North of Scotland Association of Social Work Conference.
Highland Council chambers 2014
Poverty and benefits
(This talk given a good few years ago, about the impact of welfare reform, still seems relevant today. Some of the issues such as ATOS are slightly out of date, and Covid has had a huge impact in ways I am not as connected with as I would like to be and of course, we now have our own Social Security Department in Scotland, but I would love your thoughts on it. I have an article coming out in a magazine on Sick Leave in the next few weeks, a slightly different and more up to date take on the same subject. Do look out for it. I will post a link to it when it appears.)
Hello
Many thanks for asking members of HUG to speak at your conference.
I have to start off explaining what HUG is.
We are a group of people in the Highlands with experience of mental illness. We meet together to talk and share and laugh and talk some more and generally change the world. We challenge stigma, we write reports, we appear in the media, we create art works and generally speak out about anything from medication to employment to recovery. All in all we are a voice for people who are not used to having a voice and are even less used to being listened to.
And now for my apology. I had not intended to say much today but now I am.
The idea for this session was to get a whole series of our members to come and speak about their experience of the benefits system and of living on a low income and until a few days ago that was exactly what we would have done.
But over the last week people have got ill; have reconsidered, have felt a wee sense of shame, have found the burden of illness far too much to bear and much too much to bear on top of giving talks at conferences like this and so now you have me; sort of filling a space; a wonderful talk from one of our members in Skye, which one of us will read out and two fantastic presentations from Lesley and Mags.
I therefore hope that you have lots of questions for us or that there is a coffee break looming soon after we finish.
But it is interesting to me, this subject, and the fact that we ran out of speakers.
When we talk of poverty and mental illness; we talk of so many things but most of all we tend to talk of illness and benefits and also the shame and stigma of both.
I catch myself sometimes; I catch myself in that yawning prejudice and I wonder if any of you are subject to it too.
I have a diagnosis of schizophrenia and am detained under a compulsory treatment order and yet I have worked full time for all the years I have been diagnosed and never exceeded the sick time I am allocated.
I am proud of the fact that I work; I am proud of the fact that I do something useful. I am very pleased that I have an income. I glow that there is a certain status attached to my position.
And sometimes out of that pride and arrogance I look at some of our members and think to myself , surely you could work? It gnaws away at me and it is only when I see the very same people stolen to a dark, dark, place indeed that I realise just how much we ask of people with a mental illness and just how easy it is to be caught by layers of judgement and ignorance.
It is so easy when the people you associate with are articulate and able to be silly and laugh, are able to influence and reason and to busily make things better for other people. It is easy to mistake their capability and to forget that always there is that edge that gap of confidence and stability; that a few nights lost sleep, a break from medication, a slight or a doubt, can plunge these capable, wonderful people into the most awful abyss where, not only would employment be ridiculous, but so would attending a medical or filling in a benefits form.
It is at those times that I look back many years ago to when I was on benefits and yet not considered ill at that time and I remember the impossibility of work in those days. I lived a delicate life of drink and bad food. I lived a life of uncertainty and loneliness. I lived a life where night was more common than day and where confidence was a word I didn’t understand. A life where motivation was absent and where routine and gaining skills was incomprehensible.
In those days coping was a very fragile veneer and the idea that I could seek work or manage work a complete impossibility. I am glad I went through that time so many years ago and I am glad that people close to me kept on telling me off for being such a scrounger because it helps me understand what so many of our members must feel more intensely and more powerfully every day.
And it is so easy when I live a life of relative ease amongst accepting and tolerant people to become blind to the stigma around all of this. I do not understand how so many of our members lie about not working when meeting strangers and yet it is so obvious and also so complicated.
You will all be familiar with the media scourge around people who are seen as scroungers and frauds; the stuff our members see every day on the television and who know it is themselves that are being referred to.
When you have a mental illness; the sense of shame and failure comes as a given; the sense that you are an unnecessary burden on the NHS and the State an automatic feature of life and, so, these media hunts easily confirm all the worst fears our members have about themselves.
When I first started talking about this conference, some months ago, it was in the context that the impact of welfare reform was increasingly damaging the health and wellbeing of your clients and that in that context there is maybe, within your duty of care; the need to challenge what is being done to your clients; a need to highlight the damage welfare reform causes; to mourn the people it drives to despair and suicide.
In Hug it was way back with the last Labour government that we became concerned about the impact of changes to the welfare system on our members and since then it has only got worse. There doesn’t seem to be a credible political party left that doesn’t say we need a fundamental reform of the system.
And those words. I hate that all this rhetoric is about the fact that employment is ‘Good for us’; that most of us want to work and those that don’t, need coached into it.
In some ways those words are true – ask any of our members if they would like to work and they are likely to say ‘Yes’, but ask the next question as to whether they are capable of working and they are likely to say ‘No.’
Ask the next question about what they would do if they got work and they will, if they are being polite mention the difficulty of getting into work; they will mention discrimination and smile a wee bit awkwardly when you say that is illegal, and then, if they are being very open, they will talk about the impossibility of staying in work when such things as reasonable adjustment in the workplace are still a mystery to most people, and that staying in work can become impossible when the stress they encounter there makes them more and more vulnerable and yet at the same time because they are in work, less and less supported by the mental health teams.
To me the wrong questions are being asked and the wrong solutions being found.
For many people work is all they want and recompense for that is all they require but for many of us what we need and want is to be able to contribute and to feel that that contribution is valued.
Every one of us contributes in some way; everyone gains through having their contribution acknowledged.
Perhaps we could look at our world slightly differently; perhaps we could acknowledge that many people cannot and never will work but that they can contribute. They can give value and be valued.
Maybe we should not patronise those that change the world through their voluntary work. Maybe we shouldn’t dismiss the efforts of parents and carers and of people who just brighten other people’s day.
Maybe we should enhance and protect that form of contribution. Maybe we should, instead of summoning people to assessment after assessment, help them to make the most of the talents they have and find ways of helping them use these without feeling that by giving and doing they put their income at risk.
In Hug our members have time and again said that welfare reform is the key issue they face; everything from the debacle of ATOS, to the injustice of the bedroom tax, to the growing chaos of the transfer to PIP and Universal Credit.
The fear of what will happen drives people to illness; the worry of tribunals and reviews can humiliate and terrify and make for thoughts of suicide.
In HUG we speak out about these things; we talk of the value of the various money advice agencies; in particular the CAB network. We speak to councillors and other politicians about what we go through. We respond to consultations and we appear in the media to bear witness of the impact of a new austerity that targets the disabled as the most needing to change and the mentally ill as a group within the disabled as a group most likely to need taken off of benefits.
And it really hurts our members; benefits can be humiliating to receive and living on a tiny income hugely difficult but having that tiny income subject to sudden change or review has an awful impact on so many people.
I am going to finish now.
Next week I am giving a speech on my recovery journey and my recovery journey is not all about self management or empowerment or person centred services. My recovery journey is in having friends; is in making meals for those friends. Is being in love and being able to visit my love. Is being able to go on writing courses and being able to eat well, being able drive when I want to and being able to buy wee luxuries even if only from charity shops.
Now recovery is about much more than just money but the fact that I have enough money to do the things that bring me joy and contentment must help with my recovery.
If I were on benefits having to justify myself every day, my journey would be that bit more rocky and unpleasant.
I will now pass on to Mags who will tell you something of her story.
You can find out more about HUG (action for mental health) at https://www.spiritadvocacy.org.uk/hug
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