welfarewatch.myfineforum.org

frances · Joined: 19 Aug 2009 Posts: 68

CarerWatch are asking for your help.

The General Election is coming and CarerWatch are asking all prospective parliamentary candidates to sign two campaign pledges.

Please help us. Please send the e-mail below to the prospective candidates where you live and ask them to sign. Come and tell us about any replies you get and what they say at the CarerWatch campaign site at - http://carerwatchdotcom.myfineforum.org/. Come and read there what other candidates are saying.

It’s important for carers and claimants when they vote to know how their new MP and the parties that will form the new government will deal with carer issues.

Let’s make sure that carer and claimant issues are at the top of the agenda in this General Election.

Suggested e-mail to Prospective Parliamentary Candidates

I am writing to you as my local candidate to ask you if you will support carers and sign the two statements below.

They are being proposed by CarerWatch which is a group of unpaid family carers. You can see all about them at http://carerwatch.com/

The first statement concerns carer poverty. After twenty years of promises of better financial support for carers during the boom times carers are still waiting for help. Now it is the bust this situation is becoming
desperate.

The second statement concerns ESA. CarerWatch are only asking for protection from 'conditionality' for the most severely and enduringly sick people as they should never have been caught up in these reforms without protection.

You can see the campaigns at -

http://carerwatch.com/finance/

http://carerwatch.com/mhealth/

and I really hope you will sign and support them.

Please forward this to prospective candidates and ask them to support us.

Carerwatch are asking all Prospective Parliamentary Candidates in the General Election to support this campaign. Please contact candidates in your area and others who may help and send them this message.

CARERWATCH ARE FIGHTING TO RESTORE UNCONDITIONAL BENEFITS TO ALL PEOPLE WITH SEVERE AND ENDURING ILLNESS - SOME WITH ONLY MONTHS TO LIVE. IN PARTICULAR CARERWATCH WANT THE THREAT OF SANCTIONS AND CONDITIONALITY under ESA REMOVED FROM PEOPLE WITH SEVERE AND ENDURING MENTAL HEALTH
ISSUES

We are asking all Prospective Parliamentary Candidates to support this campaign. This is not a broad campaign tackling all the problems in the new Welfare Reform Bills - it is just an emergency action to protect the most sick and the most vulnerable who have been caught up in these reforms.

You can sign up at

http://carerwatch.com/needs/

and read about the campaign at

http://carerwatch.com/mhealth/

If you have a blog / website please post about your support for us and
send us the link at - admin@carerwatch.com - and we will link to your blog

admin · Site Admin Joined: 18 Aug 2009 Posts: 22

I have emailed my LibDem and Tory candidates.
They are the only ones I can find.
I have contacted the other parties to ask for details of their candidate in my area. I have the redoubtable Mr Morley as my MP and he is leaving!!! but the labour party do not appear to have got a candidate to replace him as yet.

frances · Joined: 19 Aug 2009 Posts: 68

That's really great. Any reply yet? Lots of PPCs are signing both the CW campaigns and the political profile of those who have signed so far is very interesting.

Is it possible to send a group e-mail out to all WW members asking them to send the following e-mail to their local PPCs.

E-mail to local PPCs

I am writing to you as my local candidate to ask you if you will support carers and sign the two statements below.

They are being proposed by CarerWatch which is a group of unpaid family carers. You can see all about them at http://carerwatch.com/

The first statement concerns carer poverty. After twenty years of promises of better financial support for carers during the boom times carers are still waiting for help. Now it is the bust this situation is becoming
desperate.

The second statement concerns ESA. CarerWatch are only asking for protection from 'conditionality' for the most severely and enduringly sick people as they should never have been caught up in these reforms without protection.

You can see the campaigns at -

http://carerwatch.com/finance/

http://carerwatch.com/mhealth/

and I really hope you will sign and support them.

frances · Joined: 19 Aug 2009 Posts: 68

Roma Mills is a Labour PPC who has signed to support the ESA campaign. However she makes it clear that she is only supporting the protection we are asking for for seriously and enduringly sick people. She still wants the 'workshy' sanctioned and driven in to work.

This is NewLabour and most Labour candidates in the election will be NewLabour.

Alan Wheatley - The Green Party Disability spokesperson and himself a disabled person suffering under ESA 'back to work' pressure at the moment has challenged her on this. What do you all think?

Dear Roma Mills

I read your comment at the CarerWatch website
<http://carerwatch.com/needs/?p=10#comments> with great concern.

You wrote:

"I support this campaign [to restore unconditional benefits to all
people with severe and enduring illness....] It's important to
distinguish between people who are 'work shy' and those who by virtue of
severe and enduring illness are unable to maintain paid employment. It
is quite wrong to put such people under pressure.

"Roma Mills, Labour Parliamentary Candidate, St Albans"

It seems that you are well-inducted into the rhetoric of the workfarist
welfare reformers. But I wonder if you have properly read the evidence
available at the CarerWatch website and elsewhere, that people with
severe mental illnesses or just months left to live are being forced
into 'work related activity' in order to receive benefits?

Also, what do you know about depression and invisible disabilities?

From my own perspective, as well as volunteering at being a voluntary
ICT Coach at a local community centre, I am an ESA claimant who won a
Level 1 tribunal on 16 December 2009. That tribunal raised my
eligibility points scoring from the zero points awarded to me by an Atos
'Examining Medical Practitioner', to 21 points -- ie, 6 points above the
15 points minimum threshold. My entitlement was backdated to 12 July
2009, and after more than three decades of unsuccessful venturing toward
paid work, I was even put into the support group meaning an extra £5 a
week and less 'conditionality' [bullying].

So, bearing in mind how much the system has consistently let me down,
and the fact that the Atos 'doctor' who scored me zero eligibility
points conveniently omitted mention of my decades of unwaged status
before my last paid job [that was only part-time], I resent your trite
rhetoric.

But I must also ask you,

1. How will you ensure that people are protected from inappropriate
assessment?
2. How will you ensure that people are not kept in limbo and forced
into 'work related activity' even after winning a Level 1 tribunal?
3. Will you ask in Parliament for a full breakdown of the figures
given out at http://www.wired-gov.net/wg/wg-news-1.nsf/lfi/410417 ?
I would be particularly interested to know how many of that
158,400 UNASSESSED first-wave ESA claimants:
1. died waiting for 'assessment' to be completed?
2. have won a Level 1 tribunal?
3. were taken to a Level 2 tribunal?
4. What is the lead time between a person a) passing a Level 1
tribunal and z) the Disability Benefits Centre assessments
and appeals section getting through the 'sandbags' of
backlog in order for their claim to be 'fully assessed'?

Perhaps you could post those answers to CarerWatch or in response to my
comment on Mike McNabb's blog about dodgy use of statistics
<http://www.communitycare.co.uk/blogs/social-policy-blog/2010/02/teenage-mums-lies-damned-lies.html>?

Yours sincerely

Alan Wheatley
aka Green Party of England & Wales Disability Spokesperson

PS: I am fortunate to be able to channel my rage constructively into
politics and volunteering to attempt to make the system better. I
believe that Green Party Citizen's Income is the best way forward in
helping people engage in economic activity while protecting people from
being worked to death.

admin · Site Admin Joined: 18 Aug 2009 Posts: 22

i am sure many, many people with disabilities are well and truly sick to death of the attitude of people without disabilities thinking they are entitled to judge with the benefit of a quick visual appraisal as to whether or not there is a disability which prevents the person from working.
it follows that such a cursory judgement frequently leads to the opinion 'you look fit enough to work "and then to 'you are a sponger änd then to the assertion that all claimants of disability benefits are the same.
it is interesting to note that those close to a person with disabilities acknowledge that they are entitled but they must be an exception. I would have thought that having a prime minister and leader of the opposition with such personal experience of sickness and disabilities would have engendered a better approach and more empathic response. but of course there's the cost and the votes to think about. it shows that politicians will sacrifice any and all principals on the altar of self advancement!!!