Re-consideration - what a joke!

Yes, my reconsideration has come through and, unsurprisingly, I have been denied. Why? because iot seems that reconsiderations can only be granted in cases of clerical error or discrepency, not for medical error. So now I move on to the appeal process and this is where the system is even more rigged.

Firstly, the appeal can take up to 3 months to sort out, and sometimes longer. Meantime the £105 a week I was on will be slashed to £51 a week. Why? because I don't qualify for the top rate of Income Support (£64 a week) because I'm appealing. Yes folks, you get penalised for appealing against a decision. And somehow, this is considered fair by the powers that be.

Secondly, I have to prove I'm ill. Now this seems a no-brainer but its more complex. My doctor knows I am ill, and has the medical records to prove it. She has treated me for years. The assessor who has ruined my life for the moment met me for no more than 30, maybe 45 minutes at most and has decided (I beleive deliberately) to mark me as fit for work, over-riding my doctor. Now at an appeal, one would think in a civilised society that the doctor who has actually treated you and knows you would carry the greater weight in terms of evidence, but the reverse is true. the assessor has the advantage.

Fathom that for a moment. An assessor hears something or for some other reason takes a dislike to you, or is under orders from higher than they are to cull the herd. They can write up a report which is negative without sounding biased (intelligent people as they are) and this report, made under less than adequate circumstances in a short interview, is given more weight than your own doctor. The fix is in, the game is rigged and rigged entirely against the people who need help most.

I asked for the guidelines that the assessors must adhere to in order to reach decisions, so that I cna see for myself how a person of "sound mind and judgement" might have made an error at my medical assessment, and guess what? I'm not allowed those guidelines. Why? Could it be because a previous DWP employee told me that there are no guidelines, that assessors make completely arbitrary, subjective judgements, that are entirely based on opinion and their interpretation, rather than actual facts. opinions made in short time rather than an actual proper length of time. If an assessor excludes information, deliberately or otherwise, they are not accountable as you have to prove they did it deliberately which is almost impossible.

But what is worse, and what upsets me more than anything else, is that because of this I will not now get my daughter in the Summer. I have not seen my daughter since December 2008 and was looking forward to not only seeing her in the Summer when she came down, but in surprising her for her birthday. None of these can now happen. To say I am heartbroken is an understatement. There is already consderible distance between my daughter and I due to geography which ahs led to a distance in our relationship as I am pretty much just a voice on a phone now. It was a chance to build fences and bridges between us and also with my family, who have not seen her since Xmas 2007. We are all but strangers to her now. This news has put another nail in the coffin of my parenting and it is painful beyond words.

Right now I hate the world.