This includes an investment of £ 240 million in job supportwith work trainers who provide intensive and personalized support to tens of thousands of benefits.
However, “uncertainty” about disease benefits plans is to leave disabled and serious patients, many of whom cannot work due to Weakening health conditions – Fearing that the money they trust will be torn.
Ross Barrett, Policies Manager of the Society of the MR.
“Living with EM can be weakening, exhausting and unpredictable, not to mention expensive. PIP is a lifeguard for many, helping them to administer the enormous additional costs of their condition, from mobility aid to physiotherapy.
“While many people with EM trust proven benefits with universal credit and the allocation of job support to survive. Our MS’s help line is flooded with community calls asking what these proposed changes could mean. We urge the Government to let any plan fall to reduce the benefits. “
The big problem spoke with two claimants for disability benefits, both have multiple sclerosis (EM), about their concerns for the future.
Dave Johnston, 57, Suffolk
I feel terrified. Claiming pip It has to be the most stressful process that I have had to happen. I felt very relieved when they gave me the benefit. It has made a big difference to continue being part of society. I get the improved rate, which means that I am eligible for a mobility car, so I can still leave.
But with what is being planned now, I wake up and think: ‘What now?’ It is uncertainty. I’m just following the news all the time.
I have had more for 29 years. At that time, it deteriorates. He has progressed to wake up a morning and not be able to see from the right side of my right eye where I am now. The whole right side of my body affects: my ability to walk any distance, my cognitive ability and be able to think, my memory. He has only continued taking parts of me over time, and there is no cure for it.
Every three years, you get a review for PIP to see if there is progress, and you have to fight in every step of the road. I had that appeal To get the improved rate.
And now he receives news that work wants to reduce billions of the weakest to encourage people to return to work. That would have helped me in 2011 if I were still working. Now I am so scared that if they take me pip of my ability to be part of society.
Losing £ 430 a month, more or less, would be devastating. I would be spending more money on food and energy, only the daily life of what would enter. I already use my heating in moderation. I prefer to walk with a blanket. I only put my heating in four or five times when it was very cold during the winter, so that things were stretched.
It’s like living in a george orwell novel, like 1984. You fear what the future holds for people.
EM is not a pleasant disease. It is your body attacking you. Every day is different, whether you wake up with pain or do not sleep at all. I’m still returning to the word ‘terrifying’. I didn’t ask for this.
I was a baker when I was initially diagnosed with this. I was basically out of my last job. I had been with the company for 18 years and tried to obtain reasonable adjustments. The pressure was incredible at that time. My mobility was getting worse. I was using AIDS to move. I wanted to leave some responsibilities and expelled me from work.
I despair for how they are being punished to the weak. Why scare so many people about how they will have to fill a vacuum with hundreds of pounds? I will have to look at the sale of my possessions so that the money goes further.
Ellie Pavone, 38, Basingstake
I am extremely concerned about the cuts with which they are going to leave. It feels precarious. It’s very afraid.
I requested PIP for the first time in 2021 and at that time I didn’t know I had more. I lived with fibromyalgia and recently they diagnosed me autism and adhd. I obtained help from a local beneficial autism organization to request PIP and could not have done it without your support.
Even so, my claim was rejected. It took until July 2023 to receive the standard pip rate.
At that stage, I had a diagnosis for EM. The application process does not allow fluctuations in conditions such as MS. They ask how you handle the tasks, but in a good day, I am fine and on a bad day, I cannot do it at all. It wasn’t until I got to the court stage that I could explain that.
The left side of my body is intermittently numb with pins and needles. In general, it is triggered by immense stress or climate.
I get a double vision and I have to use a patch in my eyes, or a temporary prism lens in the prescription glasses. I have to go to the hospital every four weeks for an infusion, and that cycle is a drain. I have to organize my whole life around infusions.
They put me in reverse of my first request, but during that time, I had no income. I couldn’t work. My son is 11 years old and autistic, and we had to educate him at home because he would not deal with a conventional school. My husband works, but it is difficult because his salary has not really increased.
Pip helps me cover additional costs as supplements and therapies. It meant that I could buy a running tape to keep mobile in winter, because my pain shoots when it’s cold, so I really can’t leave the house. Last year, I won so much weight and I can’t pass my body through that again. I use a crutch from time to time when I feel wobble.
I have tried to work again and again, but I have been inside and outside the retail jobs and I can never follow it due to my autism. There is a lot of rhetoric around the claimants of benefits that are ignorant or lazy or optional of society, but the reason we cannot participate in it is because society is very capable.
It is very difficult because I don’t want to live this life. I don’t want to have to exist. I want to prosper and I want my son to prosper.
The impact of the cuts would be huge for me. Much of the public seems to think that if you are sick, you get medications and improve, but that is not the case for me. The constant uncertainty is horrible for anyone, but not knowing if your home will be torn from you, or if the money you trust will be removed, it is very scary.
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