Rebecca's Story

Six years ago I suffered a breakdown and was diagnosed with depression
and social phobia (also known as social anxiety disorder). I was 17.
The most work I'd ever done was in the village corner shop - a few
hours every week for a whopping £3 an hour, and of course I never had
to pay tax or NI contributions because I was so young.

When I turned 18 I went quickly and rather trivally onto Incapacity
Benefit. I remember going to have a quite hideous interview in a
really unwelcoming building - at the time I was pretty much housebound
and only because I was driven there by my mum was I actually able to
go. Still, I got the benefits and received them until I went to
university a year later. Because of the benefits I was able to get
some private CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) which helped me to
overcome my daily panic attacks: but I was far from better; the
treatment I'd had was a temporary solution to a problem that ran much
deeper than just my panic.

University went by, and I racked up around £25,000 of debt along with
most other students. I ended up oweing my parents a good few thousand
pounds that they refuse to allow me to even try and pay back. Because
I was a student, I couldn't receive benefits, even though my health
deteriorated to the point of being placed on suicide watch and under
the care of a psychiatrist. It's possible that I could have been able
to get some disability allowance from my university, but I was never
offered it and wasn't in a state to be thinking about going through
what would have undoubtedly been a long investigation into some help
that wouldn't come to much.

When I left university, and finally started to get some proper
treatment from the NHS, I applied for the new form of incapacity
benefit
- ESA. Because it was three years since I'd been on Incapacity
Benefit, I wasn't eligible to go straight back on that and had to go
through the rigmarole of applying again. So I did the form over the
phone with a very helpful woman who was patient with me when I got
upset telling her why I couldn't work. I started receiving benefits
and a couple of months later I was summoned to Croydon for a work
capability assessment. My therapist told me that it would be fine;
there's so much evidence of my ill health (from both the hospital and
my GP) that it would be nigh on impossible for ATOS to turn me down.

Oh, how wrong she was.

For those of you that don't know about the assessment, here's how it
works: you have an interview with a health professional. It doesn't,
actually, have to be a qualified GP: or even someone who is actually
qualified to identify your illness. It's just someone employed by the
private healthcare corporation to tick boxes. To "pass" the test, i.e.
be judged unfit to work, you have to score 15 points. I scored 0. On
the day, I had three panic attacks; one of them right before entering
for the interview. I was in floods of tears during the interview,
couldn't lift my head up, and was shaking. The woman who interviewed
me was rude, impatient and harsh in her questioning.

Thanks to the help of my local branch of Mind, I now have a benefits
advisor who is helping me with my appeal and tribunal process. Amongs
the help he has given, he gave me a copy of the work capability
assessment for mental, cognitive and intellectual functions. He and I
went through this and discovered that I should in fact have scored
well over the 15 points required. These questions include such
statements as:

"Normal activities, for example, visiting new places or engaging in
social contact, are precluded for the majority of the time due to
overwhelming fear or anxiety" - that scores you 9 points.

"Is frequently unable to get to a specified place with which the
claimant is familiar without being accompanied by another person" -
that scores you 6 points.

"The claimant misinterprets verbal or non-verbal communication to the
extent of causing herself or himself significant distress on a
frequent basis" - this scores you 6 points...and by now, you get the
picture.

I appealed twice and eventually went up for a tribunal in March. They
have a target of seeing you for tribunal within 16-18 weeks: clearly,
it is far beyond that now. Not only have I continued to receive only
£50 a week, on multiple occasions - despite me managing to put in
regular sick notes - they have refused to pay me either on a seemingly
trivial basis or one that they did not make me aware of. For example,
I changed address; they refused to pay me for 6 weeks until I had
proof of address and a new sick note bearing my new address. In this
time I had to borrow money from my parents to avoid being thrown out
of my newly-awarded temporary
housing from the council, because it had meant that my housing benefit
application was declined.

I now receive full housing and council tax benefit (which will of
course change under the Condems' new plans, as I am only 23). However
my application for DLA was turned down on the basis that I failed my
ESA work capability assessment. For something that is meant to be
separate to ESA, this is pretty disgusting. With that money I could
offset the £10-£15 I have to spend on travel every week.

I have had to subsist on £50 a week - including whilst homeless - for
over a year now. That barely leaves me anything to eat, once I have
paid my utility bills, my phone and internet bills that allow me
contact with the outside world and my support network on those days
that I can't leave the flat, my transport bills which are high because
I have to go to hospital twice a week and cannot drive.

This, of course, is just the numbers. This is before we even get to
the stress and anxiety that my struggle with the DWP, with the
tribunals service, with the council has caused me. Not only do I
constantly worry about money, but I am dogged by one single repeating
thought: "Maybe I'm not ill after all. Maybe I am just lazy, benefit
scrounging scum. I've never made a NI contribution in my life. I don't
deserve this. I'm leeching off people who are better than me because
they get off their arses."

I shouldn't have to feel these things about myself. I shouldn't have
to struggle on and try desperately to scrabble together food. It
shouldn't make me burst into tears when, like this week, my boyfriend
doesn't just bring over dinner for the two of us, but enough food for
me for a week. I shouldn't be sacrificing my health, and more
importantly my chances at getting better, because I can't afford to
reach out to the support networks that I so badly need.

Yet, I do. And the reason that I've written all of this up is that I
know for certain that I am not the only one, and I want other people
to know that too; because if you're not the only one then chances are
you're not making it all up, you're not lying to yourself, and just
because your disability isn't immediately visible doesn't mean that it
isn't there every moment of every day.