There's been a lot of controversy about the changes to DLA announced in the budget yesterday. I wasn't planning on writing anything about it because a) nobody reads this blog anyway and b) so many people have said the things I wanted to say over and over. I could see no reactions to the proposed changes except shock and horror and a terrible, lingering fear. I did not over-exaggerate that. The problem is, you see, I hang around in all the wrong circles. I'm getting a purely biased disabled view on these things. I was extrapolating that to cover healthy people's views. That was very wrong.
I started reading other articles about it, on the Guardian's website, among others, and whilst the articles themselves expressed the same views I'd seen elsewhere, I decided for some unknown reason, to read the comments. I was utterly appalled. I cannot honestly believe that so many people see disabled people as scrounging filth, scum of the Earth. I knew it, rationally, had even come into contact with it in everyday life, but usually veiled. People don't generally like to insult me to my face. All that disappears with the anonymity of the internet, however, and I was suddenly faced with hatred and discrimination on a level I'd previously only speculated about.
And the worst thing about this? DLA is not an out-of-work benefit. It's not something healthy people claim so they can sit on their asses all day. It's something you can claim whilst working. 'OMG YOU GET EXTRA MONEY EVEN WHEN WORKING!?' I hear you say. Yes, yes we do, and we
need it. Maybe minimum wage or whatever your income is is enough for someone perfectly healthy to live on, but there are a lot of added costs to being disabled. No, they're not all covered by the NHS, or social care systems, or what-have-you. They don't even begin to cover it. Especially if you're managing to pull off working with your disability. I've found that disabled people who are trying to work are oftentimes worse off than those who don't. Scratch that - ALWAYS worse off. Financially, physically, emotionally. It is very, very difficult to work with a disability and none of you healthy people seem to get that.
It's not just the problem of finding a job you can reliably do (hard enough as it is), and an employer who doesn't mind you taking huge amounts of time off for doctors appointments, random emergencies, and hospital stays (ridiculously hard, you'd think that would count as discrimination, wouldn't you?..). You have to add in the difficulties of getting ready for work in the morning, getting to work in the morning, getting home again when you're feeling as exhausted as if you've just run a marathon, having no energy to do any of the housework when you get home or being able to cook yourself food. So, if you're working, 9 times out of 10 you have to pay someone else to do your housework, and either buy expensive ready meals or pay for takeaways, buy your lunch as you don't have the energy to make your own sandwiches. Every day. Pay for taxis when you're too damned broken to either drive or walk all that way to the bus stop. And I can't even begin to count all the little adaptations and things we need to attempt to live a normal livestyle, little things that occupational therapists won't give you and the NHS won't pay for. Could YOU afford all of that on your measly salary?
If you can, then you're very lucky. And don't worry, anybody who CAN afford those things despite their disability is probably not claiming DLA. It's a ridiculously hard, long, embarassing, emotionally-taxing process that leaves you with the strong feeling of being bullied. Nobody goes through it unless they have to. No, not even those perfectly healthy scroungers you keep telling me about. Of course there are a few of them, but the process is very stringent as it is with them asking hundreds of questions, expecting you to answer word-perfect (and cutting your benefit if you don't), and asking your doctor to support your claim.
Because of all of that - it has one of the lowest fraud rates of any other benefit. 0.5%. Let me say that again:
0.5% fraudulent claims. And they think they can cut the budget by £1.4
billion just by stopping fraudulent claims? I call bullshit. They will stick to that figure, and try to cut claims down that much regardless, just to make it seem like a success. They will employ doctors for these medical assessments who are not specialists in the disabilities they're assessing for and do not know/understand what they're assessing. They will employ those rare doctors I've met who don't believe that invisible disabilities exist and who have, in the past, laughed me out of their office for daring to ask for a referral to OT.
I foresee many, many people who genuinely deserve DLA, losing their claims. I see many, many people who are
only able to continue working because of DLA, losing their jobs over this and resorting to claiming actual out-of-work benefits like ESA, costing the government lots of money. I see many, many people who rely on the money to pay for carers, trying to get along without them, hurting themselves and ending up either in hospitals or in care homes, costing the government a lot more money.
This is a stupid, stupid move and the majority of the majority (read: healthy people) need to understand that. I hope to God those discriminatory comments I came across were just a vocal minority. I'm very worried that they're not.
EDIT: Oh, I forgot to mention something about DLA that's been bugging me. It's supposedly non-means-tested, for all the reasons I mentioned above. And that's the way it should be, it makes sense. And whilst DLA itself isn't means-tested...the assessors will take the fact that you're working to mean that you're obviously not disabled and don't need help, even though you need it more than ever at that point. I know people who are terrified to even attempt to find work because of the risk it poses to their DLA, which, once again, they
need.
Not only that, but the DLA I get, that isn't means-tested, affects my income from ESA and housing benefit as those
are means-tested and include DLA as a part of my income. And then make decisions as to how much money to give me based what a normal person needs to live on...
