The immoral reality of the DLA assessments.

Having a disability assessment is a very personal situation, you invite a person into your home, most of the time you don’t want them there and then you have to open up to a complete stranger very quickly, disclose your most personal in-depth medical situation to that complete stranger so they can record it onto a piece of paper that could potentially change your life or put you in poverty.

The whole process is very impersonal and the persons you are opening up to has no background, no essence of what you are feeling, what you have been through and the reason why you are in that situation.

Peoples disabilities vary from day to day like myself I have something called Cauda equina syndrome, I have good days, I have bad days, I have days where I can’t get out of bed, there are days when I need a carer and there are days when I’m able to do a lot of things myself, this cannot be assessed for my care or financial needs within an hour and a half of sitting down with a complete stranger.

I worked for adult social care for several years and have done thousands of assessments for people who need care from people with learning disabilities, to those with mental health issues and physical disabilities and I would have classed myself as an expert but until my injury and becoming disabled I can safely say that I knew nothing about the world of disability and I was qualified in this area.

No person should be assessed in this country within an hour and a half and a person should not be able to determine how much income you’re going to receive within an hour and a half.

Under the Conservative government we have seen massive cuts to disability services, their cars are been taken away, people transferred from DLA to Personal Independence Independence payments however have seen their finances drop dramatically. People have committed suicide or become homeless as a direct result of these changes.

I’m fully aware there is an election going on and this is not a political post. I cannot see for the life of me that I’m going to vote Conservative because of the damage they have done to the disabled community.

The only way a service like this can be fully explored is if you sit down with the your GP as they have been looking after me for years. This would be a better and more personal response than just getting a letter from the GP confirming the persons diagnosis. What would also be helpful is having experience of what it’s like to live with a disability yourself whether it’s a social experiment of sitting in a wheelchair for a week or have more people do disability assessments who are disabled as the only person who can tell if that person needs assistance is a person with the same disability or someone in a similar situation.

The current system which clearly isn’t working makes a disabled person poorer, a disabled person hungrier and gives them a poor quality of life at a time when compassion should be shown to everyone with either a learning disability, mental health issue or physical disability and trying to improve the quality of life rather than distorting it by capping or taking away their only income.