EmailSenior jobcentre executives have warned staff of the risk of benefit claimants attempting suicide as controversial changes to sickness benefits are being pushed through.
The warning, contained in an internal email sent to staff by three senior managers of the government-run jobcentres, warns staff that ill-handling of benefit changes for vulnerable claimants could have "profound results" and highlights the case of one suicide attempt this year.
It emphasises the need for the "utmost care and sensitivity" when dealing with customers, as a result of "difficult changes which some of our more vulnerable customers may take some time to accept and adjust to".
The email, adds: "Very sadly, only last week a customer of DWP [Department for Work and Pensions] attempted suicide" – which it adds is "said to be the result of receiving a letter" informing him that his sickness benefit would be cut off.
The memo will crystallise concerns among charities, campaigners and medical professionals over the impact of welfare reforms on the mental health of some of Britain's most vulnerable people.
Disability campaigners privately warned ministers last year that flaws in the work capability assessment, would lead to some mentally ill people taking their own lives. But they said they were accused by ministers of scaremongering.
Neil Coyle of the charity Disability Rights UK, said: "The government is cutting direct support for thousands of disabled people and using a process to do so which is unfit for purpose. The assessment process for out of work benefits needs urgent improvement to ensure genuine needs are identified properly and to avoid further tragic consequences.
"We and our members warned the government – and DWP especially – of the impact of cuts in support but the problem has been swept under the carpet in the rush to deliver cuts in welfare expenditure. Numbers on a balance sheet have been considered more important than the lived reality of disabled people sadly."
The memo was sent in late April, days before the controversial change of time-limiting contributions-based employment and support allowance was introduced, which will see thousands of sickness benefit claimants with a working partner or some savings lose up to £91 a week in support.
The email sent to jobcentre staff emphasises the importance of being "empathetic" with vulnerable clients, "taking the time to properly understand their circumstances … and talking through their options or signposting them to other sources of support/advice". It adds: "The consequences of getting this wrong can have profound results."
The Rutherglen and Hamilton West Labour MP Tom Greatrex said: "The DWP should take seriously the potential impact its decisions can have on people's lives.
"The 'one size fits all' nature of the work capability assessment is at the root of the problem. A crude computer test of fitness to work leaves little room for a consideration of the affect on mental health.
"It's not just those with pre-existing mental health problems who are at risk. People suffering from conditions such as Parkinson's and cancer find themselves in distressing situations, with added anxiety caused by these tests. At a time when they need help, too often they feel they are being hounded."
A DWP spokesperson said: "It remains rare to find incidents of self-harm where the benefits system is said to have been a factor, but we are not complacent when it comes to ensuring that our staff can provide the right support and help to those affected.
"We ensure our staff are highly trained and ready to help people, however vulnerable they may be and whatever pressures they face.
"We have worked hard – and continue to do so – to improve the way the work capability assessment works for those with mental health issues, but it is right to reform the welfare system. The old incapacity benefits system let down too many people by simply writing them off to a life on benefits, which did nothing for their wellbeing."
But the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union, which represents Jobcentre Plus staff, says that they feel ill-equipped to deal with the volume of work, vulnerable claimants and cutbacks.
One jobcentre telephone adviser told the Guardian that the change had been handled "abysmally" and that they feel ill-equipped and "helpless" when talking to distraught customers on the phone, who are phoning up to ask about other options.
"A lot of them are very distressed. They are asking us what to do … how are they supposed to live. And there's nowhere else we can signpost them to, there's literally nowhere for them to go."
Several coroners' reports into suicides have mentioned benefits decisions as a contributory factor, but ministers have always been careful to avoid acknowledging a link.
The Guardian has spoken to dozens of benefits workers and recipients as part of an investigation into the problems faced by Britons living on the breadline and identified three separate cases of attempted suicide among people where changes to their benefits appeared to have been a factor. Several others claimed to have felt suicidal.
Speaking in the Commons recently, the employment minister, Chris Grayling, said: "We will always look very, very carefully indeed where something like that happens. So far my experience is that the story is much more complicated. But that does not mean we are not doing the right thing.
"I passionately believe that we should be helping [people], particularly those with mental health problems. I have met people who have been out of work for years and years and years with chronic depression who we are now beginning to help back into work. We have got to be very careful but we do look very carefully when those situations arise."
Comments
20 June 2012 12:41PM
Some of you have brought up this issue a number of times in comments and with the help of commenters we've put together this page which contains links to other places of support and advice as well as support forums for those dealing with changes to benefits and welfare reforms:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/info/2012/jun/08/help-and-advice-welfare-issues
Please also refer to our community faq about taking part in this thread.
20 June 2012 12:50PM
If even the Jobcentre managers are warning of these dire consequences, what will it take to make this bloody government LISTEN??? There is only one word for those who put money before people: EVIL.
20 June 2012 12:51PM
"It emphasises the need for the "utmost care and sensitivity""
How many ways can you deliver the devastating news to someone who can't find work and is ill/ disabled so it doesn't hurt them emotionally/ mentally? This is extremely difficult for anyone to say to another human being and even more so for the poor sod receiving the news.
Change the system not the way your deliver the bad news.
Mervin King give the £100 millions to these people not the bankers who are just going to it loan out and make more money from it - which puts businesses and people into more debt. Increasing the debt on peoples heads is not the way forward. Reducing it and helping them is.
20 June 2012 12:52PM
My brother-in-law, who lives in Stoke-on-Trent, has been passed from pillar to post by Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs and the Department for Work and Pensions.
Despite them acknowledging that they owe him money, he is yet to see a penny of it.
The local MP has been chasing them for months, and the case has apparently reached the desk of Lord Freud - and yet nothing is happening.
The system doesn't appear to be working, and vulnerable people like him are suffering unnecessarily.
20 June 2012 12:52PM
The sad thing is that the government probably see this as an acceptable way of reducing unemployment.
20 June 2012 12:54PM
Yes, it is mind boggling and desperate, an all out assault on the welfare state to assuage a pernicious ideology.
20 June 2012 12:55PM
Will there be an investigation into how politicised the DWP press office has become? This statement:
..is both meaningless and misleading. How rare is 'rare'? Do the DWP collect information on suicides by clients? No, they don't. The spokesman has no basis for making this claim and no purpose other than to fudge the issue.
20 June 2012 12:56PM
Save the markets, fuck the vulnerable. Capitalism laid bare.
20 June 2012 12:57PM
This is so depressing, coming at a time when Jimmy Carr avoids tax along with numerous other wealthy individuals and corporations. Ripping off the poor, elderly and sick. OK, it's supposedly not illegal to come up with tax avoidance schemes but it is obvious that these people have absolutely no moral compass and should all be treated with the utmost contempt that they deserve.
20 June 2012 12:58PM
Those managers are for the high-jump then...
20 June 2012 12:58PM
With the Europeanwide economic crises destined to worsen, even we have to now accept that the Money For Nothing lifestyle choice is consigned to history. Nobody likes it - just ask the doctors! But when government borrowing climbs remorselessly, even they start to wonder how the borrowings will be repaid. But hey, if we find a few oil wells all our problems could be solved. I know - it's all Cloud Cuckoo Land.
20 June 2012 12:59PM
The last time a government deliberately attacked ethnic groups, the disabled, the sick and the vulnerable like this, we as a nation fought back to ensure that justice was upheld, and the rights of those less able were upheld. But that was 70 years ago!
20 June 2012 1:01PM
Caring for the vulnerable in our society has no value that can be monetised.
As each day passes and I see more and more news of this kind I can't help but think that we are descending into a nightmare mirror of '1984' - where human values have been replaced by our value on a market.
We are being reduced to the level of products by an ideology that is seemingly unstoppable.
20 June 2012 1:02PM
"the "utmost care and sensitivity... Very sadly, only last week a customer of DWP [department of work and pensions] attempted suicide" – which it adds is "said to be the result of receiving a letter" informing him that his sickness benefit would be cut off."
Touchy-feely fascism. These are the times when we will all be weighed and measured. This is not democracy as usual, or else it is being stretched beyond the limits of any real meaning like never before.
20 June 2012 1:04PM
Get the MP to forward a complaint to the Parliamentary Ombudsman. Ask for the matter to be settled, for an apology, and for compensation for distress and delay.
http://www.ombudsman.org.uk/
20 June 2012 1:05PM
And secretly, the Daily Mail and its readers are absolutely delighted.
20 June 2012 1:06PM
"... a customer of DWP ..." ? Does he buy something from them?
20 June 2012 1:06PM
Except for the banks, of course, where taxpayers' money miraculously transforms itself into bonuses.
20 June 2012 1:06PM
So being disabled and sick is a lifestyle choice ???
Govt borrowing is through the roof because of the decisions they are making. They could of course use that borrowing and printing billions to create jobs through infrastructure yet they choose to sit on their hands and whine at the vulnerable and poor.
Hague lied at PMQs on the subject of housing benefit. The impact assessment said that only 7% of homes in London will be covered by the benefit changes. He claimed that 30% would.
Lies lies and more lies.
Why are the poor, the sick and the disabled the ones to pay the most for the govts atrocious handling of the economy ?
20 June 2012 1:06PM
@MidnightTrainToEgham
"we have to now accept that the Money For Nothing lifestyle choice is consigned to history. Nobody likes it - just ask the doctors"
Did you think about what you were saying before you posted this? If the doctors are involved, as you say, then these are vulnerable people, and it isn't a lifestyle choice. Is it?
20 June 2012 1:09PM
I loathe the Welfare State and the way it creates uselessness and dependency.
But even I find it a little sickening to see the evil, evil bankers bailed out so often, while the disabled (if they are genuinely disabled) suffer.
At least the disabled will spend the money in the community.
20 June 2012 1:09PM
Thanks - will do.
20 June 2012 1:11PM
THERE'S ONLY ONE WORD TO DESCRIBE THIS GOVERNMENT - AND THEIR DIVISIVE, LYING METHODS USED TO RAILROAD THESE ACTS ONTO THE STATUTE BOOK...
B A R B A R I C
20 June 2012 1:14PM
I was forced to "voluntarily" sign on to the work programme last week.
The paperwork made it CLEAR that The Work Programme is voluntary, but, if you do not partake, you would lose your benefits for 26 weeks.
It's VOLUNTARY, but if you don't volunteer, there's a chance you won't live to see out 26 weeks on 0 funds.
It's called blackmail on pain of death and it's "acceptable" to "help" people.
20 June 2012 1:14PM
MidnightTrainToEgham, what are you proposing should happen to people with disabilities who aren't able to work? Say someone with a severe chronic condition who is in too much pain to leave the house two days in five, and doesn't know in advance which days they're going to be ill?
If they don't get benefits, do you think they should die or ... what? What are you proposing if those people aren't entitled to state benefits?
20 June 2012 1:15PM
As a customer of the DWP, you can always take your custom elsewhere. Look, 'claimant' wasn't quite so fluffy, but at least it was honest and not doublespeak.
There is already blood on the DWP's hands, no matter how they try to weasel out of responsibility. It's only the start too. Universal Credit is a disaster waiting to happen:
http://johnnyvoid.wordpress.com/2012/06/17/how-universal-credit-will-split-up-families/
20 June 2012 1:17PM
Good job they can be voted out and another government under whom NO vulnerable people will commit suicde can be voted in instead.
20 June 2012 1:17PM
The need to make cuts should not be rail-roaded by the mental instability of recipients. The state should not be blackmailed!
20 June 2012 1:17PM
Agreed Arec, but the charities themselves do no favours by restricting themselves to defence of the "mentally ill".
One does not have to be mentally ill when faced with starvation and homelessness to choose suicide as a sane option. Entire populations have chosen not to reproduce and commit racial suicide faced with the same impossible futures.
The sole reaction from Grayling and co is to "get people into work" whether that is paid or unpaid, part-time or no-hours contracts or even mythical self-employment. The protestand work ethic made feudal.
20 June 2012 1:18PM
We've already got a few oil wells, but successive governments sold the rights off cheaply and neglected to invest the money.
20 June 2012 1:19PM
Yes following the uproar over 'voluntary' Mandatory Work Activity a while back, the DWP was busy that week deleting all mention of 'Mandatory' from the Work Programme material on their website and now it seems elsewhere. It's Voluntary Work-Related Activity now; you volunteer or starve. So not at all Mandatory.
20 June 2012 1:20PM
That's the truth of the matter.
The new social Darwinism is coming for poor children, the frail elderly, the disabled, the mentally ill, the long-term unemployed; indeed, anyone who is an 'unsustainable burden' on people who still pay their taxes.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/8169325/Ageing-population-putting-Britain-under-unsustainable-pressure-OBR-warns.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/5962510/Unsustainable-social-security-spending-equal-to-a-quarter-of-goverments-budget.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/08/disability-living-allowance-cuts
20 June 2012 1:22PM
They changed it from "claimant" because they now get you to sign a Civil Contract, a two party agreement in which you give away all of your rights as a "claimant" ie entitlement to your National Insurance contributions.
20 June 2012 1:23PM
there should be nothing wrong with benefits nor cheats nor people catching them - its just a system like any other such a parliamentary expenses - what is needed is decent management and reasonable implementation with any changes done in adequate time for people to find real alternatives
fortunately i live outside the uk in a sane country where there are also abuses of all sorts - but corrective measures are implemented without the lynch mob and instant retribution mentality that seems to prevail in the uk
20 June 2012 1:23PM
Which doesn't respond to what I posted, nor make any cogent argument in support of the Coalition's position.
It isn't blackmail. It's consequences. The mentally ill don't choose, they don't control what happens when they're pushed over the edge. So to call it blackmail in order to avoid acknowledging responsibility(just following orders) makes this very simple: you're only wrong but trying to absolve yourself of the guilt of what happens as a result of ill-informed knee-jerk policies short on detail but heavy on empty 'message sending'.
20 June 2012 1:24PM
@CaptainBlack
"As a customer of the DWP, you can always take your custom elsewhere. Look, 'claimant' wasn't quite so fluffy, but at least it was honest and not doublespeak."
The change to 'customer', as with the change from 'passenger' to 'customer' on the railways, however counter-intutitive it seemed, was supposed to reflect a more efficient ethos, more like the much vaunted competition based private sector, In reality it was ideological, a vital part of the shift to an all encompassing market culture, as we can see clearly now when prisons are being privately run under cover of 'saving money for the taxpayer'. Now I'm off to depress myself by reading your link.
20 June 2012 1:25PM
Not every suicide is the result of mental instability the rational suicide may well become a growing trend.
I do not recognise this county any more.
20 June 2012 1:25PM
You been drinking like Dave? Maybe we should raise alcohol taxes to replenish the cash that Dave and Sam gladly took for Ivan only to deny to everyone else?
20 June 2012 1:26PM
The difficulty you have with a posh Eton boy government is he'll be presented with the numbers of unemployed, numbers losing benefits and numbers committing suicide and that's all he will see. Numbers.
This government will always be out of touch with the reality of real life because he has never seen the reality of real life.
How sad is that.
20 June 2012 1:26PM
"Disability campaigners privately warned ministers last year that flaws in the work capability assessment, would lead to some mentally ill people taking their own lives. But they said they were accused by ministers of scaremongering."
Can anyone name & shame these MPs who accused disability charities & the RCP of scaremongering?
20 June 2012 1:26PM
@makethelefthistory
"The need to make cuts should not be rail-roaded by the mental instability of recipients. The state should not be blackmailed!"
you obviously want to make the useless eaters history, as well as the Left. Now who does that remind me of?
20 June 2012 1:26PM
About a month ago there was the funeral near where I live of a guy I know (knew) who had his disability benefits stopped on the grounds that there was nothing wrong with him - although I can tell you that he had really bad mental health issues and was not exactly employable.
He hung himself.
It is already happening.
20 June 2012 1:27PM
'"We ensure our staff are highly trained and ready to help people'
Does that include the ability to give them money to live on?
Didn't think so.
20 June 2012 1:28PM
Make no mistake this coalition is garnering every penny it can from the vulnerable in a bid to appease far right back benchers and in order to continue to prop up the city and banks with money every time they lose theirs playing the markets.
Once total destitution takes hold it is hard to continue, I know this from personal experience. I like millions of others struggle daily, we have next to nothing and once the small amount we survive on has been taken then our choices will be stark.
The liberals in coalition must take one step back and look at the damage they are inflicting on the poorest and most vulnerable members of society. If they continue in their support then it is fair to say that the concept of 'Liberalism' is dead and has been replaced by 'Cronyism'.
Calling the unemployed idle can only last for so long, its a smoke screen designed to hide the message 'Work or die' sadly there is no work thanks to this coalitions policies, so we either die or address the real problem of greedy bastards, heartless government spivs, princes and perks!
20 June 2012 1:29PM
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20 June 2012 1:30PM
The process of being assessed is incredibly stressful. My first contact with ATOS resulted in me being given completely the wrong information by their helpline. My appt had to be rearranged. Then, my parents took me to the rearranged assessment yesterday only to find that it had been messed up (no recording equipment on site) and so I was sent home again. I rarely leave the house due to my illness and it was a total waste of energy going yesterday. Now the worry (extreme) drags on until the next appt is arranged. It's all I can think about and the stress is definitely making my (physical) illness worse, not to mention the strain it is putting my parents under. Everyone is allowed to have their assessment recorded yet it isn't mentioned on any of the paperwork that you receive. I believe there are only 11 recorders for the whole country and my experience yesterday proves how ridiculous that is! They should be available in every assessment centre.
20 June 2012 1:30PM
I worked for a politician and it is absolutely vital that people denied benefits contact their MP/AM/MSP/MEP, face to face if possible. They need to be bombarded at constituency level in order to get them to understand the true impact of the welfare reform cuts, which have only just started to bite. Put them on the spot by asking specific questions, such as 'I have no money to feed my children, where can I go?'.
The reason it's important to get them involved is
i) they have access to specialist teams working for HMRC and JCP etc, who are there purely to take up complaints and deal with queries from MPs etc (this is not widely known), and can ring non public number to raise problems, while you are in the room with them
ii) as someone above says, they can use the parliamentary ombudsman to highlight poor practice
iii) they may have developed referral procedures with local foodbanks etc, so can make referrals on your behalf
iv) they should be made aware of the scale of the problem in their constituency, so that they can lobby ministers using hard evidence
v) they bloody well need to understand what's going on a human level
If you don't know how to get in touch go to the writetothem website.
20 June 2012 1:31PM
The issue here isn't twisting the arm of the state, it's the lack of protocol & resources in dealing with those who're suicidal.
20 June 2012 1:31PM
No we didn't.
Our government kept so much quiet and hidden.
It was mainly towards the end that the information was released as soldier came across camps.
There wasn't much said about it before it all started, either.
20 June 2012 1:32PM
The Tories have waited a long time to feel this pleasurable joy of self gratification watching the vulnerable suffer to such an extent that they would rather be dead.
These Tories have nothing but hate and evil running through their veins.