Post by nickd on Jan 13, 2012 21:35:05 GMT 1
Amongst government's proposed flagship welfare reforms, is a new benefit called 'Personal Independence Payment' or PIP for short. The question thousands of disability campaigners will want an answer to is whether PIP will get past the post and become law.
Here's why we owe it to the disabled to make sure it does not....
Controversy is building among disability campaign groups at the prospect of French firm ATOS being a Worldwide Olympic partner of London 2012, and that includes the Paralympics. Campaigners have already spoken to Channel 4 News and told them how the company is running a flawed process to assess disabled people's rights to benefits and is therefore an inappropriate sponsor of the Paralympic Games.
The flawed assessments have so often been the focal point of thousands of benefit disputes as claimants take the state to task at tribunals and appeal against the ultra controversial Employment & Support Allowance. Of those who appeal around 40% transpire to be successful; - casting huge doubt over the validity of the 'Work Capability Assessments' carried out by private independent healthcare professionals working for Atos Healthcare as part of a multi million pound contract they hold with the Department of Work and Pensions.
Atos, through its sponsorship of the Paralympics, may like to promote an image that the disabled can all too easily jump all of life's hurdles, but the reality is that thousands of them have to depend on disability benefits as a means of affording the extra living costs associated with their conditions. Claimants who are unable to work or who face a limitation in the workplace are being transferred at a rate of thousands per week from the older Incapacity Benefit over to the more recent Employment & Support Allowance introduced in 2008.
Disability campaigners will reel in horror as more detail emerges on how Disability Living Allowance claims (this being introduced in 1992) are set to be replaced by Personal Independence Payments as part of government's controversial welfare reforms. It's a justifiable horror as more detail emerges over how government intends the new payments to be distributed.
Key Changes
The draft regulations expose government's 'thinking' - PIP will have a big impact upon claimants; - here are some of the key changes...
(1) Assessment will be on a points scoring basis - similar to the current Employment & Support Allowance. So expect more controversial assessments as private contractors such as ATOS are bound to be involved.
(2) The current lower rates in Disability Living Allowance are to be abolished; - PIP will only be paid at a 'standard' and 'enhanced' rate.
(3) It looks like you will need to have suffered from the condition for 6 rather than 3 months and the draft implies re-assessment at more regular intervals, perhaps as often as six months. Claimants will be required to participate in 'consultations' to check over their claims; - these will be either face to face or over the phone. If you don't cooperate without good cause, your payment will stop.
(4) You will need to score sufficient points (probably selected at the whim of an appointed healthcare professional using something akin to the infamous Atos 'Lima Logic' software) from a confusing array of 67 different descriptor questions contained with the mobility and daily living activity score sheets. The points will determine whether you qualify and if you do, at what rate.
(5) It looks like claimants will have to demonstrate that they have problems with the descriptors for at least 50% of the 6 month qualifying period.
It looks like an absolute recipe for a disaster to me. It's a shame that a lot of the good thinking and sensible feedback from consultations seems to have been ignored as these regulations show every sign of becoming as problematic as Employment & Support Allowance.
It looks distinctly like more and more appeals will be upon us if PIP is implemented in its current form, all manner of problems in linking entitlements to allowances contained within the Universal Credit are likely as the reforms gather pace; - not to mention affording existing claimants some protection before they are transferred over to what looks a deeply problematic new benefit to me.
And let's not forget how funding for welfare benefit specialists is set to disappear if the government's legal aid reforms successfully abolish the Community Legal Service which currently funds thousands of specialists at your local law centre or CAB.
We owe it to thousands of genuine claimants to keep fighting against legal aid cuts so we can help our clients sort out the absolute mess if we let PIP get past the post. We also need to keep up the pressure on government and show them that thousands of benefit specialists could actually point them in the right direction by showing them what will work and what will not.
More on how PIP compares with the current Disability Living Allowance and welfare reforms..
mylegal.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=frontline&thread=552&page=1#1318