Cancer patients to undergo benefit checks

[lolli_pop]

Not in this topic. The OP is fairly explicit in his argument that anyone diagnosed with cancer should be automatically entitled to benefit no matter how it affects their ability to work.

 

The flaws in the checking system should be resolved, but that's irrelevant to the OP.

 

The current system is that anyone receiving non-oral chemotherapy is not required to go for the checks. As someone whose family has been very much affected by cancer, the thought of anyone going through that kind of treatment being required to trek to an Atos assessment centre and be subjected to that kind of "medical assessment" is, frankly, nauseating.

 

The cancers amongst members of my family have been: acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (x2), terminal bowel cancer (x2), terminal ovarian cancer and a terminal brain tumour. None of them would have been capable of work during treatment; equally I would not have wished to see any of them subjected to the stress of an Atos assessment, a process designed to deny benefits to as many people as possible.

 

You can't divorce the reality of what the "checking" involves from what the OP is saying.

[HeadingNorth]

so someone not willing to work could easily pass themselves off as a carer for a friend/relative

 

So far as I'm aware it's not all that easy. My wife gets Disability Living Allowance, and since I'm not working (nor claiming JSA, in case anyone suspects ) I look after her; but I can't claim anything for "being her carer."

 

Very few people are considered to need full-time care.

[HeadingNorth]

 

You can't divorce the reality of what the "checking" involves from what the OP is saying.

 

You not only can buy you must. The question of how the checks operate is entirely different from the question of who should undergo them.

[lolli_pop]

You not only can buy you must. The question of how the checks operate is entirely different from the question of who should undergo them.

 

I think we'll have to agree to disagree on that one

[ricgem2002]

So far as I'm aware it's not all that easy. My wife gets Disability Living Allowance, and since I'm not working (nor claiming JSA, in case anyone suspects ) I look after her; but I can't claim anything for "being her carer."

 

Very few people are considered to need full-time care.

so why cant you claim carers allowance if your not working ?or even why cant you work part time ? you seem to know a lot about disabilty and benefits yet i think your not telling us everything

[I1L2T3]

Which is fine - in such cases, they would I'm sure be assessed as unfit for work.

I've known people who fall into that category, and I expect most do, but I've also known several who have worked through it and felt better for doing so.

 

I think the issue is that the new rule would switch things around from the default being not to work but do so if fit and mentally capable, to the default being work unless you can prove otherwise.

 

I can see that the idea is to filter out the people who could work. I knew a bloke who never missed a day when he had blood cancer and was even in work the week before he died - that is fine if people want to do that. But this new rule seems like a massive waste of resources to crack a remarkably small walnut with a ridiculously oversized hammer, for a disease that mostly affects people approaching or past retirement age anyway.

 

Really hard to fathom it. Both from a resource perspective and a moral perspective in terms of the stress it will add at one of the most challenging times of life.

[missymoo73]

I now someone who has just finished a gruelling years chemo for a tumour on his liver. He has also had to undergo radiotherapy before then. A week later he was taken off incapacity (or whatever it was to say he wasnt fit for work) and he now has to go and sign on etc - he was recently admitted back into hospital because his immune system is none existent and ended up with a bad case of flu - he still was classed as being ft for work??? he has worked all his life He has never ever claimed benefits in his life and never been work shy and yet when he needs help - it isnt there for him.

 

The whole thing stinks.

[medusa]

I would not have been physically capable of going to work when I was diagnosed, partly because I spent 2 months in hospital and then partly because I spent the following 4 months going to the stroke unit on a daily basis to learn to get back as much as possible in feeling and fine control of my gammy arm. At that point I wasn't on Incapacity Benefit though- I was having my salary (and then part of my salary) being paid by my employer.

 

Trying to work with the sudden disabilities that I had got combined with the emotional problems dealing with going from being young and fit and suddenly having a life sentence of illness and disability would together have made me a liability to anyone with whom I was sharing a road, so it's very sensible that I didn't try to work during that period. I found it very hard to cope with a 6 month sick note so my GP wrote me one every month, but he did tell me that if I had allowed him to he would have written one for the full 6 months at the start. He understood how large the operation was and he didn't want me being stressed with thinking that I would have to try to rush back to work whilst I was trying to recover, but I actually found it easier to think about that than to look so far forwards without physical recovery.

 

If I'd have known then what I know now I'd have been less worried about the 6 months and more worried about the impact that the disabilities would have on every day for the rest of my life!

[medusa]

so why cant you claim carers allowance if your not working ?or even why cant you work part time ? you seem to know a lot about disabilty and benefits yet i think your not telling us everything

 

Not everybody on DLA is entitled to a paid carer, so therefore if you have a carer they have to do it for love, and live in slightly more poverty than if they were being paid the princely sum of £53 a week to do it (which is currently the full Carers' Allowance).

[Frank Sidney]

Not in this topic. The OP is fairly explicit in his argument that anyone diagnosed with cancer should be automatically entitled to benefit no matter how it affects their ability to work.

 

 

The flaws in the checking system should be resolved, but that's irrelevant to the OP.

 

I am. I feel there has to be some give in the system. The effects of cancer on the mental health of patients will vary. That's why I said the patient themselves will know if they are fit for work.

 

There's not much hope for humanity if you want to force someone coping with the trauma of cancer to work. You'd have Tiny Tim climbing up a chimney because he had two good arms.

 

I sometimes wonder how some people get through their days being so tight. In this day and age measures like this won't save the country any money. Its just another example of the evil Tories at work....