DLA assessments by 2013...Autism as whipping boy again?

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/fina ... nefit.html

Expect to see a vast raft of tribunals as thousands of DLA claimants protest the decisions to cut their allowances, regardless of any and all medical evidence. The disabled have already been targeted by the new ESA benefit as an easy target for savings, and now we will catch it in the neck again, because real fraudsters are canny enough to exaggerate their problems, overact and lie, whereas we are generally more interested in trying to live more normal lives. But the more "normal" we try to be, the more we will be penalised, even though we are still disabled, just willing to TRY. Bettering yourself or pushing yourself further and harder will only result in being pushed back. Invisible disabilities will be at the top of the list for cuts, because DWP employees are already near incapable of recognising them. Lets not forget either that ATOS healthcare, much vaunted professionals that they are, have already been caught falsifying DLA applications to make people seem "better". The DWP seem to be better at miracle cures than Lourdes.

Bear in mind that DLA is not a "benefit" only available to the poor or the workshy but a compensation designed to help ANYONE disabled by assisting them with the activities that everyone else can do fine. It is effectively a leveller. My concern is not so much that there should BE a medical assessment, but that it will be carried out by the same lying shysters as the ESA medical, who are only interested in saving money. (For the record this is not a libellous statement. ATOS have lied and falsified data. FACT.)

How can autism show in a medical test? If they scam me out of my DLA with this BS I'm gonna be mad at our government...

The first-year plan for the 2009 Autism Act suggests that ATOS will be applying some proper autism training to their pet monkeys. They definitely need it. They also need to be knocked down a peg or two so that their opinion does not override that of every other medical professional in existence.

...And another thing, isn't my official diagnosis proof enough?

That's the problem. According to all the paperwork, in an ESA assessment the opinion of the ATOS "healthcare professional" outweighs the decision of any and all medical professionals. It doesn't matter what a doctor, psychologist, clinical psychologist, neurologist or the surgeon general says. It doesn't even matter if the diagnostic criteria REQUIRE YOU to have some of the assessment points. What ATOS says is more correct.

This is my fear.. that ATOS will apply their god-like powers to DLA.

That's just mad. Already I hate this stupid new government.

In fairness, Labour initiated this regime, but an easy target is an easy target, and vulnerable people by definition are an easy target.

This is so typical. Ignore a trained professional's opinion and instead listen to a "healthcare professional" who probably doesn't even know what autism is. You're right though. They'll pick the easiest targets first. Then the people who need and rely on the benefits won't get them and the crooks who are used to scamming these so-called "professionals" will still get it.

I know in the United States you can turn in people doing welfare fraud. They have shown videos made by regular citizens turning in their welfare fraudster neighbors. People fake bad backs carrying matresses or tvs into their house. Another was of a man who claimed a spinal injury doing labor intensive roofing work who was getting piad under the table.

There shouldn't be an automatic right to recieving DLA because you have an aspergers diagnosis anyway. I've seen the kind of exajeration put on claims for DLA from people who have AS and quite frankly I can't think of anyone with AS who would be entitled to such a benefit, short of them being in a wheelchair or suffering some kind of physical ailment.

I would much rather this money goes to people with physical/sensory and/or learning disabilities. I'm sorry you just can't compare the problems of AS to the problems of having those kind of problems its absurd. If you are able bodied can read and write your already doing better then a significant amount of the human race as it is.

There are always fraudsters, true enough. These "medicals" simply aren't good enough to actually catch them..and the genuinely disabled are not usually criminally-minded enough to fake symptoms.

To the genuinely disabled, I suspect the thought of "faking" some of the things that blight their lives is extremely repellent, because it would be unlawful and immoral, and in many ways sick and twisted. Often the disabled and vulnerable are naive, extremely innocent. The concept of white lies is beyond them, never mind full-blown fraud. Many will assume (as I and my partner did) that our diagnosis would speak for themselves, that the very nature of our disabilities would be relevant to our capabilities in any proper medical examination. They did not. We would sensibly assume that the opinion of a fully qualified clinical psychologist formed over a long perusal of the relevant facts, a lengthy interview and a learned study of medical history in a specialist subject by a specialist would be of some import in a MEDICAL examination, and that that opinion would be of larger import than a tick-box questionnaire performed by a generic "health-care professional". It did not. It would even be safe to assume that the diagnostic criteria for a disease or impairment or disability would be of some relevance. (Example: this man has AIDS. Perforce, his blood is infected with a rather unpleasant and infectious problem. This man has had both legs torn off at the knee by a shark. By definition, he has no legs. This man has Aspergers. In order to qualify, he must meet the triad of impairments. By definition, he is impaired. Its not called a triad of capabilities..) But of course, this is not the case.

ATOS healthcare professionals are trained, compelled even, to make staggering assumptions based on the smallest of circumspect guesswork. The claimant arrived at the interview by car. Thus the claimant is capable of travelling by car. Thus the claimant not only has ready access TO a car at all times, but is fully capable on a daily basis of driving said car to and from a destination. Thus the interviewee can work. The fact that a) an claimant is COMPELLED to travel to the interview and b) a single unique interview situation with one individual at a specific time is completely different to multiple occasions at set times to a place that may contain many individuals...etc etc it should be clear enough. Or how about: the claimant has a pet/pets. Thus they are capable of work. (Genuine question.) I cannot explain this one as I still do not understand how the admission that you have an indeterminate number of pet animals at an indeterminate place or unknown species could possibly imply full working ability. It may be that the claimant has a pet earwig they keep in an old sock in someone elses shed. It may be that the pet is wholly imaginary. It may be that they have a flock of sheep. The ATOS employee would not know, because they do not ask. They just tick another box.

Ad nausem, the ATOS questioning is almost completely random, and the physical medical is utterly incapable of reflecting any ability to work. The fact that an individual can touch the tip of their nose once bears no relevance to whether they can do it ten, twenty or a thousand times, for example. The fact that an individual might allow an (apparent) medical "expert" to touch them once does not mean they would then allow it a million times from complete strangers.

I could go on, and in other threads I have, about the sheer corrupt ineptitude of ATOS healthcare. Point is, its mandate is akin to an insurance investigation, and NOT a sensitive and supporting study of what work a disabled person might be capable of performing. To a given degree, EVERYONE can perform some form of "work", but only when the term "work" is stretched to the breaking point. Whether someone can perform MEANINGFUL and CONSTRUCTIVE work is ignored. ATOS and the government are only a few steps away from forcing the disabled into menial indentured labour. In many cases, this is already happening. I volunteer with local mental health services and have met many service users who are shoehorned into factory work, collecting trays and cleaning tables in shopping centres, and shoving trolleys around car parks. This despite many of them being bright, talented individuals. Their only crimes are to be piss-poor at effective communication and be unable to lie to the jobcentre. Many of them do not even receive a working wage for this, but simply the same benefits a million feckless smackheads receive for doing nothing. I would hazard a guess that most of the genuinely disabled actively WANT to work, to contribute to society in some meaningful way. I do, hence the voluntary work. What they do not want, and certainly do not need, is to be forced into becoming a serf underclass for those devious enough to evade the system, or treated as if "putting screws into drainpipe brackets" is somehow beneficial to their health and well-being. Whilst it is true that employment is healthier than unemployment, this is not an absolute. Many jobs are soulless, destructive to health, demoralizing, dangerous, underpaid, and a fast-track to a paupers grave. It is discrimination at its apogee to demand that the disabled perform these jobs, and pure lies to claim it is good for them. To claim the same of any other group (gypsies, asians, mexicans) would be decried as racism and discrimination and treated with all the scorn the media could muster. But WE.. we are all "fraudsters",,"skivers", "jobshy" and sundry other HEADLINES. Anyone claiming benefits MUST be pulling a fast one. WE should do all the sh***y jobs that nobody else wants to do because "work is good for us" and because clearly our disabilities mean that we should not be allowed to CHOOSE what we want to do, and we should DEFINITELY NOT aspire to better ourselves, because if we actually achieve anything then we obviously can't be disabled at all, but just fraudsters and liars.

A recent case in our papers was of a man with only one leg (lost in a shark attack) who, with the aid of a prosthetic, crossed a desert in a gruelling and difficult trek, filmed in a TV documentary (Beyond Boundaries.) A heroic effort, no? BUT as he failed to inform the jobcentre of his "increased mobility" he was imprisoned. Apparently, crossing a desert in a supreme act of physicality where many completely able individuals would no doubt expire from the effort is somehow, in the minds of the DWP comparable to "going to the office" or "working in a warehouse." Never mind that its a killer trek, never mind the effort involved psychologically and physically, clearly this OBVIOUSLY disabled man is capable of work and is a lying fraudster even though you can SEE on TV that he is MISSING HIS LEG. Clearly unless we remain in our homes unmoving, in a supine position (because if you sit UP you can sit at a desk) in the dark with no TV (because benefit claimants don't deserve them and if they can watch them they can work at a pc) surrounded by our own filth (because if we can get up to piss we can walk to catch a bus to go to work every day) we are defrauding the state and the tax-payers. Clearly we must also remain in this vegetative state AT ALL TIMES, because the "tax-payer" and the "able-bodied" are only expected to work for SOME of the time, but we are under scrutiny ALL of the time. OUR capabilities are judged on a 24 hour clock. The irate Daily Mail reader has to be able to work for maybe a 9-5 period and after that can lounge around in the pub or on his ass watching TV for the rest of the time because he's "earned it". WE, on the other hand, must attend our unpaid menial labour during the day, then remain as incapable as possible at all other times because if we are otherwise active we will lose our benefits. Even the smackheads on JSA are not kept under such constant scrutiny or studied with such intensity. The disabled rates of benefits are not much higher than that of standard jobseekers, but when did you last go in to sign on and get asked IF YOU CAN PISS ON YOUR OWN???

There seems to be a pervasive few in the UK that if someone is disabled they must simultaneously try their very best to live normally, whilst actually having to push themselves twice as hard as "the normal" to do so, but at the same time not actually achieve "normal living" because to do so would be fraud. It seems almost inevitable that sooner or later (with the cuts in housing benefit) that it will be more financially viable if all of the disabled people were to live together in large buildings funded by private companies, and allowed to do makework and unpleasant menial tasks to earn their keep, so as not to be a drain on society, the tax-payer, the rich, and those lucky enough to be completely able. Yes, that would be best, and healthiest for us....

Typically, no it isn't - at least in most countries. You have to provide some proof that you are incapable of earning either above what the benefit is (in some jurisdictions) or not able to earn anything (in some other jurisdictions.)

For example, in Alberta, the Assured Income for Severely Handicapped requirement is that you prove that you are unable to earn above the benefit. However, with the Canadian Pension Plan - Disability, you must prove to be unable to hold any job at all or have contributed enough to the CPP to get the benefit. Alberta's Persons with Development Disorder program used to allow people with Asperger's but as a cost cutting measure, the new applicant must have it verified that the person's IQ is two standard deviations below average by a clinical psychiatrist.

I disagree. Only 12% of people with AS and HFA have full-time employment according to the NAS. Don't you think those who are unable to get a job (usually because of plain and simple discrimination) are entitled to money to live from?

I hate it when people act as if, because a problem isn't physical, it isn't a real problem which requires extra help. That simply isn't the case, and that line of thought is very ignorant.

Further to this: national newspapers carry interviews with people affected by the budget.. news websites have "budget calculators" but none of them appear to be bothered about interviewing either the disabled or the unemployed, nor helping us work out OUR budgets. Screw us then eh?

You think the government fat cats give a crap about a few thousand autistic people? Where would the gain be for them? Would it help them get a significant number more votes next election? Would it be something they could make money from?

No? Then they care as much about us as they do about a piece of gum that got stuck on the bottom of their shoe.

You think the government fat cats give a crap about a few thousand autistic people? Where would the gain be for them? Would it help them get a significant number more votes next election? Would it be something they could make money from?

No? Then they care as much about us as they do about a piece of gum that got stuck on the bottom of their shoe.