So Employment & Support Allowance is here to stay to replace Incapacity Benefit. Having got through an IB50 allegedly I will not be checked again until 2013. That means nothing to me. It could be tomorrow as far as I am concerned.
Whatever happens there is nothing I can do to stop being swept up into it. well what do I do now? Do I sit and do nothing and wait for it to happen?. People say to me that I shouldn't worry myself about it and just wait till it happens. I am sorry to disappoint you folks but I am worrying about it now.
The DWP virtually say in there explanation of ESA that as long as you can breath you are fit for some type of work. I have already read a lot about the ESA and there are many things written in to it to make your illnesses or disabilities not be as severe as they are for you the actual sufferer.
To me the ESA is nothing more than glorified jobseekers allowance.
So that leaves few choices: work or suffer on the pittance the government think you need to live on while not forgetting to go to your work-focused interviews or you will get sanctioned.
If you want to try and find a job [not that you haven't already been trying] don't forgot there's a recession looming on so there aren't that many jobs about really as everyone seems to think there are. You will have to compete with the people who have just lost there jobs and the employers who don't employ disabled people which I have said about in a previous post.
ESA is just a trap so the government can save money to pay for bailing out banks, wars and making the rich even richer. The sick and the disabled and the unemployed are just treated as some sort of under-class.
I don't believe all this garbage the DWP are coming out with how going to work will help your self-esteem and make you feel better. Robert wrote in my last post about him only being offered jobs at Asda handing out baskets. Sorry but handing out baskets at probably the minimum wage would not do Robert's or anyone's self esteem any good however wonderful it may be made up to sound.
The ESA has also been designed so people will worry and end up on the pathways to work so they can also make a profit out of your misery.
I also hold responsible the Jobcentre for failing in all there promises they made to me of helping me get back to work.
How the DEA raved on about how how wonderful it would be to go to rehab in Birmingham for eight months and how they would help me get a job. I went to Birmingham virtually every day for eight months and all they did was get me a voluntary work placement and effectively dumped me there. After all that they closed my case. Where is all the support? I am no nearer to a job as I was then.
I am nearly 40 years old, had a life threatening brain injury and I have got to start at the bottom again. ain't it about time somebody gave me a break for a change. It isn't all my fault I am in this situation. I can not be held responsible for everything that has happened.
The people who I trusted to help me get back into work have failed me and all they have done is make a profit out of me.
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6 comments:
You have expressed very well the problems of many of us on IB: When will we be re-assessed? Will there even be work for us when we are forced off IB? And how will we manage to hold down a job with our health conditions?
I have a chronic spinal problem that results in continuous pain, sometimes severe enough to make me vomit, but the questionnaire is now worded so that this will in fact raise a maximum of six points when I have to be re-tested. Pain is not counted. Over the years, and taking care of my health, I have gone from thirty-six points to fifteen, so I now just qualify. At no point in the 13 years that I have been like this, have I been offered anything other than painkillers: so I now have kidney and blood-pressure problems too. I don't believe that suddenly I will be offered lots of physical therapies to help keep my pain under control. What I think will happen is that people like me will be given the new questionnaire, fail it, and be put on JSA. End of story. Our income will immediately drop, so managing life will become even harder, as we will be even poorer - and heaven knows we already struggle on £90 per week - and we will be expected to show the efforts we are making to find work which is not there, and would not be offered to us anyway. In addition, rather than admitting that they have moved the goal posts, the government prefer to pretend that we have been illegitimate claimants all this time, and we are now seen by many people as lying, thieving scroungers. In this way they have whipped up the tabloids to do their dirty work for them. As an honest person this suggestion of dishonesty sticks in the throat.
All of this fills me with despair.
I am sorry not to be able to be more positive.
Whilst I do not presume to understand the particular health conditions of the previous contributors to this blog, what is immediately clear is that both are very articulate with a grasp of basic IT skills (sufficient at least to have made their contributions). These are two skills that many "able bodied" job applicants don't possess. Perhaps, then, a little more focus on the positive. I'm not suggesting that it is necessarily easy for people with health conditions to pick up job offers at the drop of a hat, far from it - but it you have skills you should not waste them.
Are you lot for real? I already struggle on £90 a week - that's more than poeple I know take home after their rent and council tax is paid. It's about time that people realised that any work is better than no work. I was on IB for 4 years - what a touch, the gold card of benefits - I even got a pay rise after 6 months. For the chap that you talk about who got a job handing out baskets - that's b/s - Asda ensure that you multi task, you have the benefit of interacting with others, more opportunity than you would on the sick and the chance of making new networks. I started at a bread chopper in a busy restaurant when one of those pathway companies placed me. Now I am a regional operations director. I still have my disability but it was the labels that I was given that stopped me seeing what I could do. Stop whinging and start paying your way!
Anonymous Anonymous said...
Whilst I do not presume to understand the particular health conditions of the previous contributors to this blog,
Thank you for you comment as you obviously understand that it is not as easy as others seem to think.
I wish it was that easy, unfortunately this is what myself and many other people have experienced and this is why I am writing about it in my blog.
I go into these things all positive and think its going to work and i am going to get somewhere then you get down to reality. If the people who said they would help were more motivated by actually helping people and not by wanting to get people off there books and make a profit out of the sick and disabled at the same time then things might be different. If your face doesn't fit or you don't tow the party line then your chances are greatly reduced. I am just one of many who to the goverment are just a number on a list and they don't care what sort of future you want as long as you are off there books.
Discrimination against disabled and sick people applying for jobs is real and is one of many problems people have to face but some people won't accept it and they think you should just stop whingeing and accept any crap job just to get you into "the job".
Pathways to work might help some people but to others it is the pathways to hell having had personal experience.
Work isn't the be all and end all of it. I want a future but I won't do it packing soap, handing out baskets like Robert [if he had not experienced it he would not have mentioned it. If it was that simple I am sure he would be a director by now otherwise.] cutting up drawings and making cups of tea and how my once former workmates said I should be so grateful just to have work there.
The biggest problem for an employer is this do I take on somebody who might be OK today and bad tomorrow, do I employ a disabled person because I've a social conscience or do I employ somebody who is fit healthy and perhaps not so educated. The answer in the main will be the fit and healthy, because they have a better chance of not taking days off, it's a lie but thats the mind set of people.
I'm not really stupid I left school with a fair education, went to work in the building trade becoming self employed working for myself.
Then I had an accident for which I spent nearly two years in and out of hospital, this was allowed because the hospital messed up my treatment sending me home on the day of the accident with a broken back and a badly damaged spinal cord then accusing me of being drunk, then the CCTV film of the day in question went missing and the Judge said that it was not by accident this happened.
But the problem is in fact employers, everything is being aimed at the sick the disabled, nothing much at the employer in fact nothing at all. A memo I saw from government stated that employers must get a social consciences, well perhaps but most firms work on a profit to employee ratio I know I did.
But you have two people for one job, you have a disabled bloke like me education Ok, he types with one finger because he has a clawed hand, he has not worked in years, he is severely disabled and still takes powerful drugs, then you have a bloke from Poland fit healthy does not speak English who do you employ well neither you go and look for somebody else.
Problem is no legs must mean you have a mental health problem and it highly likely they are right, but when they are wrong no legs means access access means money, so why not employ somebody with legs.
So ends my rant.
"Whilst I do not presume to understand the particular health conditions of the previous contributors to this blog, what is immediately clear is that both are very articulate with a grasp of basic IT skills (sufficient at least to have made their contributions). These are two skills that many "able bodied" job applicants don't possess."
Alas, being articulate and with reasonable IT skills doesn't make an employer inclined to give you a job once they find out about your slow typing speed, your inconsistent and unpredictable performance levels, or the way you only have the time and energy to manage to work part-time because you need most of your time and energy to struggle with the basic essentials of day to day living such as eating and washing.
So it's all very well to say we're capable of operating a breadslicer, but it must be remembered that we need to be able or enabled to look after ourselves properly *as well*.
Furthermore, unless it's a "special" nonjob created specifically for us as part of a scheme, we also need to be able to interview well and persuade employers to overcome their own prejudices *as well as* managing to be the best and most capable applicant for the position.
I'm pleased for VickyVega that she got the support she did and was therefore able to prove herself in the work environment, and that her disability is such that she did not incur high disability-related costs and could therefore regard IB as a "gold card" rather than "barely enough to cover essential expenses". I would be more pleased for her if she could realise that different people are in different situations.
Finally, before anyone leaps to a conclusion - I'm disabled, I work, and I got my job without charity or intervention. I'm just well aware that not everyone is as lucky as me.
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