First of all I should say who we are so here goes -
My name is Lily and I am a member of CarerWatch.
You can find out all about us at our website at - http://carerwatch.com/
We are an independent group of carers with a strong mental health group.
I am starting this blog because we are very concerned about ESA. ESA is the new benefit that is replacing IB and IS for disabled people.
ESA has a different philosophy from IB and we are very concerned about it. ESA has been set up for all disabled people and we don't think this one size fits all works for mental health. So we are campaigning to get some changes.
There is lots more I could say but I hope other people will join in and we can all work on this together.
Here is a letter that we sent to the Minister - Philip Hope - today. It will tell you where our thinking has got to at the moment but please post and tell us what you think about ESA. The more people putting ideas forward for this campaign the stronger it will be.
And apologies in advance to any one who is a service user and finds carers patronising or intrusive and thinks we don't know what we are talking about. We know we only see this from the outside and we will be very happy for service users to take over and run their own campaign. We do our best but we don't see it as well as you do.
Lily
Dear Philip Hope
We are an independent group of carers across many diabilities. You can see more about us on our website.
We noticed your speech on Monday and the interest you take in mental health. Sometimes only people with direct experience understand.
We thought you might understand about the problems with 'conditionality'in the new ESA system for people with enduring severe mental illness likeschizophrenia. As you know many people with these illnesses do achievestability on medication and want to do a few hours work. But any sort of threat affects them very negatively especially if they have residual paranoia. ESA does contain an element of coercion and this needs to beflagged up in the case of mental health where pressure can destabilise people.
We are very concerned that special protection needs to be factored in forthem in the ESA regime. We think they need assurance that with a diagnosis of schizophrenia they can be assured that they can have protection from 'conditionality' and go in the 'support group'. This should be based on an assessment by their own medical team. On the websites for mental illness you can see how frightening they find the idea of being called in and assessed by strangers and it isn't safe for them to be treated like this.They often can't explain their illness themselves and as you know may deny they have it. It takes months of careful monitoring by mental health teams to assess these conditions and second guessing is fairly pointless and not safe if it frightens people.
You can also see that with the heavy medication they often find six toeight hours work a week is about right. The support group needs to make provision for this amount of permitted work. Otherwise they may not dare attempt anything and that is such a pity.
I know the people designing ESA probably think they want to keep all these decisions to themselves and that they will be kind and generous in theirjudgements but when you have paranoia you don't trust officials and thisseems like an official threat.
As carers who have often worked with mental health teams for years to getour carees stable and we really don't want them destabilised, stoppingmedication and going back through the revolving door because of this kind of stress and pressure.
-- Carer Watch A campaign group for carers across the UK run by independent, unpaid carers.
http://www.carerwatch/
