Imagine you have a serious, life threatening condition which causes you constant pain, for which the only relief is via powerful opiate medication. You are vulnerable to every virus or bacterial infection. You must keep warm, or your internal organs may start to bleed. You live in a council house which is damp, hard to heat, and has plaster peeling away from walls. You are regularly hospitalised to stabilise your condition, and your doctor has told you that your minimum wage part time work is making your condition worse, and you must stop work. The council keeps changing the dates when the remedial work to your house is to take place, has told you you must switch off the heating, that the radiators will need to be removed, and you have to pack everything possible in boxes. There will be a lot of dust, but there are no resources for you to be decanted. You have a 14 year old son, but no other help when you are seriously ill, and you worry that he has to miss school to care for you. Your fuel is paid for via pre-payment meters, and today you dont have enough money to feed either meter. Your doctor, and your hospital consultants submitted reports of your medical condition to ATOS in March, but until your MP intervened, you were still unassessed for your PIP. Now, your assessment is tomorrow, but you are to ill to go on a bus, so a friend will take you. You are terrified that you will not be granted your PIP, or that it will take months to come through. If it is refused, you will have to go to your heavy work this weekend, even though your doctor has been adamant you must not. You have already had to be given vouchers for the Foodbank. You have always worked. Always volunteered. Always cared for your children. Now you feel useless, and at the end of your tether. And all the people paid to support and advise you can do is to tell you that they are sorry, but their are tens of thousands of people in the same position..... Now, having imagined all this, and knowing that tens of thousands are in this condition...and according to one sympathetic DWP worker, even worse...what are we going to do about it?
Posted on: Wed, 15 Oct 2014 07:21:23 +0000
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