Tightening up

"Have you heard? They're talking about tightening up on Incapacity Benefit now," whispers an anxious PD at the Pub.

I assure him I had. It worries me too, but at least I have substantial physical problems too. His incapacity to work is related to his mental health problems, a rather more invisible problem.

"Oh, I should be okay," he assures me, "The government won't want to have to take the responsibility of so many depressed people killing themselves." I'm not sure who he is trying to reassure, me or himself.

I wish I had such faith. As far as I can see the government won't even believe suicides are a possibility, & if it did happen, they wouldn't believe they had any responsibility for them.

When I first became disabled I hot paced it to the Job Centre to see about getting re-trained to do something feasible in a wheelchair, go back into law or try translation work for example. I couldn't even cope with the assessment day let alone a job at the end of it. Nonetheless, I still had the Benefits Agency not long afterwards advising me I was fit for work. I wrote a stiff letter back, explaining I was more than happy to work if they could suggest a job I could realistically do. I didn't hear any more from them on that occasion.

Since then they introduced the point system. I've sailed through medicals with the doctors just wondering why they were wasting their time & mine when I was so obviously not able to work.

But the problem with these "tightening up of the system" schemes, is there is a temptation to reduce the number of successful applicants numerically without really considering the medical conditions & consequent restrictions of the applicant before them. They look for a reason to reject an applicant regardless of their qualification for the benefit.

PD & I will be holding our breaths & hoping we won't have too much trouble as a result of this tightening up. Our consolation is that we're both growing older & so will soon be out of this particular system as we settle into old age pensions instead. PD is already 60. I've got a little longer to go but at least now I'm well into my 50s.

It would be rather more helpful if money was put into finding a cure to our medical problems so we could work & live a more productive, less dependent, life, rather than into increasing our difficulties by adding these extra stresses onto our already stressed lives.