How To Get Away With Murder: DWP Hides The Evidence In Suicide Reviews

Documents published by the DWP today hint that shocking neglect within the benefits system may have contributed to claimants’ deaths yet heavy redaction means there is little hard evidence.

The department have finally released 49 peer reviews into the deaths of claimants following a recent ruling from the Information Rights Commission.  The documents are so heavily censored however that many of them are completely blank with all relevant details redacted including dates, and even cause of death.

The DWP claim that withholding this information has been done to protect the identity of claimants – in line with the tribunal ruling.  But then they would fucking say that wouldn’t they.  This is the same DWP who want to share benefit claimants’ personal details with local authorities, landlords and charities.  It seems they only start to care about your privacy once they’ve killed you.

Despite the lack of details the documents deserve close scrutiny.  The over-riding theme seems to be a lack of processes in place to identify claimants at risk of suicide.  There are also indicators of grotesque incompetence within the system.  One report recommends that staff working on the Employment Support Allowance helpline are given refresher training to “help them better understand the claim process.”  Others call for more to be done to ensure claimants deemed vulnerable have a home visit before benefits are ‘disallowed’.  It is unclear whether this report was carried out before or after the DWP finally admitted that safeguarding visits should be carried out before any claimant with a mental health condition is sanctioned.

What is clear is that DWP policies were deemed to be a contributory factor in at least one of these deaths.  One report also raises the question of whether the death under investigation represents “a dislocation between policy intent and what actually happens to claimants who may be vulnerable”.

Police in Scotland are currently assessing whether to hold an investigation into former DWP ministers Chris Grayling and Iain Duncan Smith over “wilful neglect of duty by a public official” following a complaint brought by the Black Triangle Campaign over suicides linked to the despised ‘fit for work’ tests.  There may be evidence of this neglect in these peer reviews.

What we know for sure is that these 49 people are dead.  And that even amongst the scant information available there is evidence of DWP failings that contributed to these deaths.  The government has failed in its duty of care to vulnerable claimants and people died as a result.  How far that failure goes must now be urgently investigated.

The documents can be downloaded at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/dwp-foi-releases-for-may-2016

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If Anyone Is Guilty Of Disability Charity Hypocrisy It Is David Cameron Himself

All smiles for the camera as he plots to cut the benefits of those with epilepsy

It must take some front to vote to slash benefits to poverty levels for sick and disabled claimants whilst also acting as a patron or trustee for charities that claims to support them.  So it is good news that Tory MP Kit Malthouse has been forced to resign as patron of his local MS Society whilst Zac Goldsmith is also facing questions about his role as patron of a Richmond AIDS charity.  But this astonishing hypocrisy goes right to the top of the Tory Party.

David Cameron himself is vice-president of two major epilepsy charities, as well as two local cancer charities.  According to the register of minister’s interests the Prime Minister is vice-president of both the Epilepsy Society and the National Centre for Young People with Epilepsy, as well as being a Trustee of Epilepsy Research UK.  He is also a patron of Versus Cancer and Cancer Research UK Relay for Life in Witney.

Cameron’s interest in epilepsy was no doubt sparked by the death of his son who suffered from the condition, and so unlike Goldsmith or Malthouse, his concerns would appear sincere.  That does not change the fact however that one of his adopted charities has been damning about his government’s welfare reforms.

In a recent submission to a Work and Pension Connittee inquiry the Epilepsy Society slammed current Jobcentre policies saying that benefit sanctions “contribute to social injustice and the removal of human dignity”.  The charity is also a member of the Disability Benefits Consortium who recently lobbied as hard as their dirt cheap wordpress blog would let them to scrap the upcoming cut to Employment Support Allowance which could see some disabled people lose almost a third of their income.

According to the most recent figures – and they are a few years old because the DWP has stopped publishing this information –  around six and a half thousand people were assessed for benefits and placed in the Work Related Activity Group due to a diagnosis of epilepsy between 2008 and 2011.  From 2017 any new claimants placed in this group – and all those who have a change of circumstances – will be forced to try and survive on just over £70 a week.  The government say this will incentivise them to find a job.  According to the Disability Consortium this cut will make it less likely disabled people will return to work.

The death of a child may be a tragedy but David Cameron can’t have it both ways.  If he genuinely supports the charity he is vice-president of then he opposes his own government.  Whether he is involved with this organisation for comfort or spin makes little difference.  So will the real David Cameron stand the fuck up and either scrap these nasty reforms or have the courage of his convictions and resign from organisations which oppose them?  Don’t hold your breath.  Ask @epilepsysociety to sack him instead.

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‘Just The Start’ Say Claimants And Disabled People As Blockade Brings Traffic Chaos To Central London

Islington Council have called the scheme Jobs on Prescription. This is an example from MHRN of what those prescriptions might look like.

Disabled people, benefit claimants and supporters brought traffic chaos to Central London yesterday after blockading a major roundabout in protest at Iain Duncan Smith’s attempt to install Jobcentre funded busy-bodies in doctor’s surgeries.

Pic from @paulapeters2

Over 100 people gathered for the demonstration which began outside City Road Medical Centre, – one of six surgeries in Islington where so-called Work Coaches are due to be based.  Iain Duncan Smith himself even made an appearance, dressed as a doctor and handing out work cures such as the prescription above.  The protest was good-natured but determined and made a mockery of the health bureacrats who decided the surgery should be closed for the day due to fears over patients safety.  In truth the people really concerned with the welfare of Islington’s poorest residents were out in the street defending them from the latest DWP attack on disabled people and those with health conditions.

After about hour the demonstrators moved off the pavement to march down the busy City Road chanting “We’ve gotta get rid of the rich” and “the NHS makes us well, the Tories make us sick”.  On arriving at Old Street roundabout, a major central London junction, the growing police presence was out-witted and campaigners managed to block traffic moving in all directions.  A banner was unfurled across the road stating that ‘Working isn’t working’ – a reference to the growing insistence from government that low paid insecure jobs are good for our health.

A large crowd of onlookers gathered with many supportive of the action taken to draw attention to the vicious regime being installed for those out of work due to sickness or disability.  A new Health and Work Programme is planned which is likely to include some forms of forced medical treatment for some of those on sickness benefits.  Already tens of thousands of sick and disabled people have had their benefits sanctioned for not meeting the endless petty requirement imposed by Jobcentres.  Others have had benefits stripped away completely after being declared ‘fit for work’ at a Work Capability Assessment in spite of often serious and even life-threatening conditions.

Appallingly the Work Coaches to be stationed in GP Surgeries will come from the same shadowy private company that runs both these assessments and the local workfare scheme in Islington.  The employment advisors, whilst largely funded by the DWP, will be employed by Remploy –  once a provider of employment for disabled people until they were sold off by the government and turned into a welfare-to-work subsidiary of the hated Maximus corporation.

Claimants in Islington could therefore be found Fit For Work by Maximus, then forced to attend the Work Programme with Maximus and now even be coerced into being harassed by a Maximus Work Coach when they go to the fucking doctors.  So claims from council leader Richard Watts, and other DWP apologists in the borough, that this scheme is officially ‘voluntary’ for participants really don’t count for shit.  There have been no public assurances from either Maximus or the DWP that Jobcentres and Work Programme advisors will not force claimants to attend a GP-based work coach under the threat of benefit sanctions.

What is really going on is that this is a pilot scheme intended to provide evidence to justify the upcoming Health and Work Programme.  But just in case the evidence doesn’t show what the DWP want campaigners have been informed that there will be no evaluation of the results of the scheme.  It is little more than a formality in advance of some of the most brutal policies to be inflicted on disabled people that have been seen in generations.  Lefty Islington Council may claim to have had good intentions when they agreed to the pilot, but in reality they have been mugged, by Maximus and the DWP.  Now they know how claimants feel.

The protest was organised by Disabled People Against Cuts, Mental Health Resistance Network and Boycott Workfare.  A range of other groups came out in support including grassroots trade union United Voices of the World, Class War, Winvisible and Kilburn Unemployed Worker’s Group.  Doctors, psychologists and healthcare workers were also present in support.  One message rang out loud and strong.  This is just the start of a disruptive and militant campaign to destroy Iain Duncan Smith’s Health and Work Programme.

Watch a video of the protest on facebook.

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Urgent 3pm Today 4th March Online Protest! Kick The Jobcentre Out Of The NHS #DoNoHarm

Bit late with this, but if you can’t make the protest today against Maximus Work Coaches being stationed in GP Surgeries then join in online.

Friday 4th March 3-5pm – Online Twitterstorm – Please share the tweetlist.

Use hashtag #DoNoHarm and sign up to the Thunderclap

Please also support by using the template letter (amend as you wish) to send to your MP and your Doctor. (Click on links Template Letter to your MP and Template letter to your doctor to download).

You can tell Islington Clinical Commissioning Group what you think @IslingtonCCG or go direct to the leader of Islington Council who back the scheme @RichardWatts01

Follow @boycottworkfare and @Dis_PPL_Protest or join the Mental Health Resistance Network facebook page for the latest news.

Please spread the word!

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Is Work Really Good For Your Health? Probably Not If You’re Sick, Disabled Or Poor Says DWP Research

A DWP funded study published in 2006 reached a clear conclusion: “there is little direct reference or linkage to scientific evidence on the physical or mental health benefits of (early) (return to) work for sick or disabled people.”

This is quickly qualified by the researchers, who are no doubt aware that you don’t get cushy jobs writing reports for the government by telling them things they don’t want to know.  So the study claims that there is a ‘a broad consensus’ that work is good for the health of sick or disabled people “across multiple disciplines and also, importantly, among disability groups, employers, unions, insurers, and the main political parties”.  In other words if enough important people say something is true then it must be true, despite the lack of evidence.  That’s science folks.

The tragedy is that this ‘broad consensus’ has manifested in a horrifying regime for disabled people or those out of work with a long term health condition.  Every benefit sanction, work capability assessment and forced unpaid work placement that has been inflicted on sickness benefit claimants can be traced back to this invented consensus.  So far has it gone that even the recent Mental Health Taskforce report – which highlighted the shameful lack of funding for mental health treatment – called for employment to be viewed as a clinical outcome.  In some parts of the UK trials are being established to put DWP funded ‘work coaches’ in GP surgeries.  Mental health treatment ‘hubs’ are being sited in buildings alongside Jobcentres.  A new Health and Work Programme is on the way aiming to strip benefit from up to one million claimants of Employment Support Allowance – the main out of work sickness and disability benefit.   All of this is being justified by the belief that work is good for the health of sick and disabled people based on the 2006 report which says there is no scientific evidence for this claim.

The study called ‘Is Work Good For Your Health And Well-Being’ was authored by Gordon Waddell and A Kim Burton, two specialists in back pain from Cardiff University.  It features a review of over 350 scientific publications examining the relationship between health and work.  The focus of the study is largely those who are non-disabled, healthy, or have mild to moderate health conditions.  What it found is that “work is generally good for your health and well-being, provided you have ‘a good job'” (emphasis theirs).

A  discussion of the study, published in an Oxford Journal, pointed out this is a “a no-brainer”.  If you love your job, are well paid, and have a boss who is sensitive to health requirements then this might well be better for your health then the poverty and social isolation that can come from unemployment.  But even this is only a ‘general’ effect. Work can also be bad for your health the study found.  Low status and low paid jobs are a particular risk, as is work that is ‘unsatisfactory’.  The review even found that for a significant minority of people, between 5 and 10%, unemployment can lead to improved health and well-being.

Even this may not tell the full story.  Often it is assumed that because evidence shows that (generally) unemployed people are less healthy then this means that unemployment is bad for your health – rather than poor health being likely to lead to unemployment.  The researchers warn of this ‘health selection effect’ although they claim to have accounted for it. There is also an economic dimension – unemployed people are poorer, and it may be poverty that is bad for your health, not unemployment.  The researchers appear to agree and caution that in areas of high social disadvantage then a range of factors impact on health and even then “It is all very well to say that work is good for your health, but that depends on being able to get a job.”

Finally it’s worth noting that many of these studies featured in this review were carried out in the US where the loss of a job may mean an end to health insurance.  Government policies can certainly attempt to socially engineer poor health due to unemployment – already the UK has a benefit sanctions regime designed to harm the health of those who do not keep up with endless Jobcentre demands to look for work.  It may be that impacts on health due to unemployment could be mitigated by paying people more benefits and ensuring access to free healthcare.  The idle rich seem healthy enough after all.  The Queen Mother was 101 when she died and you can’t get much more workless than someone who didn’t even wipe her own arse.

The truth then, at least as far as this review is concerned, is that a good and well paid job is probably good for your health if you only have a mild to moderate health condition.  But it might not be.  You might even be one of the 5-10% who are better off being unemployed. Also there is no evidence that the health benefits of work applies to sick and disabled people, although lots of very important people think it should.  A bad job however, with low pay, low status and little prospects, could be worse for your health than unemployment.  And yet these are exactly the types of jobs that many of the claimants who face being bullied off sickness or disability benefits are likely to end up in.

According to the Mental Health Taskforce “people with mental
health problems are also often overrepresented in high-turnover, low-pay and
often part-time or temporary work”.  Current Jobcentre policies aim to get people off benefits and into work – any work – as soon as possible.  Private companies running back to work schemes are paid according to how many people they find a job, not on the quality of those jobs. Some of those jobs will make people sick, or will worsen existing health conditions.

Astonishingly, if Iain Duncan Smith gets his way, then GPs themselves will be involved in handing out these work cures, without any regard for the evidence which shows that poor quality work might harm people’s health.  The employment advisors, soon to be installed in Islington GP surgeries offering ‘jobs on prescription’, work for Maximus, the sinister US outsourcing company who also run the despised Work Capability Assessments used to stop people’s benefits by finding them ‘fit for work’.  They cannot be trusted to be aware of the complex interactions between work and health.  They will not be medical professionals but welfare-to-work busy-bodies tasked with bullying and coercing people into low quality jobs as soon as possible.

If there were loads of great jobs out there, jobs which are genuinely rewarding, well paid and enjoyable, then any coercion or conditionality within the benefits system would seem bizarre.  People are already queuing round the block in some parts of the country just to work in a coffeeshop.  Tens of thousands of people are working without pay. Despite the snide rhetoric from government ministers and the media that unemployment is caused by lazy or deficient unemployed people there is no shortage of hunger for work.  There is a shortage of jobs though, especially good ones, likely to not damage your health.

In such a cut-throat employment market, dominated by ever more demands on workers to raise productivity then patients themselves, not welfare-to-work advisors, or even doctors, are the best ones to judge whether a job is likely to be suitable for them, or whether they want to go back to work at all.  The medical ‘consensus’ that work is good for your health may apply to doctors, healthcare bureacrats and other pampered professionals but it is just not true for many of us who face long hours, low pay and insecurity.  A middle class solution to a working class problem is not acceptable.  The duty of the medical profession is to first do no harm, not parrot ideology intended to trick us into low paid work by lying about the health benefits.  And that means keeping the Jobcentre out of the NHS.

Join the protest to keep work coaches out of doctor’s surgeries outside City Road Medical Centre, 190-196 City Road , London, EC1V 2QH on Friday 4th March from 3pm.  Please spread the word, more details on the facebook page.

You can read the report at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/is-work-good-for-your-health-and-well-being

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Keep The Jobcentre Out Of The NHS – The Fightback Against The Health And Work Programme Starts Now! #donoharm

Job coaches in GP Surgeries? No!

We call on GPs to ‪#‎DoNoHarm‬.

Join DPAC, Boycott Workfare, Mental Health Resistance Network on

4 March, 3pm at the City Road Surgery, 190-196 City Road, London EC1V 2QH.

Groups supporting benefit claimants and disabled people are uniting for a protest on the 4th March following the news that Employment Coaches from shadowy US outsourcing company Maximus are to be stationed in GP surgeries in Islington.

The demonstration will take place outside City Road Medical Centre, one of six GP practices in the borough who have opted to take part in the DWP funded pilot scheme.  These surgeries will now have their own Employment Coaches drawn from the welfare-to-work industry who will provide the kind of Jobcentre harassment that disabled people and those with health conditions are already all too familiar with if they are unable to work.

The scheme has been devised by Islington Clinical Commissioning Group who oversee healthcare in Islington and is backed by the local Labour Council who say on their website that this service will create ‘jobs on prescription’.  Many claimants fear the reality could be benefit sanctions on prescription, as doctors are turned into a weapon to impose labour market discipline and bully unemployed, disabled or unwell people into low paid or unsuitable work.

GP referrals to Employment Coaches will not be compulsory to attend – yet.  But this pilot scheme forms part of a national strategy by Iain Duncan Smith to bring Jobcentres into the heart of the NHS.  A new Health and Work Programme is being planned, with the aim of slashing spending on already meagre sickness and disability benefits.  Even those with the most serious conditions may soon to be forced to prove they are constantly looking for work whilst the government are examining the possibility of compulsory treatment for some health problems.

Campaigners warn that any attempt to merge healthcare with the vicious benefit cutting agenda of the DWP will demolish the trust that exists between doctors and patients.  An activist from Disabled People Against Cuts warns that “many disabled people already feel they have to watch every word they say when seeing their GP in case it is used against them at some point to stop their benefits.   Placing Jobcentre funded staff in doctor’s’ surgeries could destroy the doctor/patient relationship and may lead to some people not accessing vital healthcare when they need it most.”

Perhaps most appalling is that the Employment Coaches in Islington are set to come from Remploy – once a government run service that provided jobs for disabled people – now sold off and turned into a privatised welfare-to-work company responsible for sanctioning disabled people’s benefits.  Remploy have become a subsidiary of Maximus – the same company who run the despised Work Capability Assessment used to declare that disabled people or those with a long term health condition are ‘fit for work’.  Maximus are also providers of the Work Programme, a Jobcentre scheme which involves compulsory training or workfare with brutal benefit sanctions inflicted for ‘non-compliance’.

At a time when some claimants have been driven to suicide by the constant bullying, assessments, threats and sanctions that now form part of the UK’s benefits system, there must be no place in the NHS for Jobcentre busy-bodies.  Disabled people, benefit claimants and supporters can and will defeat this appalling attack on the fundamental principle that healthcare professionals should ‘first do no harm’.  Join campaigners from DPAC, Mental Health Resistance Network and Boycott Workfare outside City Road Medical Centre, 190-196 City Road , London, EC1V 2QH on Friday 4th March from 3pm.  Please spread the word and make this huge!

An online protest will also be held for those unable to attend in person.  Watch this space for further details and in the meantime please tweet using hashtag #DoNoHarm

See the Facebook Event Page for more details and please support the Thunderclap – timed to go off just as the protest begins

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How Islington’s Labour Run Council Are Dancing To Iain Duncan Smith’s Tune

So the doctor says to their patient “I’ve got some good news, and some bad new.   The bad news is you’ve only got six months to live … but the good news is that I’ve found you a temporary job working in Poundland.”

You might have noticed that this joke is not very fucking funny.  But this is the dream of council bureacrats in one London borough who are developing a horrifying strategy for local healthcare which will see “employment viewed as a clinical outcome.”

Whilst the final plans for Iain Duncan Smith’s localised Health and Work Programme have not yet been released, the Labour dominated Borough of Islington are jumping aboard the gravy train early and have set up their own scheme to tackle what they call  ‘health-related worklessness’.  In a report published in 2014 the so-called Islington Employment Commission – a bunch of local employers, councillors, Jobcentre busy-bodies and a token TUC representative – called for radical change in the borough’s employment support strategy. Their proposals mirror almost exactly the current direction of Tory social security policy, even down to using the same words.

All young people should be ‘learning or earning’ according to the commission, a phrase first used by David Cameron when he announced the yet to materialise mass workfare programme for all those under 21.  They also claim that many long term sick or disabled people are not receiving enough employment support because “their benefit does not require them to look for work”.  And for those who do have to look for work as part of their benefit conditions, they say the support is not good enough, and they think they could do better.  In fact salaries depend on it.  As such they recommended establishing a local Health and Work Programme to make ‘maximising employment a priority’ for healthcare services.

Six months later Islington Council teamed up with Islington Clinical Commissioning Group who oversee local healthcare and ominously formed a partnership with Jobcentre Plus. The DWP were  only too happy to help and agreed to fund the salary of an Employment Lead worker to be based at the heart of Islington’s NHS services to “to drive employment outcomes through strategic health commissioning”.  What this means is money meant for healthcare will instead be shovelled into the hands of grasping welfare-to-work parasites with the aim of reducing “entrenched worklessness among residents with a health condition or disability in the borough.”

One of the first moves, which is already sparking local outrage, is to introduce Employment Coaches into six GP’s surgeries in Islington.  These tax payer funded busy-bodies will come from Remploy who were recently sold off to giant US outsourcing company Maximus who already run many Jobcentre services. Doctors will be encouraged to refer patients for employment support with the same company who carry out the despised Work Capability Assessment used to stop disabled people’s benefits by finding them fit for work.  A company that has been the target of ongoing protests by disabled people and benefit claimants.  It is hard to imagine a bigger insult to disabled or long term sick people in Islington.  But then perhaps that is the point.

This is leafy, lefty Islington, and so there is lots of gushing talk about quality of life and creating living wage jobs in the proposals for the new scheme.  They don’t really mean it though.  In Islington Employment Commission’s report they discuss how some residents object to taking the first job they are offered because it might be unsuitable or low paid.  According to the commission local employers have told them this is not the case and that people should be prepared to take a job that isn’t perfect no matter how shit, just to get their foot on the ladder.  But then they would say that wouldn’t they. Islington’s Health and Work service is being designed with the needs of employers in mind, not local people.

As such, whilst evidence shows that low paid, insecure, or unsuitable work is bad for your health, doctors will still be encouraged to coerce their paients into taking these jobs.  And whilst Islington Councillors and healthcare bueracrats salve their consciences by telling themselves about all the wonderful opportunities they are creating for disabled people, their partners, Jobcentre Plus will provide the teeth – in the form of vicious and life destroying benefit sanctions – to ensure compliance.  Iain Duncan Smith must be pissing himself as the liberal elite dance to his tune in Jeremy Corbyn’s backyard.  If he can get away with this shit here, he will consider he can do it everywhere.  And that is why it must be stopped.

A protest has been called outside City Road Medical Centre, 190-196 City Road , London, EC1V 2QH on Friday 4th March from 3pm.  Please spread the word, more details on the facebook page.

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Big Disability Rides To The Rescue With Too Little Much Too Late

In an unprecedented show of absolutely fuck all, members of the Disability Benefits Consortium – which includes some of the UK’s largest disability charities – have written a stern letter to Iain Duncan Smith asking him not to cut disabled people’s benefits.

In the Welfare Reform and Work Bill, due to be debated in the House of Lords next week, plans have been announced to slash some out of work sickness and disability benefits by almost a third.  New claimants in the so-called Work Related Activity Group, meaning people assessed as likely to be fit for work at some point in the future, will receive just over £70 a week – the same amount as those currently on the dole.  People in this group include those with degnerative or progressive diseases such as Multiple Schlerosis, Parkinson’s disease or cancer.  This vicious benefit cut is not being done to save money, but to ‘incentivise’ people to find a job.  It is about as vile as anything that Iain Duncan Smith has done so far, and he’s done a lot.

In response the Disability Benefits Consortium have written a letter, which only half of their members bothered to sign, and which was published in the Daily Mirror over the weekend.  Big fucking deal.

According to their website the Disability Benefits Consortium (DBC) is a “national coalition of over 60 different charities and other organisations committed to working towards a fair benefits system.”  They include Disability Rights UK, an organisation who have recently been handed a huge contract to work for Maximus – the shady US conglomerate who carry out the despised Work Capability Assessments which will be used to decide which disabled people face a benefit cut under the new rules.  Other charities involved in pretending to defend social security are MIND, RNIB, Leonard Chesire and Mencap – all of whom happily accepted lucrative sub-contracts to run Iain Duncan Smith’s  mandatory Work Programme which disabled people are forced to attend under the threat of vicious benefit sanctions.  Also on the list are the workfare supporting Papworth Trust, along with Age UK who in 2013 were accused of running a ‘workfare warehouse’ in East Sussex.  Citizen’s Advice, who welcomed the introduction of the Claimant Commitment under which unemployed people are forced into pointless jobsearch for 35 hours a week under threat of benefit sanctions, are also included in this fight for a fairer benefits system.

Despite the vast resources possessed by the 60 charities who make up the Disability Benefits Consortium (DBC), their website is hosted for free on wordpress.com.  It looks like someone knocked it up on a cheap smartphone during their fag break.  Last year this group of fearless campaigners made a total of 12 posts on their blog – and I thought I was getting slack.  According to the website they have not been arsed to contribute to a government consultation on welfare reform since 2012.

Compare this to the now defunct Disability Works campaign – launched with a glitzy House of Lords reception by many of the DBC charities and used to lobby the government to hand them juicy welfare-to-work contracts and you see the true priority of these organisations.  Money.

The very worst thing that could happen is big disability charities hijacking the fight against welfare reforms, although there is little danger of that.  The fucking awful Hardest Hit demonstration they organised in 2011 was little more then a march to protect disability charity funding, not disabled people’s benefits.  And it’s been downhill ever since.  For every statement released by charities condemning social security cuts a story emerges of them quietly sidling up to the DWP in the hope of lucrative contracts. Until disability charities form a united stance of complete non co-operation with this government then their words mean fuck all when their actions are complicit in destroying the lives of sick and disabled people.

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Keep Benefit Sanctions Out Of Healthcare, Protest This Week With Mental Health Resistance Network

You might have thought that Thamesreach, as one of London’s largest homelessness charities, would be savage in their criticism of the current housing policies at the Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG).  You might have expected outrage at the extension of right to buy, the slashing of housing benefits and the decimation of council housing with secure tenancies and genuinely affordable rents.  You would have assumed, at the very least, they would have something to say about new rules being introduced which could see up to 95% of social housing sold in some boroughs.

Sadly however, Thamesreach have remained silent whilst the DCLG have gone about smashing up the social housing sector in London.  One reason for this compliance is likely to be the significant funding the department has given the charity to set up an Employment Academy in Southwark to combat so-called ‘worklessness’ amongst homeless people.

To be clear, anyone who uses the word ‘worklessness’ when they mean unemployment, is a cunt.  The only purpose of this term is to stigmatise those who cannot find a job and attempt to blame unemployed people for unemployment.  And Thamesreach use this nasty little slur over and over again in their gushing promotion of their latest tax-payer funded gravy train.

According to the charity their Employment Academy is “helping thousands of unemployed and economically disadvantaged people find employment in the capital.”  The truth is not quite so dramatic.  Elsewhere Thamesreach admit that just 114 people have found work through the project so far.  Which for s service which claims to have up to 1800 users a month is remarkably shit.

It is unclear how involved the DWP are in the Employment Academy although the charity do allude to a partnership with Jobcentres and the Work Programme.  Thamesreach are known for their cosy relationships with DWP Ministers including Iain Duncan Smith himself who recently visited one of their other projects in Streatham.  The charity are also notorious for their attacks on the most marginalised, such as supporting Westminster Council’s failed attempt to make it illegal to give food to homeless people, perhaps one of the pettiest and most spiteful laws proposed in recent history.  They were one of the first organisations to launch a high profile anti-begging campaign claiming that if you give money to homeless people it will kill them and have even been involved in closing down squats in co-ordination with the police and UK Border Authority.  Perhaps most astonishingly they support ‘encouraged’ repatriation of non-UK born homeless people as well as grassing up migrants who might be working illegally.

An organisation whose policies would not be out of place in the BNP’s manifesto can simply not be trusted at a time when the government is turning their attention to sick and disabled benefit claimants with the threat of compulsory treatment.  So it is alarming that Southwark Coouncil have recently decided to locate mental health services inside Thamesreach’s Employment Academy in the form of their Living Well Hub.  This follows a similar decision by Lambeth who faced protests after situating their Living Well Hub inside Streatham Jobcentre “where specialist mental health services operating alongside JCP (Jobcentre) staff are working together towards a common goal of improving health and well-being and helping people to get back to, or stay in, work.”  That’s according to Thamesreach by the way, who are also involved in the Lambeth hub.

A protest called by Mental Health Resistance Network is being held this week outside Thamesreach’s Employment Academy demanding that there should be no attempt to replace mental health treatment with benefits removal and sanctions.  It is vital to establish a line which must not be crossed, by local authorities, charities, welfare-to-work companies or any other organisation with their snout in the welfare reform trough.  The protest has already been a success – the launch party of Streatham’s Living Well Centre which was to coincide with the demonstration has already been called off.  Mental Health Resistance Network will be there anywhere, join them this Wednesday 9th December – meet at noon outside the Employment Academy, 29 Peckham Rd, London SE5 8UA or gather on Camberwell Green from 11.15am to march there together.  Please help spread the word.

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How The DWP Is Drafting In Doctors To Promote Iain Duncan Smith’s Warped Ideology

Are you working hard enough?  Are you sure?  What if you get sick, or have an accident?  Are you prepared to go to work anyway, even if you don’t think it would be good for your health?  What if your doctor and boss agree you could do something other than your usual job instead of malingering at home?  Like making cups of tea all day, or cleaning the bogs, or any form of work your empoyer can dream up to force you not to take time off.  Because that is now the chilling reality as the DWP attempts to inject Iain Duncan Smith’s warped ideology into the NHS.

Last week the DWP issued patronising new guidance to GPs on when they should issue a Fit Note.  Doctors are warned of the dangers of ‘worklessness’ and told they must consider “the vital role that work can play in your patient’s health”.  According to the department, “the evidence is clear that patients benefit from being in some kind of regular work”.

This is an outright lie.  What the evidence says is that on balance most people might be better off working but the beneficial health effects depend on the nature and quality of that work.  In the report on which the DWP’s claims are based – a paper incidentally commissioned by the DWP themselves – the authors actually warn that “a minority of people may experience contrary health effects from work”. 

This study – called Is Work Good For Your Health and Well Being (pdf) – has formed the basis of government policy ever since the Labour administration launched the despised Work Capability Assessment for out of work sickness benefits in 2008.  It features a reasonably wide-ranging review of the evidence of the health risks and benefits of work and concludes that work, on balance, is better for most people’s health than unemployment but with important caveats.  These findings have been consistently misrepresented by politicians who have used them to claim that any kind of work is good for health, and that this applies to everybody.

The study found that in some cases – possibly 5-10% – unemployment can lead to improved health and well being.  It warns that negative health impacts of unemployment are “at least partly mediated through socioeconomic
status” – meaning it is not work that is good for you, but poverty that is bad for you.   The review points out that whilst the evidence is conflicting, shift work and long hours could have a weak negative impact on health.  It also finds that school leavers who move into ‘unsatisfactory’ employment can experience a
decline in their health and that economically secure people who retire early may experience beneficial effects on their health.   Even if this report is taken at face value – and it comes loaded with assumptions about the social and moral imperatives of work – all it shows is that work can be good for your health – but only if it’s a good quality well paid job.

If you are in low paid or insecure work then what your GP should tell you – based on the existing evidence – is to take a few days off if you aren’t happy or feel unwell.  Perhaps they should warn that you might be one of the 5 or 10% of people who are healthier if they are unemployed, despite the loss of income.  A more recent study carried out in Australia, and quoted on The Conversation, found that people “who moved into poor-quality jobs showed a significant worsening in their mental health compared to those who remained unemployed.”

What the new guidance to GPs is intended to do is impose workplace dicipline via the healthcare system.  Much like a seven day NHS is a health service for bosses, not patients, and likely to lead to pressure on workers not to book medical appointments in working hours, the Fit Note scheme is designed to bully people into the workplace even if they are sick.  That is why the guidance states that if GPs consider their patient could do any work at all, regardless of their usual job, then they should tick a box suggesting amended duties, or workplace adapatations rather than issue a full Fit Note.  And if doctors are too squeamish to treat patients this way then they are instructed to refer them to Maximus – the shadowy US conglomerate brought in carry out health assessments under the new Fit For Work scheme.

To help doctors decide what is best for their patients, or more correctly their patient’s employers, the new Fit Note guidance features case studies, with recommended courses of action that GPs should take.  They include an example of someone diagnosed with anxiety disorder who says that her work in customer services is giving her panic attacks and that she is too distressed to carry out her duties.  According to the DWP her doctor should first warn her that working is important for her mental health and “remind her that there are still other things that she can do – for example, physical tasks or back-room duties.”  This will help her feel more positive according to the department.  Then she should be referred to Maximus who will develop  a plan with her boss, such as sending her on a course to learn coping techniques, or doing quieter shifts.  And of course bosses, being always right and always reasonable, will not abuse this new power to force sick employees into the workplace.

Yet even the most bullying of bosses are to be accommodated according to the DWP.  Another case study features someone – a woman again – who complains that a poor relationship with her manager is causing her severe stress.  She says the manager has been ‘really horrible’ to her and she feels unable to cope.  Rather than raise any concerns about what seems to indicate workplace bullying however, her doctor is instructed to declare she does not have a health problem and she should speak to her human resources department, or union rep.  She should not be issued with a Fit Note and her GP should explain that they are “acting with her health interests in mind.”  It is better for her health to be bullied and abused in the workplace than be workless, even for a short while, according to the DWP.

The introduction of this guidance makes it clear that the scroungers vs scroungers narrative is now impeding on healthcare even amongst those who are not on benefits.  It is not hyperbole to suggest that the credibility of doctors is now at stake.  For too long the entire healthcare sector has remained silent whilst scientific evidence is distorted to further the ideology of modern capitalism and increase the power of employers over their staff.  Any GP who believes in evidence over rhetoric should tell Iain Duncan Smith to stick these guidelines up his fucking arse.  Anything else is a betrayal of the role of doctors as guardians of our health and well being.

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