Dying forced to wait eight weeks instead of eight days for help amid ‘dire’ benefits overhaul – MPs

MPs criticise ‘dire situation’ as terminally ill forced to negotiate call centres and endure long waits as disability benefits are replaced with new system

People dying of cancer have been forced to wait up to eight weeks for vital financial support previously available within eight days because of the bungled introduction of new benefits system, a committee of MPs has concluded.

Patients already certified by doctors as having only a short time to live have been left facing financial problems and in some cases unable to arrange care because of the delays processing applications, they found.

Carers or terminally ill people themselves have had to spend long periods on the telephone to call centres to make applications, instead of simply filling in a form, as happened under the old system.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/10703960/Dying-forced-to-wait-eight-weeks-instead-of-eight-days-for-help-amid-dire-benefits-overhaul-MPs.html

This disgusting government and Duncan Smith in particular are a disgrace and a bunch of liars who twist statistics to suit their pathetic agenda.

If you can stomach it you can read the whole sorry saga of incompetence, lies and down right deceipt of the very people who need help.

It's here - the full report. Use the previous and the next buttons to navigate round it all...

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmworpen/1153/115310.htm

That man is beyond redemption! How bloody dare they treat people who are dying like that, there are no words!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And all this crap about people have come off it because they were cheating it shown to be totally false in it:

INCAPACITY BENEFIT CLAIMANTS

123. Sheila Gilmore MP (a member of this Committee) asked UKSA to investigate a Sunday Telegraph article in March 2013 which stated that "900,000 choose to come off sickness benefit ahead of tests".[124]

124. This related to DWP statistics on claims for Employment and Support Allowance (ESA), which has replaced Incapacity Benefit (IB) as the income replacement benefit for people with health conditions and disabilities which prevent them from working. People claiming ESA are required to undergo the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) to establish eligibility for the benefit. A process started in 2011 to migrate existing IB claimants to ESA over the period to 2014. The migration process involves a WCA.

125. Grant Shapps MP, the Conservative Party Chairman, was quoted as saying "nearly a million people have come off incapacity benefit [...] before going for the test." The press article was drawn from a Conservative Party press release which stated that "878,300 people claiming incapacity benefit—more than a third of the total—have chosen to drop their benefit claim entirely rather than face a medical assessment, new figures have revealed."

126. UKSA's investigation found that the 878,300 figure resulted from the conflation of official statistics relating to new ESA claims with separate statistics on migration of Incapacity Benefit claimants to ESA. The release also failed to make clear that a number of claims were withdrawn because the person recovered from their illness before the WCA took place. In his letter to Sheila Gilmore setting out the findings, the UKSA Chair, Andrew Dilnot, explained:

The statistical release does not address the issue of why cases were closed in great depth, but it does point to research undertaken by DWP which suggests that "an important reason why ESA claims in this sample were withdrawn or closed before they were fully assessed was because the person recovered and either returned to work, or claimed a benefit more appropriate to their situation.[125]

The Telegraph article just made me want to hit someone!

My friend broke his back in 2000 he fell off scaffolding , he regained the ability to walk again luckily , but in 2012 he had a triple hernia operation and was on the sick for months, he went for an assessment and he said the people assessing didn't even mention his operation for the hernia which he was on the sick for but kept going on about his back injury , he answered their questions and said he was wondering when they would get to the reason why he was being assessed , but they did not and passed him for for his back injury.
They really don't know what they are doing .

And now they are trying to bring in PIP and failing miserably, it's even worse.

Sassy wrote:And now they are trying to bring in PIP and failing miserably, it's even worse.  

Everything is taking up to eight weeks to process, the whole department is a bloody fiasco and yet IDS still stays in his job.  :\\:[: