A Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) work coach told a chronically ill and disabled woman that it was her responsibility to “support the nation” and get a job. In a covert recording of a call passed to the Canary, the work coach repeatedly showed the lack of empathy or understanding that exists at the DWP – even to someone who just days later got a lung cancer diagnosis.
Grace’s experience
Grace, who is using a pseudonym to protect her identity, told the Canary:
Before becoming severely disabled I worked from the age of 16. I trained and worked as a chef then went on to run nightclubs and bars. I could also build and paint and decorate and fix things so did a lot of that. I’m also an artist and musician.
I worked and paid taxes for about 25 years.Eight years ago, I caught an infection that eats your heart valves and nearly killed me. I needed emergency open heart surgery, a new valve, and leaflet patches. I also got a PE in my lung and had three mini strokes. Now, eight years later, these issues are causing more and more problems with my muscle strength, brain function, and memory loss (I repeat myself a lot!).
A few years after I started on the chronic pain pipeline, I was first diagnosed with coccydynia, fibromyalgia, ME/CFS, osteopenia, COPD, Chronic Pelvic Pain Syndrome, and mild heart failure.
I’ve had three lumbar disc slips and one mid-back, two of which required hospitalisation. I even lost consciousness and vomited.
I’m just 45, but my health is absolutely terrible. I just recovered from pneumonia, which nearly put me in the hospital. I pay privately from my PIP for care twice a week, but I’m struggling to afford the care I need. Some of my daily medications include morphine, pregabalin, and diazepam.
Switchover to Universal Credit
Yet despite all of this, Grace has faced a succession of issues from the DWP. She told the Canary:
I receive twelve mobility points on my PIP, have a blue badge, and a freedom pass. I’m quite severely disabled. PIP gives me 3-5 years at a time. I don’t leave the house much and use a stick or a chair when I do – on a good day.
Since January, when they automatically moved me to Universal Credit, I’ve been receiving less than half of what I was getting previously on bi-monthly ESA. My private but previous support group payments were £450 every two weeks, but now I get £400 monthly.
So, as you can imagine, the savings have gone, and I’m even skipping meals to pay for care.
The reason Grace’s Universal Credit is lower than her ESA is because she is yet to have a Work Capability Assessment (WCA). This will decide whether or not she is fit for work – and therefore, whether she will be entitled to the health-related element of Universal Credit.
This is where the problems from the DWP worsened for Grace. Because a call with her work coach just showed how intolerant and unempathetic the department’s staff are.
DWP staff are disabled too
The Canary has been passed a recording of the call. During it, the work coach explained to Grace what would happen with her WCA. However, it was what they said on top of this which was most shocking.
The work coach repeatedly pushed DWP propaganda and tropes around disabled people onto Grace. For example, regarding whether she would receive Limited Capability for Work-Related Activity (LCWRA), the work coach said:
There are so many people who are disabled in the country, but are able to do some sort of work-related activities, or are able to do some sort of work even with their long-term disabilities.
In other words, why can’t you?
The work coach then went on to pressure Grace, by saying:
There are people who are disabled within the… [DWP] who work as a work coach with long-term health conditions, and who are able to do some sort of work.
This trope, that because some chronically ill and disabled people are able to work everyone else should, is a key line of DWP propaganda at present. Yet after Grace explained how sick she was – including the amount of medication she is on – the work coaches response was even worse.
Get a job you scrounger
Grace had said that:
It’s not that I don’t want to work. I physically cannot work. I’m laying on a sofa at the moment under a blanket with pure exhaustion after a three-month flare-up. I’m not well. I take morphine every day. I take diazepam every day. I take heavy painkillers. So I’m not someone that needs to be told that I can sit at a computer for two hours a day and press some buttons. Like, I can’t.
The work coach’s response was as follows:
Nobody’s telling you to touch a computer. There are other forms of work that are available that you can do… Disability doesn’t define you as a person. It’s not whether or not you’re disabled enough. It’s about what skills you have to support the nation. It’s not just to support the nation, but it’s also to support yourself as well.
At this point, Grace and her carer who was supporting her with the call rightly told the work coach she was being ‘judgemental’. They then accused them of being ‘discriminative’. This classic piece of gaslighting is the DWP’s MO in a nutshell.
After Grace challenged the work coach on the fact that they had told her that she could work (“there are other forms of work that are available that you can do”), the work coach proceeded to backtrack, claiming:
Once in this conversation, did I tell you that you would have to go out and work?… Not once did I confirm that you had to go out and work.
The work coach is either a) grossly incapable of doing the job they are supposed to be doing, or b) intentionally gaslighting Grace. Regardless, all this left Grace extremely distressed.
The DWP work coach ‘made me feel ashamed’
She explained how this whole situation with the DWP has affected her:
It’s been almost six months since the switchover, and I’m on less than half of my previous benefits. I’m feeling incredibly anxious and my CFS is flaring up because of it. I even felt suicidal after this call with my “work coach” from DWP. The call was so demeaning and patronising that it made me feel sick to my stomach. Suicidal, and needed to call scope for benefits advice and a shoulder to cry on.
I know I’m not the only one who’s going through this. There are millions of people out there who are being put through this kind of treatment, and I just want to make sure that people understand what’s happening. I’ve been through a lot, and I’m not going to let anyone make me feel ashamed about my health. I’ve tried my best to adapt and find ways to work, but it’s not easy.
I’m also recovering from pneumonia related to my lung condition, so I’m not in the best shape right now. I’m hoping that the government will take a closer look at what they’re doing and make some changes. We (disabled) may (sometimes) be fiscally net negative, but most of us lead full lives and contribute in different but important ways.
Since we spoke to Grace, her situation has deteriorated.
Now with lung cancer
Not one single member of DWP staff has replied to her requests in her Universal Credit journal to try and support her.
And in the past days, she has now been given a lung cancer diagnosis. Grace told the Canary:
I went into hospital with sepsis after having pneumonia on Friday and walked out Saturday with a 5cm mass on my right lung. A malignant growth. I have lung cancer I may die.
Now I have MacMillan they’ve intervened with the DWP. Now we have cancer too they need to start paying me my LCWRA payment element that’s been missing for six months. Yet no one’s replied on my journal to me or my carer for over three weeks now. I’m hoping McMillan have some clout.
Of course, it would be easy for the DWP to say that Grace did not have a lung cancer diagnosis at the time the work coach spoke with her. Therefore, if she had have done, the work coach would not have said those things. This is of course a nonsense excuse that only serves to play into the narrative of the ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ disabled people narrative the Labour Party government is pushing. It should not matter what diagnoses people have. If they and their doctors are saying they cannot work, they cannot work – and an unqualified work coach should not question that.
More broadly, what Grace’s call with the DWP work coach shows is myriad of issues.
The DWP: broken beyond repair
There is often a clear lack of understanding from work coaches of chronically ill and disabled people’s personal circumstances and support needs. There’s often also a lack of awareness around impairments and health conditions.
Work coaches like this one display little more ability than to be able to repeat the tropes that the DWP and media spoon-feed to the population. They might not even realise what they’re doing. And moreover, there is a complete lack of empathy.
However, Grace’s experience points to a wider problem.
The DWP is filled with box-tickers and robots who are there to complete the most basic elements of their jobs, and nothing more. In a role where you are dealing with chronically ill and disabled people who often have complex needs, you need people who – for want of a better phrase – give a shit.
Sadly, most DWP staff do not. If they did, they would be mortified at the tens of thousands of deaths on the DWP’s watch and have resigned their positions years ago.
As Grace summed up:
The whole thing has been horrific. It’s a huge scandal really. They’re already either making mistakes, or on purpose pushing us off legacy benefits like ESA and into Universal Credit.
Yet no one seems to want to own up.
The lack of accountability at the DWP – from both staff and the institution as a whole – is what compounds the systemic issues that exist in the first place. Grace’s experience is a microcosm of just how abusive, vicious, and at worst, deadly the DWP is. But when an institution is designed to be that way, no amount of policy changes can alter that.
Featured image via the Canary
By Steve Topple
This post was originally published on Canary.