women with visible and invisible disabilities
For two years, WinVisible has peer-supported disabled single mum Maria (not her real name) in South London, and provided her with information to secure benefits which the family needs: • She used our blog about the Personal Independence Payments (PIP) legal challenge on mobility needs and mental distress, to brief Merton Centre for Independent Living … Read more
We are taking part in the Commission on Social Security, which is led by people with personal experience of claiming benefits. The Commission is a project supported by the Trust for London, to come up with proposals on how to make the welfare benefits system better. These proposals will be put to the government. The … Read more
WinVisible is among those supporting Joy Dove, mother of Jodey Whiting. On 10 June, DWP officials travelled to meet Jodey’s bereaved parents at the office of her MP, where they told her they have made many changes. They told her that Mind is providing training to staff. Read the Disability News Service report of the meeting … Read more
We’re supporting the petition to Amber Rudd to STOP the DWP telling GPs not to issue sick notes for patients who are wrongly found fit for work. Sign the petition here. See petition updates from Zacchaeus 2000 here. Sick and disabled people are being deprived of vital benefit while they appeal, leaving them destitute and risking their … Read more
Single mum carer and disabled daughter, ESA woman, lost added disability amounts Please come along, or support in other ways: #StopandScrap Universal Credit Wed 23 January 2019 at High Court, Strand, London WC2A 2LL Court case 10.30am. Go into court 18 to support the claimants, TD, AD and Ms Reynolds. Cases listed here. Continues Thursday 24 January, support … Read more
Several legal challenges at tribunal and then High Court have forced the government to repay around £1.67bn in benefits to an estimated 180,000 low-income sick and disabled people, which they were wrongly denied since 2011. Well done to Ms H, a woman who was wrongly found fit for work, one of those who went to tribunal. She challenged being … Read more
More legal challenges to Universal Credit are on the way: by a man whose ESA was stopped when he was unfairly found “fit for work”; and by a single mother who lost her carer benefits as her daughter’s DLA did not continue smoothly. More information from the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) representing the claimants, is below. … Read more
Getting Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) depends on the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) and a points system. The massive UK-wide campaign against the WCA and Atos (the multinational company which used to carry out the WCA) and successful legal challenge against the WCA has had a huge impact. The British Medical Association, representing doctors, and many MPs, voted … Read more
In February, the all-party Work and Pensions Committee of MPs issued two scathing reports on the PIP and ESA assessments done by Atos, Capita and Maximus — on claimant experiences, and recommendations on the system. The MPs are awaiting the government’s response. They got nearly 4,000 submissions, mainly from claimants, who continue to have a … Read more
The Work and Pensions Committee of MPs has secured a commitment from the government to stop rubber-stamping benefit refusals at the first stage (mandatory reconsideration). This is a result of the 4,000+ testimonies to the inquiry into the ESA and PIP tests, mainly from disabled claimants, about this injustice, and evidence from the DWP union PCS … Read more