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Disabled people in the UK (and I’m sure many other countries) who rely on benefits are also not allowed to save that capital or own property at all. https://twitter.com/cannibality/status/1338574430293790721
Guys this is SO FUCKED UP if you have property and then become disabled and lose your income, you CANNOT get disability benefits until you SELL YOUR HOUSE.
you are REQUIRED to perpetually drift from rental to rental, reliant on shitty private landlords or shitty council housing, for the rest of your life if you want to survive. All for the crime of being disabled.
If you are not disabled, I would ask that for me, for every disabled person, tell someone else about this. So many of my friends, people who are good disability allies, had no idea - I can’t imagine people more removed from disability day to day will know better
Our government treats disabled people like absolute shit.
Did you know that in the training manual for PIP assessment, it says that back pain is NEVER constant and anybody who says they have constant back pain is lying? Like, that’s just blatantly untrue.
I’m just so sick of this shit and honestly I’m sick of abled people being like ‘gosh how terrible I had no idea’ like there aren’t so many disability activists out there desperately trying to educate them
PIP assessors get SEVEN DAYS of training. Seven. They might be a physiotherapist and then have to assess someone with BPD. It’s very unlikely they have any knowledge of your particular condition.
The PIP manual also says to ask about hobbies, so as to ‘check for inconsistencies’. Like doing simple sudoku means you can manage household bills. Like disabled people never modify their hobbies, or ignore pain in order to feel a little joy.
When you get the record of your assessment, it is laid out as an essay detailing why you are a liar. ‘You claim you have problems with x. I disagree’. That’s the exact wording. From someone who’s only met you for twenty minutes.
Receiving that letter is exhausting. It’s disgusting. It’s traumatic.
Mine said that she disagreed with my ‘claim’ that I struggle to prepare food consistently and safely, because I drank from a squeezy water bottle.
They also copy and paste. Someone I know had a home assessment as she was too unwell to travel to the ‘test centre’. Her assessment said she ‘travelled alone’.
Look it’s just fucking awful and relentless and you never know when they might reassess you and take everything away
I don’t know where all of this has come from, getting a new diagnosis has made me furious because ‘at least this will look good for PIP’. this is how they make you think, if you don’t have a diagnosis you are punished as though the failing of the nhs is squarely on your shoulders
The fewer tests, hospital visits, diagnoses, consultants you have, the less you are believed. As tho conditions like ME/CFS or EDS aren’t treated by the nhs as ‘eh off you go, nothing we can do’
I’m just so tired of it. I’m tired.
Please just do some activism work, abled friends. Please.
