Category Archives: Book Reviews

This is well worth reading. Please read the original blog post that I’ve re-bloged before reading my comments. Thanks.

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For those of us on ESA because of mental health conditions it’s a frightening thought that the already meager allowance could be sanctioned if we don’t attend ‘medical treatment’ because obviously we don’t want to get better and go to work if we don’t.

I’m being sarcastic.

In January the idea of going to any form of treatment was impossible, purely because I couldn’t leave the house. If a person is that ill how are they expected to go to treatment?

I’ve had CBT in the past; it doesn’t work long term for some people, me included. Why go through the horror again, when long-term professional psychological assessment and treatment would be more appropriate? Because the government can keep the price down if they contract for a fixed number of sessions.

At some point I’ll have to go for an assessment with Maximus to see whether I need to be in the Work Related Activity Group or the Support Group. An employee of the DWP who knows me well said that I really need to get off ESA and into part-time work before then

…because I don’t want you to go through the trauma of the assessment.

Trauma

Before I had to stop working – was forced out of my job by unsympathetic management – I was working on a short term agency contract on the ESA enquiry line. I spoke with so many people who were in dire poverty because their ESA had been sanctioned or paid late. I spoke to people with serious mental health conditions who had been told they were fit for work by Atos despite being unable to leave the house unaccompanied, I spoke to people who were suicidal because they couldn’t deal with everything, because they were in dire poverty, because their lives had so suddenly changed.

The DWP is no longer fit for purpose, it kills people and attaches further stigma to those already stigmatized in our society. There needs to be serious reform, now.