I've put together several emails about sanctions and benefits that have recently come to my inbox via public lists.
Not very comforting reading.
all in the context of this
Peers have backed down in their battle with MPs over cuts to disabled people's benefits after ministers invoked special powers to push them through.
NO 1
A truly frightening and dehumanising trajectory: it almost makes you nostalgic for 1984.
Just in case anyone still isn't aware of the sheer scale of the social destruction inflicted by sanctions, set against their almost laughable ineffectiveness as a means of securing employment or employability . . .
Dan Silver, a friend of mine, has just drawn my attention to this (free downloadable) book of a project he's helped six local people in Salford put together. They 'represent their own lives through photography, storytelling and info-graphics'. It gives a clear human feel to the dichotomy between Salford's traditional working class communities and the monumental, corporate landscape - notably, Media City - that's systematically designing them out. But that's by the by . . .
Towards the end of the book, there's a diagram which includes the statement that 1 in 5 benefit claimants in 2013-14 were sanctioned. The source for this is an ongoing study of the regime by David Webster at the University of Glasgow, based largely on information that the DWP had to have squeezed out of them through FOI requests. The figures are staggering.ￜ Just a couple of quotes from the summary document:
"Almost one-fifth (18.4%) of the 3,097,630 individuals who claimed JSA during 2013/14 were sanctioned, after challenges: 568,430 people, with an average of 1.56 sanctions each. Over one-fifth (22.3%) of the 8,232,560 individuals who claimed JSA over the five years 2009/10 to 2013/14 inclusive, were sanctioned: 1,833,035 people, with an average of 1.95 sanctions each. Of the individual JSA claimants sanctioned in the year to June 2014, 30.9% were sanctioned more than once, and 12.5% three times or more. Over the six years of the ESA sanctions regime from October 2008 to September 2014, 21.0% out of a total of 85,292 sanctioned claimants received more than one sanction, and 7.6% three or more. In the year to May 2013 there were more than 93,410 children in households affected by sanctions."
"The Work Programme continues to deliver far more JSA sanctions than JSA job outcomes. Up to 30 September 2014 there had been 575,399 JSA Work Programme sanctions and 345,640 JSA Work Programme job outcomes."
Fantastic! Get in there! (as the not-so-quiet IDS so memorably put it when Osborne announced the Living (sic) Wage in the previous Budget.)
Laird
Just in case anyone still isn't aware of the sheer scale of the social destruction inflicted by sanctions, set against their almost laughable ineffectiveness as a means of securing employment or employability . . .
Dan Silver, a friend of mine, has just drawn my attention to this (free downloadable) book of a project he's helped six local people in Salford put together. They 'represent their own lives through photography, storytelling and info-graphics'. It gives a clear human feel to the dichotomy between Salford's traditional working class communities and the monumental, corporate landscape - notably, Media City - that's systematically designing them out. But that's by the by . . .
Towards the end of the book, there's a diagram which includes the statement that 1 in 5 benefit claimants in 2013-14 were sanctioned. The source for this is an ongoing study of the regime by David Webster at the University of Glasgow, based largely on information that the DWP had to have squeezed out of them through FOI requests. The figures are staggering.ￜ Just a couple of quotes from the summary document:
"Almost one-fifth (18.4%) of the 3,097,630 individuals who claimed JSA during 2013/14 were sanctioned, after challenges: 568,430 people, with an average of 1.56 sanctions each. Over one-fifth (22.3%) of the 8,232,560 individuals who claimed JSA over the five years 2009/10 to 2013/14 inclusive, were sanctioned: 1,833,035 people, with an average of 1.95 sanctions each. Of the individual JSA claimants sanctioned in the year to June 2014, 30.9% were sanctioned more than once, and 12.5% three times or more. Over the six years of the ESA sanctions regime from October 2008 to September 2014, 21.0% out of a total of 85,292 sanctioned claimants received more than one sanction, and 7.6% three or more. In the year to May 2013 there were more than 93,410 children in households affected by sanctions."
"The Work Programme continues to deliver far more JSA sanctions than JSA job outcomes. Up to 30 September 2014 there had been 575,399 JSA Work Programme sanctions and 345,640 JSA Work Programme job outcomes."
Fantastic! Get in there! (as the not-so-quiet IDS so memorably put it when Osborne announced the Living (sic) Wage in the previous Budget.)
Laird
-- LAIRD RYAN e: lairdryan@bignall.free-online.co.uk Twitter: @LairdRyan
NO 2
For those who have not seen it, do view this chillingly intelligent video
on psychological compulsion and workfare:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NF3vjwTrM3M&app=desktop
--
Kind wishes from Adrian Barritt Adur Voluntary Action
www.adurva.org adrian@adurva.org
on psychological compulsion and workfare:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NF3vjwTrM3M&app=desktop
--
Kind wishes from Adrian Barritt Adur Voluntary Action
www.adurva.org adrian@adurva.org
No3.
from Caroline Molloy <carolinejmolloy@googlemail.com>
I think this piece is critical to understanding the right-wing agenda for service provision.
And how - under the rubric of joined up care and personalisation - they are stealthily importing the harsh benefit sanctions culture and 'undeserving' narrative they've created, into all our public services. Health, housing, etc.
This piece starts by focusing on the introduction of Maximus 'job coaches' into GP surgeries (and the protests against that last Friday by DPAC).
Please do read through to the end, there are a number of other worrying examples mostly relating to mental health and employment, that show the real agenda is the absolute opposite of empowerment.
Whether or not, as with previous welfare to work schemes, this ends up being a debacle of underfunded sub-contracting of the more difficult cases to the voluntary sector, or not, there are major ethical concerns here that we all need to be switched on to, I think. Are the plebs sorry I mean service users to be left ANY agency of our own?
And of course it all fits together nicely with the dreadful eugenic piece in the Times yesterday about how heavy service users are genetically disposed to being poorly socialised.
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