"Write what you know" they say.

Even of what you know is benefits advice work and writing stories about it only pays enough to keep your colleagues in biscuits!



Tuesday 15 November 2016

Saving Daniel Blake

In my previous post I slated the Toby Young/Daily Mail review of I, Daniel Blake, which was taking a bit of a risk as I hadn't actually seen the film then.  However, the odds of the Daily Mail being right about something multiplied by the odds of Toby Young being right about it too...  So not that much of a risk, eh?

Anyway, I have now seen Ken Loach's superb drama and cannot recommend it enough.  The film manages to be warm and uplifting, yet also strikingly bleak.  Unlike the hated Mail I'm not going to include spoilers, but will admit I'm not as brave when plotting my own characters' misfortunes as Ian Laverty has been here.  The performances from the two principal actors are outstanding - so convincing that you seem to be witnessing the real lives and conversations of friends and neighbours, as they spiral into despair and desperation.  You can see Daniels and Katies in the early morning queues outside advice centres from Newcastle-upon-Tyne to Newquay; or rather you can where those services still exist. 

I expected to be moved to tears and to anger, despite knowing more than most about how benefit cuts and sanctions impact on the lives of sick and disabled people, and so it proved.  Stoke Odeon set the mood for the scenes of fuel poverty by apparently not bothering to put the heating on in tiny Screen 10.  Midweek, with little publicity, there was only a small audience, which was a pity as this film deserves to be seen by everybody.

Initially, the benefits geek in me was wary that some aspects of the story were going to be over-simplified.  The conversation heard in the background of the opening credits didn't resemble any Atos/Maximus medical assessment I've ever sat in on - our local Healthcare Professionals ask oblique questions about a claimant's 'typical day' rather than quoting the descriptors and infer their points and abilities from those answers, often entirely incorrectly.  But it works, of course, as a way of explaining the assessment criteria to the uninitiated.

As a benefits specialist, I wanted to see Dan's interview with his welfare rights adviser, to hear their conversation explaining how Dan's failure to score 15 points was neither here nor there, because Regulation 29 should allow him to be deemed of 'limited capability for work' due to the serious risk to his health of finding otherwise (a scene for the 'Director's Cut'?).  That's important, because the DWP's own investigation into claimants' suicides revealed systemic failures by Decision Makers in applying this regulation.

It was, however, a nice touch to make the adviser/representative a wheelchair user.  After all, nobody is saying disabled people can't work; the need is for the right jobs, in respectful workplaces, for those capable of and ready for them.  On the other hand, if there are real reps out there talking as confidently of success before tribunals as Dan's man, they are tempting the fates something rotten!

I knew Ken's team had really done their homework when the 'shite music' started.  No offence to Vivaldi, but you won't find a benefits adviser or claimant in the country who doesn't hate 'Spring' from the Four Seasons with a passion.  I have read bundles of appeal papers, drafted submissions, chatted to clients or colleagues and drunk gallons of tea to that soundtrack, waiting so long for someone to pick up that, when they do, I've almost forgotten what I needed to ask about.  It irritates and demoralises in equal measure.  How much worse it must be hearing it on an endless loop when you're down to your last couple of quid of credit and chasing a long-promised payment.  When (very minor spoiler) Dan's rebellion against the DWP included a demand they change the tune, I cheered quietly.  It's the little things, as much as the threats and sanctions, that eat away at the souls of real Daniel Blakes.

I have met many Daniel Blakes, like the man described in this post.  Although "Jeff" was fully fit for work and would never have declared otherwise, he too fell foul of a Jobcentre jobsworth who treated him with contempt as an unemployed, uneducated man, rather than respecting and supporting his efforts to find work in an unfamiliar and rapidly changing world.  Like Loach's hero, the system cut off his income before he could argue or appeal, putting him through hell before he got to tribunal. However we want to change the benefits system, that should change first.  

It isn't too hard to imagine how much less harrowing Daniel Blake's lot would have been if, after his 'fit for work' decision, he'd been allowed to stay on ESA pending his reconsideration and appeal.  Ironically, until October 2013, that was exactly what did happen if you appealed a 'fit for work' decision.  Then some bright spark invented 'mandatory reconsideration' and decided that, unless you had a new disabling condition or medical evidence of significant deterioration in your existing health problems, you would have to come off ESA at that stage and, in most cases, claim JSA instead if you needed an income. Since then, we've seen thousands of people wrongly assessed either compelled to 'do a Daniel' and go through the wearing motions of job-seeking when they aren't fit for it, struggle without funds because they can't cope with that, or get lost in the system because they think 'signing on' is an admission of wellness and will count against them in their appeal. 

If the DWP don't change the decision and your case goes to appeal, it is then possible to go back onto ESA - so why force the break in claim at all, except to drive sick people off of ESA or discourage their appeal?  Needless stress for claimants and pointless work for DWP staff could be avoided, if ESA remained in continuous payment throughout the whole process.  While I can dream of an unconditional Citizens Income, in the short-term, perhaps we should campaign hard for this simple reform. 

I watched I, Daniel Blake with my husband.  Twenty-five years ago, he claimed Invalidity Benefit after a heart-attack ended his career as an ambulanceman.  It came through, without a glitch, on the basis of a GP certificate, until he felt well enough to end his claim and seek lighter work.  There was no half-baked assessment by someone completely unqualified to offer an opinion, no hasty totting up of points by a harassed Decision Maker, no bullying at the Jobcentre, no suggestion from Government or media that he was 'scrounging' - in short, no needless, dangerous extra pressure during his convalescence.  Seeing, through Daniel Blake's eyes, how much things had changed, upset him deeply.  He too would have been found fit for work long before he actually was.  I'm sure he would have tried, just like Dan to meet his Claimant Commitment.  I don't like to think about how his story would have ended.

#WeAreAllDanielBlake