Relieved but SO ANGRY!

So over a year after having recieved an IB50 though exempt and having my DLA also stopped on the grounds of the incapacity medical I should never have had to go to, and the subsequent decline in my health, including three months on tranqulisers just to survive the day, the DLA decision was reversed-in fact I was entitled to more than I was getting!-and my IB appeal was cancelled-we turned up to the office to be told there was no need! I also found out I have been entitled to Income Support since 2007 and none of these oh-so-diligent benefits people had bothered to tell me, and am now awaiting a claim for this too.

Now for me, the plan was always a return to work. As I've said here before, I'm undertaing an MA in Social Work and fingers crossed will be qualifiying next Spring. The idea was that through my supported placements I would recover sufficiently to have regained the level of mental health needed to hold down a job, though thanks to the DWP this may now not be the case. So from my perspective it's all turned out OK, but I am so bloody angry that I had to go through this. I am an educated, articulate person with a great deal of support and access to a number of agencies. A lot of the people having the rug pulled from under them like this won't be in my relatively fortunate position, and I'm genuinely afraid for these people, and so furious that this is even being done. I keep thinking it can't be long til the papers pick up the first ESA suicide.

I'd like to do somethng, get involved in trying to change this in some way but I don't know how! I've considered making a DDA claim against the DWP for ignoring my exemption and causing me psychiatric injury. My mum, a union rep, is dead keen on this but I'm not sure it would be of any use. Thoughts?

Unfortunately, as has been said many times in this forum, judicial acts carried out by decision makers (or in your case not carried out) on behalf of the Secretary of State, are normally exempt under the DDA and other Acts of Parliament.

As you have a grievance against the DWP, you may be able to pursue a claim for financial redress for maladministration.

Hi Emma and CD,

Just thinking aloud here, but whilst decisions by a decision maker may not be subject to the DDA, what about actions by agents of the DWP?

The decision to change the procedure so that IB50's have to be completed before exemption is considered was a DWP procedural rather than judicial decision and the sending out of the questionnaire before exemption has been considered would, as far as I know, have been done by Atos.

If people who are exempt should not usually have to complete an IB50 until the DWP or its agents have considered exemption - including getting evidence from other sources such as the claimants GP - then the changed procedure might be in breach of the DDA if a disabled person suffers loss or distress as a result.

If that was the case then an action might lie against the DWP and its agents - in this case Atos.

This really is just thinking aloud - please don't base any decision on it Emma.

But do please consider passing on your experiences to the EHRC enquiry we wrote about in the blog - it;s a very good example of the DWP failing in their duties.

Good luck,

Steve

How about a complaint to ICE? Independent Case Examiner

www.adrnow.org.uk/go/SubPage_72.html#wha

I don't know anything about it, but Emma you have my moral support. The psychotherapy I'm having now concentrates more on my mistreatment by Atos than on the sexual assault and domestic abuse that incapacitated me in the first place - that's how bad it made me feel! Let us know if you decide to do anything.