ATOS-ed Again

Just for my DWP diary, I will quickly note that I had another PIP Assessment two or three weeks ago. The actual appointment was far less awful than I was expecting (though whether or not the report they make from it will be remotely accurate remains to be seen) but the experience of getting to and from the building , getting around the building and sitting in the waiting room was awful.

We’d told them in advance that we needed wheelchair access and preferably a ground floor room. Whilst we did get seen in a wheelchair accessible ground floor room, the assessment centre was located really far away from any bus stops and there was no wheelchair accessible route to the building – the choices of routes where “walk on the road cos the pavement is too narrow for a wheelchair” or “Steep ramp up to another slightly less steep ramp followed by 20 metres of cobblestones and then cross the car park while cars are moving”. So, no, not wheelchair accessible at all really.
We spent over an hour in the waiting room, regularly being told it’d be another 10 minutes or so until we were seen. It was an extremely hot day – one of the hottest so far this year and it was hot inside too but no one dared to leave. One woman nearly fainted from the heat. My boyfriend eventually worked out that there was air-conditioning – they just hadn’t considered turning it on. He asked them to turn it on and they did but seriously, who expects vulnerable people to sit for hours in extreme heat and doesn’t think to use the air-con that is available?
And maybe I’m being petty here but: while I avoided the terribly uncomfortable seating by staying in my wheelchair, the seats were laid out in a pattern creating corridors between rows of seats and the pattern left no space for any wheelchair users to park. All three wheelchair users in the room had to just block of a bit of corridor at the end of a row and hope no one would need us to move. It was as if they didn’t expect us.
Another sign that they clearly didn’t expect wheelchair users was that all the internal doors had to be opened for me by two people for me to pass through. No “Press to Open” doors or large light doors with easy to open handles. Just heavy doors that I couldn’t have opened.

Like I said above, the assessment itself went much better than I’d expected – this time they didn’t ask me why I was still alive with my suicidal thoughts, didn’t ask me how I got PTSD and didn’t make me do any unnecessary physical exams (all of which happened at my first PIP assessment). But really I wish the constant assessments would stop and the fear of the next new and exciting way ATOS and the DWP can dehumanise me and threaten to impoverish me could lift.

Benefits Update

A full 16 months after I applied for ESA, I’ve finally got an answer. I’ve been put in the Support Group which basically means that I don’t have to work or seek work because I am too ill and disabled to be reasonably expected to try to find work that I can feasibly do and employers willing to make the many, many adjustments that would be required to make that work accessible to me. After literal years* of financial insecurity due to disability and ill health (including times when I had no money of my own) I finally have something resembling security – money to replace the employment I cannot be reasonably expected to seek or find until and unless I get much less ill (unlikely to happen as my physical illness is chronic and incurable and my mental illnesses are chronic and not responding all that well to treatment) or society gets MUCH, MUCH less disablist and much, much more inclusive and accessible (more likely to happen but still years away). I view it as somewhat akin to compensation – money to live off in recognition that between my body and the society I live in paid job opportunities for me will be close to non-existent but I still deserve to live a good life.

So, what now?
I’ve bought quite a few things lately that I’ve not been able to afford for a very long time – a mobile phone that actually works, a winter coat, new shoes, a Blue Badge and a Disabled Person’s Railcard. It feels odd both to have these things and to know that I can buy such things without worrying about whether I can also afford to pay my rent. This security is unfamiliar to me, I find myself still acutely aware of when each payment is due to come in and when my rent and direct debits are due to go out.

As I don’t need to look for or get a job, I’ll have a lot of free time. I’ll definitely be blogging and I’ve got some great ideas for posts lined up. I’m trying to get back into reading regularly and I want to write more fiction. In fact, I have the slightly ambitious aim of writing the first draft of a novel this year (I’ve written novels before but not since my teens). I’m also looking for very, very part-time volunteer activities in Manchester feel free to contact me if you’ve got an opening you think I could fill 🙂

In the medium term, I’m on a few NHS waiting lists to hopefully get some treatment for my my mental illnesses. I don’t expect to be “cured” but there’s a lot of scope for improvements in managing my illnesses and maybe even reducing my symptoms. A man can hope, right? Learning how to make a phone call without breaking from fear and panic, for example, would greatly improve my life and it’s a goal that is ambitious but (I hope) achievable.

Even longer term, I want to be a parent. I’m hoping to be on the adoption register as a potential adopter before I’m thirty. In order to get there, I’m going to need a few things I don’t have yet: a permanent home with at least one spare bedroom, more local friends than I have now, possibly a wheelchair and/or a service dog. I’m not hugely sure how to go about getting these things sorted but not having to worry too much about continuing to afford to eat and pay rent frees up a lot of time and energy for planning the little steps to the bigger goals. And I know what my big goal is: to be a good parent to at least one someone who didn’t get a great start in life.

So, that’s where I am. Right now I’m still pretty poor compared to most people but I don’t have to worry too much about it any more cos (for now at least) I know that I will have a regular income and that my rent will be paid. This means I can concentrate on other things. Which is something I’ve not been able to do for a long, long while.

*I’ve been trying to apply for DLA / PIP and ESA since 2011, the present year is 2015.

How I’ve Been – What Applying For Benefits Is Like

TW: Frank discussion of worsening mental illness, ATOS

Hello readers,

It’s been a little quiet around here for a while and if you follow me on twitter (I’m @autistliam) you might have an idea why. I’ve spent the last few months trying to find out what is happening with a claim for disability benefits I made over 6 months ago, whilst at the same time trying to fill in the forms and provide evidence for two more benefits I’m eligible for *and* manage my social care *and* get to all the doctor and hospital appointments I have to go to *and*… well, and have a life. I have friends and family and lovers to spend time with, books to read, films to see…

And because of the horrific bureaucracy I’ve found myself having to grapple with, I’ve had to do all that whilst living on less than £25 a week, perpetually wondering whether this is the week I’ll hear good news or whether I’ll have to ask my Uni for yet another crisis loan just to keep myself fed. It turned out that this week was finally the week that I have been awarded PIP – Enhanced Rate Care, back dated to cover most of the time I’ve spent living on as little as possible. It’s a relief to finally have it (even though I need to appeal the decision NOT to award me any Mobility payments) but it doesn’t really make up for what I’ve been put through.

It’s been a whole year since I started filling out a DLA form that took me five months to complete, working around my postgraduate degree and around treatment for my yet-to-be-diagnosed chronic illness. I sent that form just ahead of the deadline for the PIP change over but the DWP decided that I would be assessed for PIP anyway – for their convenience, not mine. They sent me a new form and just four weeks to fill it in. Overtaken by stress and despair, I considered killing myself and started self-harming after not doing so for months, saw my GP and was put onto antidepressants and considered quitting my degree but thankfully opted instead to take a year out. That was in May, I’ve been signed off as too ill to work since then but as I never had a job in the first place my sicknotes don’t get me any money. I managed, somehow, to fill in and return the PIP form – complete with over 12000 words of additional information and several sheets of evidence, within the four weeks they asked for. They never acknowledged receiving the form. I next heard something in July, when I was asked to attend an assessment with ATOS on the fifth of August. I arranged for my partner to be available to take me to the assessment and stay with me. I survived the misleading questions and attempts to catch me out in an over two hour long assessment – during which I had a small meltdown, was asked simple arithmetic questions, had my sight in both eyes tested after explaining that I can only use one at once and was asked to explain what triggers my PTSD and why and how often I harm myself and how often I consider killing myself.
After that, I heard nothing for a month. I had no money coming in and had to ask my Uni to loan me a month’s rent in order to have anywhere to live. My advisor phoned the DWP. ATOS had not sent them a report about my assessment yet. Try again next week.
That was early September. Since then, I’ve been trying again next week *every week*. The Uni has given me two more loans to keep me housed and fed. ATOS took seven weeks to get my assessment report to the DWP. They didn’t tell me they’d received it. It took almost another month before they looked at it and made a decision. They didn’t tell me about that either. I found out today by having my advisor phone them to ask them whether the £1600 that had appeared in my account was actually for me. Apparently it is.

The last year hasn’t quite been Hell (I’ve seen Hell and it’s much worse) but the precarity of always being told that things will be okay soon with no clear idea of when “soon” will be is certainly torture. My mental health has been affected and I have needed to start antidepressants, needed to ask friends to help keep me alive by making sure I eat or by sitting with me when I’m struggling to keep myself safe. I suddenly have some money and an income and can afford to eat better and to buy things but so long on less than £25 a week has made me forget what I even wanted.
I suspect it was to replace the clothes that I have worn through. Perhaps it was to eat in my campus bar every now and then or maybe to buy more than one drink at the pub. I need to replace my passport and haven’t been able to afford to.

Before all this, I was doing an MA and considering volunteering or part time work. Right now, I am doing neither as all my energy goes towards trying to sort out my benefits, social care and health. Being too ill to work is a full time job in itself.

This ordeal has changed me. It’s not been as hard as it would have been if I were not a student, I’m very grateful for help received from University Welfare Services, friends and partners and hundreds of supportive people on twitter. I hope to get my life back on track soon, I’m going back to Uni properly in May and I hope to have my PIP, ESA and Housing Benefit sorted by then. If things are sorted soon, I’ll look into volunteering.

In the meantime, I’ll try to write. I have been so scared to write this, so worried that somehow it would affect the result if I wrote this blog post before getting my first payment.

EDITED TO ADD:
As this blog post is going much further than I ever expected it to, I’d like to clarify some things that I didn’t make wholly clear.
Firstly, PIP is a benefit you can get whether you work or not. The out-of-work benefit for UK disabled people is ESA and I’m currently filling in the form for that and will have to have *another* ATOS assessment in the next three months for that.
Secondly, the people who told us repeatedly to “try again next week” were *DWP and ATOS staff*. They told my advisor every week that I’d get a decision the next week – for over two months.
Thirdly, without my advisor at the Uni phoning them for me I would *never have heard anything* from the DWP between August and now. And I would have no money to afford to phone or write to them either.
Finally, I just want to repeat that I have had fantastic support from my Uni, my friends, my partners and my doctors. Other people *will* be facing this alone and we need to find ways to find them and help them.