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Atos Medicals - Questions, Answers and Support

A new GP Survey is out today which shows that the WCA is pushing "vulnerable people to the brink" and that there are many suicides.
One of the most frightening of the statistics is that 6% of GPs say they have patients who have either attempted or commited suicide as a direct result of the WCA. On another blog they have worked out if this is only one person per GP(unlikely) it works out at 2,100 souls.

Blood on their hands...

http://www.rethink.org/how_we_can_h...tional_press_releases/new_gp_survey_shows.htm

link not working...
 
Now he is in the Justice Department, though of course he will come under much more scrutiny than in the DWP, especially from liberals who quite easily ignored his dissembling and mendacity over benefits..
 
treelover said:
Now he is in the Justice Department, though of course he will come under much more scrutiny than in the DWP, especially from liberals who quite easily ignored his dissembling and mendacity over benefits..
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I bet he wishes he was there when that video came out offering helpful advice :mad:
 
he will now 'fix' the tribunals process, he has already been quoted as saying 'they are allowing too many appeals to win''
 
Steven Timms gave him shit about Harringtons reccomendations NOT being implemented:
The previous Government introduced the work capability assessment and employment and support allowance to provide support for people who are out of work for health reasons, but who are able to plan for a return to work. The current Government chose to take a drastic short cut by curtailing the bedding down period for the new benefit and rolling out the assessment without any improvement, even though by that stage improvements had been identified and proposed. The predictable result of that has been severe problems. Ministers are failing in their task of managing the contract with Atos, of ensuring that people who claim employment and support allowance are treated as they should be, and of reviewing and reforming the test so that it works as it should. The test needs major improvement. Two of Professor Malcolm Harrington’s reviews have reported so far—the hon. Member for Enfield North (Nick de Bois) was right—and while the Government say that they have accepted most of the recommendations, they simply have not implemented them, and that is the heart of the problem.

One simple example that shows the muddle that the Minister has got into has been raised several times in the debate. The year one Harrington review recommended that Atos should pilot the audio recording of work capability assessments, and a pilot of 500 claimants followed. Atos said that it was a good idea, but we have heard what has happened in practice from my hon. Friends the Members for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue), for Stoke-on-Trent North (Joan Walley) and for Airdrie and Shotts (Pamela Nash).

In a previous debate secured by my hon. Friend the Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West, the Minister made a commitment that
''we will offer everyone who wants it the opportunity to have their session recorded".—[Official Report, 1 February 2012; Vol. 539, c. 291WH.]
He has not delivered on that pledge, and it turns out that the problem is a shortage of tape recorders. I was contacted by someone who struggled for weeks to get her assessment recorded. Eventually, Atos wrote to tell her that she could not have a recording or a rescheduled appointment. I wrote to the Minister about that and reminded him of the commitment that he had made. He said that he thought it would be unreasonable to delay the assessment indefinitely for such a reason, but that was not the commitment he gave to the House in February. I am afraid that this mess and shambles shows all we need to know about the Minister’s management of this process. The Government need to get a grip on Atos. I wish the Minister great success in his new job, but I wish he had put a bit more effort into this aspect of his old one.

We have also had a series of mishaps. For example, the Minister made rather farcical efforts to suppress a YouTube video giving advice to people who were claiming against their work capability assessment. It turned out that the subversives who were responsible for this pernicious video were his colleagues at the Ministry of Justice.

Perhaps the most harmful thing to the credibility of the work capability assessment has been the delay in making the changes needed so that the test can work. Professor Harrington’s first review in 2010 asked Mind, Mencap and the National Autistic Society to propose better descriptors for people with mental health conditions. They produced recommendations in November 2010, and Professor Harrington commended them to the Department in April 2011. Further recommendations went to the Department in November 2011 about changes to the descriptors for fluctuating conditions.

Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab):
Several announcements that have been made, including about having mental health champions, have not been rolled out to assessment centres. Atos is still being inconsistent about allowing support workers or friends to assist those with mental health illnesses who are going to assessments.

Stephen Timms:
I agree that commitments have not been delivered, and my hon. Friend cites a good example.
The work capability assessment must not be a snapshot of someone’s condition on the day they attend the medical assessment. By definition, that is likely to be a good day, because otherwise they would not be able to show up. The assessment needs to take account of the frequency with which they can do work-related tasks and that with which they suffer the ill effects of their condition. The alternative descriptors proposed do just that. They are now in the public domain thanks to the Grass Roots disability blog, without which we would not have known what they were, and they look like a real step in the right direction.

The Department has had the recommendations on mental health descriptors for 17 months and those on fluctuating conditions descriptors for nine months, but hardly any progress has been made in that time. On 25 June, in a written answer, the Minister said:

“we have been carefully considering how to build an appropriate evidence base around the proposed new descriptors…Terms of reference have been agreed and we aim to publish a report of the Evidence Based Review in the spring of 2013.”—[Official Report, 25 June 2012; Vol. 19, c. 54W.]
The Minister’s successor will need to get a grip on this. If that ambiguous deadline is even met—and that would be a first—it will be two years after expert guidance was received on how to improve the assessment for people with mental health conditions, and a year following the other recommendations.

Ann McKechin:
Does my right hon. Friend agree that if a person suffers from cancer but does not require chemotherapy, they should still be deemed to be not capable of working if they are in treatment? Why have the Government not changed that indicator when they could do so immediately?

Stephen Timms:
My hon. Friend raises a good point that we discussed when we considered the Bill that became the Welfare Reform Act 2012. My understanding was that the Government had committed to make precisely that change, but it appears that that has not happened.
I want to ask the Minister two questions. First, on recording assessments—this might appear to be a minor issue, but it has been raised several times in the debate—will he stand by the commitment he made in Westminster Hall in February that people who want recordings will be able to have them? He seemed to have reneged on that commitment in the letter to me that was written by officials, but signed by him, about a case that I raised. Secondly, will he get these new descriptors evaluated quickly—he can urge his successor to get a move on—do so transparently, and make the changes quickly after the evaluation is completed?
Click to expand...


Greyling said yesterday:
The issue of cancer has been raised. It has taken us longer than I expected to address that, because of various issues that arose in our discussions with Macmillan Cancer Support, but I believe that we are now in the right place. We will be making a formal announcement very shortly, but I have said before that I believe that we should extend to those receiving oral chemotherapy the access to the support group that is offered to people receiving intravenous chemotherapy.
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I'll find the lnk to the Hansard....

WCA Debate 4th Sept Westminster Hall
 
Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab):
Several announcements that have been made, including about having mental health champions, have not been rolled out to assessment centres. Atos is still being inconsistent about allowing support workers or friends to assist those with mental health illnesses who are going to assessments.
Click to expand...

I thought it was allowed you could take whoever you like..

We have also had a series of mishaps. For example, the Minister made rather farcical efforts to suppress a YouTube video giving advice to people who were claiming against their work capability assessment. It turned out that the subversives who were responsible for this pernicious video were his colleagues at the Ministry of Justice.
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as if Timms or Purnell wouldn't have done similar..
 
This MP got close to the UNUM connection..
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab):
My hon. Friend is right to point out that the work capability assessment has been around for some time. For many years, I have been helping my constituent, Mr Robert Shafer, who was the victim of a poor assessment. Is my hon. Friend as concerned as I am that the chief medical officer of Atos is now Professor Michael O’Donnell? He was previously employed as chief medical officer by the American insurance company, Unum, which was described by the insurance commissioner for California, John Garamendi, as an “outlaw company” that has operated in an unlawful fashion for many years, running claims denial factories. Is that the kind of person that the Government should allow to be in charge of a work capability assessment system?
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On Recording Assessments, you can take your own expensive, dual recorder with you if you like:
Greyling : I do not rule out recording. If there was overwhelming evidence showing that it was necessary, I would make it available, but let me give some statistics. There are 300 claimants waiting for an audio-recorded assessment, while Atos is conducting 8,000 assessments a week. We are ordering additional audio-recording machines so that people can have their assessment recorded, if they want. They are perfectly entitled to bring their own recording equipment to an assessment as long as it can record two copies of an assessment, because they need to be able to take one copy with them and leave the other behind. That is why we have to buy what is fairly expensive equipment, and we have ordered additional equipment because there has been an increase in demand in the last few weeks.
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Frankie Jack said:
This MP got close to the UNUM connection..
Click to expand...


'In November 2001 a conference assembled at Woodstock, near Oxford. Its
subject was ‘Malingering and Illness Deception’. The topic was a familiar one to
the insurance industry, but it was now becoming a major political issue as New
Labour committed itself to reducing the 2.6 million who were claiming Incapacity
Benefi t (IB). Amongst the 39 participants was Malcolm Wicks, then Parliamentary
Under Secretary of State for Work, and Mansel Aylward, his Chief Medical Offi cer at
the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP). Fraud - which amounts to less than
0.4 per cent of IB claims - was not the issue. The experts and academics present
were the theorists and ideologues of welfare to work. What linked many of them
together, including Aylward, was their association with the giant US income protection
company UnumProvident, represented at the conference by John LoCascio. The
goal was the transformation of the welfare system. The cultural meaning of illness
would be redefi ned; growing numbers of claimants would be declared capable of
work and ‘motivated’ into jobs. A new work ethic would transform IB recipients into
entrepreneurs helping themselves out of poverty and into self-reliance. Five years later
these goals would take a tangible form in New Labour’s 2006 Welfare Reform Bill.'

http://www.lwbooks.co.uk/ebooks/Welfare Reform (revise).pdf

i wonder if O' Donnell was also at the meeting, a certain David Milliband was
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That's when it all kicked off Treelover. That MP yesterday was the first time I'd heard any of them mention the UNUM connection. Think Black Triangle will be bending his ear shortly. ;)
 
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