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Dispute-with-DWP-and-MAXIMUS-about-ESA50

Page history last edited by Dalinian 5 years, 10 months ago

 

 

My Dispute with the DWP/MAXIMUS Nexus

Regarding Their THIRD 'Blank ESA50 Form'-Based Austerity Attack Attempt

28 Jan 2018


◀ Previous anti-austerity-attack victory: Anti-WCA Victory #2 & #3

▶ Next anti-austerity-attack victory: Anti-WCA Victory #4

🔽 This anti-austerity-attack victory: Anti-ESA50 Victory #3 (see also: Anti-ESA50 Victory #2)

 


[Update]

Victory Confirmation:

All Six Austerity Attacks Successfully Repulsed

 

Since my Anti-ESA50 #3 mailshot was delivered to MAXIMUS on 31 Jan 2018, nothing more has been heard from them – and my 'Employment and Support Allowance - Support Group' social security payments have continued uninterrupted as before, completely unperturbed by the DWP/MAXIMUS nexus' latest failed austerity attack attempt, thereby bringing my victory tallies up to: Anti-ESA50 Victories = 3, Anti-WCA Victories = 3.

 


Preface

 

This is my January 2018 response to the DWP/MAXIMUS nexus, on the occasion of my returning to them a third blank ESA50 form – ie: the initial application form for the 'Employment and Support Allowance' social security benefit for UK citizens with disabilities, which benefit I've been regularly receiving since February 2012, when I was correctly allocated by the DWP to their 'Employment and Support Allowance - Support Group', predicated upon my successfully completed ESA50 form of December 2011.

 

Since this isn't my first rodeo, I'm recycling and repurposing some the material I produced when rebuffing my first two 'Blank ESA50 Form' austerity attacks, via email, in 2012 and 2016.

 


TABLE OF CONTENTS

 


 


 

ESA50 Form Duplication Exercise: Declined (For The Third Time)

 

 

People with disabilities getting militant about death prevention - not always the easy touch hoped for by the Tories, Atos, and MAXIMUS

 

 

FROM

My Name: Tim Jones

My Address: [REDACTED], Tyers Street, London SE11 5HB

 

TO

Recipient: MAXIMUS Health and Human Services Ltd., variously trading as:

  • the 'Centre for Health and Disability Assessments' (CHDA); and
  • the 'Health Assessment Advisory Service' (HAAS).

Distribution: friends and supporters (at this stage; should it become necessary, I reserve the right to copy in my GP, MP, disability rights advocate, solicitor, barrister, etc., &c.).

 

RE

Your Letter - Title: "Capability for Work Questionnaire", ESA51 02/15

Your Letter - Date: 22 January 2018

Your Letter - Enclosures: blank DWP JCP ESA50 form, return envelope

Your Reference: [My NI Number, REDACTED]

 

 

Dear MAXIMUS Employee,

 

MAXIMUS, Inc., in the guise the 'Health Assessment Advisory Service' and the 'Centre for Health and Disability Assessments', appears to have sent me yet another blank DWP JCP ESA50 form to complete, and has also suggested that your corporation may invite me to attend a Work Capability Assessment (WCA). I set out below why I decline the former (for the third time), and believe the latter to be in error.

 

 

CASE HISTORY

Since early 2012, the DWP has assigned me to the 'Employment and Support Allowance - Support Group' (ESA-SG), because of my incapacity to work due to my severe mental illness and hidden disability: type II bipolar affective disorder (ICD-10 – F31.4 » http://apps.who.int/classifications/icd10/browse/2016/en#/F31.4 ).

 

In the process of transferring from Income Support (in lieu of Incapacity Benefit) to Employment and Support Allowance (ESA), in December 2011 I completed my first (and only) ESA50 form – at considerable downstream cost to my mental health and personal well-being, in that the stress and anxiety provoked by the ESA50 form-filling process precipitated a nasty mood state crash into a consequent six-month long episode of severe clinical depression. However, on the basis of my ESA50 form submission and its supporting documentation, a DWP decision maker correctly assigned me to the ESA-SG in February 2012.

 

 

POLITICAL CONTEXT

It is now well known and documented that both the 2010-2015 Tory/LibDem coalition government and the current Tory government have employed private "health services" corporations to squeeze people with disabilities till the pips squeak, in an unethical and immoral attempt to deprive us of the disability benefits to which we are entitled, with at least three ends in mind:

  • to enrich their friends in the private "health services" industry with lucrative outsourcing contracts;
  • to boost the profitability of UK PLC, at the expense of impoverishing the lives of UK citizens with disabilities, as part of a wider rightwing ideological austerity program; and
  • to implement their oft used ruling class divide-&-rule tactic, by trying to provoke social conflict between so-called "strivers" and "scroungers / skivers / shirkers", as ably assisted by an unending barrage of so-called "poverty porn" attacks in mainstream media.

 

Indeed, the former Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Iain Duncan Smith cited the intolerable unfairness of still further Tory austerity policy cuts to disability benefits in the 2016 budget as his reason for resigning his ministerial position.

 

Supporter Morgan Freeman, expressing a commonly held opinion regarding state-funded employees who violate the human rights of people with disabilities

 

The last time a European rightwing political party used the national state apparatus to systematically persecute and eradicate citizens with disabilities, their despicable eugenic atrocities were curtailed by an international intervention, known today as World War II. In their 'Never Again!' determination, our victorious anti-Nazi forebears established the United Nations and a Universal Human Rights framework, in order to try to prevent a recurrence of such evil-doing. However, the Tories' C21 despicable eugenic atrocities have created the necessity for another international intervention, this time by the United Nations itself.

 

The onslaught of state-sponsored austerity attacks on UK citizens with disabilities has prompted a world first: an in-depth and on-going United Nations human rights investigation, which has characterised the Tories' austerity attack policies as:

  • grave and systematic violations” of the human rights of the UK's most vulnerable citizens [1]; and
  • a “human catastrophe” for UK citizens with disabilities – according to Theresia Degener, who leads the UN's Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. [2]

 

Furthermore, your predecessor corporation in operating the DWP's ESA contract, Atos Healthcare, became such a lightning rod of national contempt and derision – as provoked by their appallingly inhumane treatment of vulnerable social security claimants – that they threw in the towel in February 2015, opening the door to MAXIMUS to take up the Tory human rights violations cudgels where they left off.

 

Just to add insult to injury, in her January 2018 cabinet reshuffle, Tory Prime Minister Theresa May promoted Esther McVey – aka Fester McVile among folk with disabilities – to Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, prompting headlines such as:

 

Rightly reviled for her shameful parliamentary record of consistently voting AGAINST the interests of the very people who rely on the DWP for social security support (as illustrated below), McVile's appointment as DWP Secretary obviously signals a renewed Tory vigour for perpetrating austerity attacks against the UK's most vulnerable citizens.  Not for nothing does our shadow chancellor John McDonnell characterise McVile as a "stain of inhumanity". [3]

 

One of many anti-McVile memes, produced in reaction to her appointment as DWP Secretary in January 2018

 

Against this politically inspired austerity assault on the dignity and rights of UK citizens with disabilities, it's been heartening to see that resistance is fertile, giving rise to organisations such as Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC » http://dpac.uk.net ), the Black Triangle Campaign (» http://blacktrianglecampaign.org ), and the Disability News Service (» http://www.disabilitynewsservice.com ) – among many others.

 

Under such conditions of sustained economic and ideological assault, the days of a government department (or their privateer hirelings) calling all the shots to a compliant and acquiescent citizenry are long gone – since only by asserting ourselves as freethinking autonomous claimants can we expect to avoid the pitfall traps laid out for us by government diktat, and reclaim our dignity and rights, as full citizens deserving of equality and respect.

 

 

FIVE PRIOR AUSTERITY ASSAULT FAILURES BY ATOS & MAXIMUS

Before quitting the DWP's ESA contract in disgrace, Atos made two failed attempts to put the squeeze on me, by:

  • sending me another blank ESA50 form to complete and return, a year after my original submission (in December 2012); and
  • inviting me to attend their notoriously discredited and infamous Work Capability Assessment (in June 2013).

 

On both occasions, I made it crystal clear that I would assertively rebuff such austerity attack attempts, and on both occasions the DWP/Atos nexus relented:

  • I did NOT need to collude in a pointless and wasteful annual ESA50 form duplication exercise; and
  • I ought NOT to be subjected to a WCA, in line with the standing DWP policy that recipients of ESA-SG are ineligible for the WCA.

 

Now MAXIMUS has proved itself to be learning impaired, in that it has apparently learned nothing whatsoever from the failures of its predecessor, since MAXIMUS has already made three prior failed attempts to put the squeeze on me, by:

  • sending me yet another blank ESA50 form to complete and return (in June 2016); and
  • twice inviting me to attend their notoriously discredited and infamous WCA (in January 2017).

 

On all three occasions, I yet again made it crystal clear that I would assertively rebuff all such austerity attack attempts, and on every occasion the DWP/MAXIMUS nexus relented:

  • I did NOT need to collude in a pointless and wasteful periodic ESA50 form duplication exercise; and
  • I ought NOT to be subjected to a WCA, in line with the standing DWP policy that recipients of ESA-SG are ineligible for the WCA.

 

One very important reason for my need to assertively rebuff such austerity attacks is my condition-specific elevated risk of suicide. Although the DWP know full well that many vulnerable people like myself have already been driven to take their own lives under the weight of DWP depredations on their rights to disability benefits [4], I am nevertheless resolved to do my level best not to join them in an early death – as illustrated below, in a part of my response to the invalid WCA invitations from MAXIMUS in January 2017.

 

Talking with the State about preventing my own suicide: 'The DWP/MAXIMUS WHEEL of TORTURE - A Kafkaesque Killing Joke'

(click on the image above to see a full size version)

 

 

ESA50 FORM DUPLICATION EXERCISE: DECLINED AS UNNECESSARY (FOR THE THIRD TIME)

Since all the reasons I declined to collude with Atos and MAXIMUS in a pointless and unnecessary ESA50 form duplication exercise are as valid today as they were in December 2012 and June 2016, I reproduce them now again for MAXIMUS, in expectation of the same result: that the DWP/MAXIMUS nexus accepts that for ESA-SG claimants with disability impairment conditions that are permanent, life-long, and incurable (such as my type II bipolar affective disorder), a repetitious and futile ESA50 duplication exercise benefits neither claimants nor the DWP/MAXIMUS nexus.

 

Subject: Re: Annual Form ESA50 Duplication Exercise

Date: 16 June 2016

 

Dear MAXIMUS Employee,

 

<sarcasm> “Thank you” for sending me SUCH a lovely summer present – a whole fresh blank ESA50 form to fill in – WOO-HOO! </sarcasm> I hope and trust that it has not escaped your attention that I did so already, in December 2011 – and I can tell you now, with 20/20 hindsight, that the stress and anxiety thus provoked in me by the DWP/Atos nexus in necessitating my transition from ‘Income Support in lieu of Incapacity Benefit’ to ‘Employment and Support Allowance – Support Group’ cost me very dearly indeed, by plunging me head first into a six-month long episode of severe clinical depression. Again, “thank you” to Atos.

 

I’m well aware that MAXIMUS are operating under an immoral contract to the Tory government, the purpose of which is to cut the “economic burden” imposed by vulnerable, disabled, and sick people on their paymaster’s bottom line – despite the fact that we bear no moral responsibility whatsoever for causing the permanent crisis in which their economic system now wallows. But please pay attention to the nature of my condition: type II bipolar affective disorder. Only 10 minutes or less of competent online research would be required to verify that this severe mental illness and hidden disability has the following characteristics: it is permanent, life-long, and incurable. And as ‘MAXIMUS Health and Human Services Ltd.’, this ought to be a well known fact within your organisation.

 

So there’s really no point at all in my filling in this fresh ESA50 form, since there have been ABSOLUTELY ZERO CHANGES since I filled in my first ESA50 in December 2011; and conversely, there is every point in my declining to do so, since completing this form first time round precipitated an exceptionally deep depressive episode. The logical corollary for MAXIMUS is that there really is no wiggle room in cases like mine – all the good and valid reasons why I was allocated to the ‘Employment and Support Allowance – Support Group’ still hold true, and will continue to hold true in perpetuity until either:

    1. I die; or
    2. a miracle cure for type II bipolar affective disorder becomes available.

 

Even with the huge potential advantages opened up by human genomics research, nevertheless the latest discoveries around epigenetics and the functionality of those stretches of our genome which were previously regarded as ‘junk DNA’ seem to me to indicate that the likelihood of my death preceding any miracle cure for type II bipolar affective disorder becoming available remains very high indeed. So on these grounds, I would expect to be in receipt of ‘Employment and Support Allowance – Support Group’ in perpetuity, without the need to endlessly repeat myself word-for-word in a repetitious form duplication exercise.

 

If MAXIMUS REALLY do require this fresh ESA50 form to be completed, then it will NOT be at the expense of my mental health: just take the form I submitted in December 2011 from your files, and copy it word-for-word, field-by-field, page-after-page, until all but the ‘Declaration’ signature and date fields on page 22 are blank; then send the thus precisely transcribed form to me, and I’ll sign-&-date the ‘Declaration’, and return the thus completed form to MAXIMUS.

 

Of course, a far more sensible approach would be to follow the example previously adopted by the DWP, before screwing over vulnerable, disabled, and sick people was out-sourced to Atos, and now to MAXIMUS. IIRC, the DWP categorised my award of ‘Income Support in lieu of Incapacity Benefit’ as ‘indefinite’, ie: I would continue to receive this benefit in perpetuity, predicated upon the nature of my condition which qualifies me to claim these benefits – permanent, life-long, and incurable. So, along with the medical and psychiatric sciences and professions, MAXIMUS could just accept that some conditions (such as type II bipolar affective disorder) really are permanent, life-long, and incurable – and therefore tag the files of folk with those conditions with something like ‘ESA Support Group in perpetuity – no followup required’. This really is the win-win solution, in which the advantages for both the folk so afflicted AND for MAXIMUS are obvious and apparent: we don’t need to endlessly repeat ourselves in a periodic form duplication exercise, and MAXIMUS get to cut their case administration overhead by not having to send out, receive back, and process the exact same data year after year.

 

My hope is that MAXIMUS are already sensibly expediting an ‘ESA Support Group in perpetuity – no followup required’ file tagging system, that my file will now be so tagged, and that that will be and end to this matter. If my hope falls short of the facts on the ground, then no doubt you’ll be sending me more bureaucratic administrivia* via snail mail or email in the near future.

 

Yours faithfully,

 

Tim Jones

 

* Administrivia: 

“Mindless bureaucratic tasks imposed on workers by management in order to crush the soul and prevent one from achieving anything useful or fulfilling.”

~ Urban Dictionary

 

 

CONCLUSION

For the sake of brevity, I'll omit all the reasons why it's invalid to suggest to ESA-SG claimants that they might attend a WCA (as detailed in 'Dispute with DWP and MAXIMUS about WCA'). Suffice it to say that the DWP/Atos/MAXIMUS nexus has accepted that I should NOT be invited attend a WCA, and I therefore expect no such further WCA invitations from MAXIMUS in the future.

 

Since I decline to collude in the “grave and systematic violations” of my human rights, as currently being perpetrated by Fester McVile, the DWP, and MAXIMUS, I have therefore returned your blank ESA50 form to Wolverhampton in the return envelope you provided, with an explanatory covering letter referencing this webpage message. I hope and trust that this matter is now concluded, and that I shall NOT be hearing from MAXIMUS again. However, should you feel the need to reply, my preference for communication is by exchange of email to:

"Tim Jones" <tim.dalinian.jones@googlemail.com>

 

Do please feel free to bring this message to the attention of appropriate personnel within the domains of CHDA, HAAS, MAXIMUS, and the DWP.

 

Yours faithfully,

 

Tim Jones

 


 

 


 

FOOTNOTES

 

Footnote [1] – Grave and Systematic Human Rights Violations

“Grave and systematic violations” of the human rights of the UK's most vulnerable citizens – for example, see:

● 'British government systematically violating the rights of the disabled, UN inquiry warns'

– "The Government’s welfare reforms and austerity policies have led to “grave and systematic violations” of disabled people’s rights, an inquiry by the United Nations found."

» http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/un-report-disability-disabled-rights-violating-austerity-welfare-reform-esa-pip-a7404956.html

 

 


Footnote [2] – Human Catastrophe

A “human catastrophe” for UK citizens with disabilities – for example, see:

● 'Government cuts have caused 'human catastrophe' for disabled, UN committee says'

– "Government welfare cuts have created a “human catastrophe” for disabled people in the UK, the chairwoman of an influential United Nations committee has said.Theresia Degener, who leads the UN's Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), said the UK Government has “totally neglected” disabled people.Ministers are also accused of misleading the public about the impact of Government policies by refusing to answer questions and using statistics in an unclear way."

» http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/government-spending-cuts-human-catastrophe-un-committee-rights-persons-with-disabilities-disabled-a7911556.html

 

 


Footnote [3] – Fester “Stain of Inhumanity” McVile

Our shadow chancellor John McDonnell characterises Fester McVile as a "stain of inhumanity" – for example, see:

● 'McDonnell defends calling Tory MP 'stain of inhumanity' '

– "John McDonnell has defended describing a Conservative MP as a “stain of inhumanity” by arguing that it is better if politicians are honest about the way they feel. The shadow chancellor conceded “I was angry” when he made the comments in the Commons about Esther McVey in March last year, before she lost her Wirral West seat to Labour."

» https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/sep/25/mcdonnell-defends-calling-female-mp-stain-of-inhumanity-esther-mcvey

 

 


Footnote [4] – DWP-Induced Claimant Suicides

The DWP know full well that many vulnerable people like myself have already been driven to take their own lives under the weight of DWP depredations on their rights to benefits – for example, see:

● 'Suicides of benefit claimants reveal DWP flaws, says inquiry'

– "A series of secret internal inquiries into the deaths of people claiming social security reveal that ministers were repeatedly warned of shortcomings in the treatment of vulnerable claimants facing potentially traumatic cuts to their benefits entitlements."

» https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/may/13/suicides-of-benefit-claimants-reveal-dwp-flaws-says-inquiry

 

 


Postscript: Timeline


01 Feb 2018 to Present – Anti-ESA50 Victory #3

  • Nothing more has been heard from the DWP/MAXIMUS nexus – and my ESA-SG social security payments have continued uninterrupted as before, completely unperturbed by the their latest failed austerity attack attempt, thereby bringing my anti-austerity-attack victory tallies up to: Anti-ESA50 Victories = 3, Anti-WCA Victories = 3.

31 Jan 2018 – 'Blank ESA50 Form #3' Mailshot: Delivered to MAXIMUS

 

30 Jan 2018 – 'Blank ESA50 Form #3' Mailshot: Dispatched to MAXIMUS

  • I posted my 'Blank ESA50 Form #3' mailshot back to MAXIMUS in the return envelope they provided, via the Royal Mail's Signed For 1st Class service.
    • The last time MAXIMUS tried and failed in this form of austerity attack (in June 2016), three weeks after I returned my Blank ESA50 Form #2 to them, a snotty follow-up letter arrived from MAXIMUS, insisting that I needed to urgently return my completed ESA50 Form to them - to which I responded with a witheringly scathing message, 'A Woeful Litany of Inadequacies & Failures' (and thereafter I heard nothing more from them).
    • So although the MAXIMUS supplied return envelope was pre-paid, I chose instead to use Royal Mail's Signed For 1st Class service, in order to attain a verified proof-of-delivery, against the contingency that MAXIMUS might try to deny its delivery. 
    • Proof of Dispatch
      • Reference number: GK558585123GB
      • Proof of posting receipt:
      •  
    • Contents:
      • (1) My Covering Letter, referencing this webpage's explanatory message to MAXIMUS:
        •  
        •  
        •  
      • (2) Blank ESA50 Form #3 (as Illustrated below) 
      • (3) "Capability for Work Questionnaire" Letter, pp2, ESA51 02/15  (as Illustrated below)

 

26-29 Jan 2018 – Rebuffing My 'Blank ESA50 Form #3' Austerity Attack

  • I prepare my response to this tediously repetitious austerity attack:
    1. drafting my 'ESA50 Form Duplication Exercise: Declined (For The Third Time)' message to MAXIMUS;
    2. uploading this message to this 'Dispute-with-DWP-and-MAXIMUS-about-ESA50' webpage;
    3. drafting and writing out a covering letter, pointing to the explanatory message on this webpage, to accompany my Blank ESA50 Form #3 on its return to MAXIMUS, as blank as when it was delivered.

 

25 Jan 2018 – Discovering My 'Blank ESA50 Form #3' Austerity Attack

  • Letter from MAXIMUS delivered to my home; contents:
    1. "Capability for Work Questionnaire" Letter, pp2, ESA51 02/15:
      •  
      •  
    2. Blank DWP JCP ESA50 Form, pp24 (my Blank ESA50 Form #3):
      •  
    3. Return Envelope:
      •  

 

22 Jan 2018 – MAXIMUS Launches My 'Blank ESA50 Form #3' Austerity Attack

  • MAXIMUS, Inc., in the guise the 'Health Assessment Advisory Service' and the 'Centre for Health and Disability Assessments', appears to have printed out my third "Capability for Work Questionnaire" (ESA51 02/15) letter, and dispatched it with my Blank ESA50 Form #3.

 

08 Jan 2018 – A "Stain of Inhumanity" Appointed as DWP Secretary

  • Fester "Stain of Inhumanity" McVile appointed as DWP Secretary. 
  • The temporal proximity of her appointment to the 'Blank ESA50 Form #3' austerity attack documented on this webpage may only be coincidental.

 

 

 

 

 

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