A group member of Respect For the Unemployed & Benefit Claimants personal blog - highlighting their experiences at the hands of Atos Origin. I recently accompanied my nephew, who suffers with chronic schizophrenia, to an “assessment” by ATOS Healthcare, in partnership with the Government’s Department for Work and Pensions - DWP, to determine his fitness for work. I was appalled by the experience and considered the whole procedure nothing short of “state sponsored” harassment of people with serious physical disabilities or mental illness. They attend these” assessments” under duress and the” threat” that failure to attend could result in the loss of all or part of their disability benefits. It fails to say that by attending they are also at serious risk of losing all or part of their disability benefits on the arbitrary assessment of an employee of a Company, paid by the Government, whose remit is to “force” the sick and disabled into work regardless of the consequences. These “assessors” know little or nothing of the history of the “client” and rely mainly on the answers given, by the “client”, on the day, to questions they have already answered in a form sent to them by the DWP some weeks or months previously. My nephew received a letter from the DWP giving him the date, place and time he was required to attend and requested he arrive 10 minutes BEFORE the stated time, which he did. On arrival I noted that there were 20 “clients” already in attendance. My nephew informed the receptionist of his arrival and was immediately told that they were “running” late and that it was doubtful that he would be seen that day and a new date for his attendance would have to be made. I protested and asked how late they were running and was told approximately one hour. My nephew’s appointment time was 1100hrs so we were prepared to wait in order to be dealt with that day. We were further informed that each appointment took approximately 40 minutes with a further 10 minutes to allow the assessor to complete notes. Assuming that each assessor would deal with 4 “clients” in the morning i.e.0900hrs to 1300hrs and, with an hour for lunch, 3 in the afternoon i.e. 1400hrs to 1700hrs there being 3 assessors available that day, 21 “clients” would be dealt with and as there were already 20 clients waiting when we arrived I anticipated that we would be the last to be seen that day at around 1600hrs i.e. 5 hours later than the actual appointment time. Despite repeatedly being told by the receptionist that it was unlikely that we would be dealt with that day we were still prepared to wait in order to prevent having to rebook. The receptionist informed me that it did not work that way because there would be a further 20 “clients” arriving for the afternoon session so any morning “clients” not seen by 1200hrs would be sent home and rebooked. I could not believe what I was being told. At 1400hrs, 3 hours later than the original time of his appointment, my nephew was called to meet with the assessor ..... please click on link to read further
Posted on: Fri, 21 Jun 2013 16:27:57 +0000
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