Hi everyone
my Statutory Sick Pay from work will end mid October. I have been told that Incapacity Benefit is being replaced by Employment Support Allowance. The only trouble is no-one seems to know anything about it including Jobcentre plus. The guy I spoke to didn’t even know whether it was means tested or not! Can anyone out ther offer any help??
XXX
Hi Woolly,
I think you should be OK and fit into the Incapacity Benefit scheme rather than new ESA scheme as this is due to start on 27 October 2008. Just make sure your application is registered before that date. At some point all the existing IB claimants will be reassessed over a long future period with a new set of qualifying rules and then either receive ESA or be rejected for this type of benefit. I’m really surprise that the Jobcentre plus couldn’t clarify this for you.
Hope that helps
Roberta
xx
Employment Support Allowance is replacing Incapacity Benefit & Income Support for those with a disability or illness. It is a single allowance consisting of contributory related and income related elements, combined with a work focused support regime for those who can benefit from work and improved support for those less likely to be able to work - at least that’s what the letter I got from the DWP syays !!
copied this bit from the job centre website: (jobcentreplus.gov.uk/JCP/Customers/WorkingAgeBenefits/Dev_015412.xml.html)
It has been designed to help you achieve your full potential, if you have an illness or a disability, and help you to gain independence from benefits. It does so by focusing on your abilities and supports your return to work.
Central to the allowance is a new medical assessment, which looks at what you can do, and not just what you can’t do. All new customers will have to take this test. For most people this will include an interview with a trained doctor or nurse, which will assess how your condition affects what you are able to do. It will also explore what could be done to help you get back to work, for example if you need treatment, or adjustments at your workplace to help you cope better. People with the most severe levels of disability will not need a face to face interview, their entitlement to benefit will be decided on the basis of paper evidence, for example from their GP or someone in the community who is involved in looking after them.
Most people claiming Employment and Support Allowance will be expected to take reasonable steps to help prepare for work. To do this, Jobcentre Plus will build on the successful Pathways to Work scheme.
If you have a severe illness or disability, you will not be expected to actively prepare for work. However, you will be able to volunteer for support if you do want to return to work.
If you are currently receiving Incapacity Benefit or Income Support due to an illness or disability, you will continue to receive your existing benefits, so long as you continue to satisfy the entitlement conditions. Employment and Support Allowance will initially be for new customers only. However, you will be fully eligible for the work-focused help which will be available with Employment and Support Allowance and can access this on a voluntary basis.
The DWP do have a bit about it on their website dwp.gov.uk/esa/ - but it’s not too helpful!!
hope this helps a bit.
Margaret x
Hi Margaret,
Brilliant summary of the new employment support allowance. I found your post really helpful. I think you should get a job as a welfare rights officer, working for Breastcancercare!
Hope you’re keeping ok.
Wendy x
Personally, I think it’s just something that’s been brought in to try and make the PM look as if he’s doing something about serial benefit chasers, the ones who claim benefits as a career move because they don’t really want to work. When I was ill I got nothing because I had taken 3 months out to look after my dad until he went to a nursing home. The Jobcentre mucked up my carers benefit and I didn’t pay NI, so I couldn’t get IB. I had worked since 1977 and the last time I claimed anything was 1991 when I was made redundant from my job.
A very unfair system if you ask me.
I’m not a big supporter of the govt and their various schemes to make the stats look better - but this is one area where I do think they have got it right.
Unfortunately too many people are claiming sickness related benefits because they have been signed unfit by their GP to do their job. However, this doesn’t always mean that they are unfit to do ANY job - this is what the personal capability test is about - could you do some kind of work, not necessarily the kind of work you were doing before.
My area is a Pathways to Work area - another scheme designed to help people to come off benefits. I have to say my local job centre have been nothing but helpful. When I was first called in to see them, when I transferred from SSP to IB I was expecting all sorts of nonsense about why I wasn’t working… but they have been marvellous. I have been put in touch with the local WorkAble office - who help you with all manner of job seeking stuff. I was a HR Manager prior to diagnosis so didn’t feel like I needed help - but WorkAble even offer a financial grant of up £200 to cover the period between benefits stopping and your first pay packet, so I signed up just for that element lol!
As long as you are in a Pathways to Work area there are also other benefits available on returning to work, such as a tax free top up of £40 per week for the first year, work mentoring, job coaching and in my area even free massage and gym membership!! Naturally there are conditions attached to most of the benefits - I think with the £40 allowance you must be working 16 hours a week or more and earning less than £15k per year - but that isn’t unreasonable I don’t think.
Having just undergone a personal capability assessment, I was informed that they were satisfied I was ill, and that I wouldn’t have to submit any further sicknotes till August 2009, when I would be re-assessed - ironically I received this letter the day after I had posted them a letter telling them I had been signed off the sick and was returning to work haha
Margaret
I decided to become self employed and work with my OH in his business as I really didn’t want to have to deal with the DWP or the local Jobcentre after my experience. Firstly, the Jobcentre told me I had to claim DLA which the DWP said was wrong and I didn’t get it anyway. When I applied for IB my claim forms went to 5 different offices between Preston and Glasgow including my 2 local Jobcentres and I had to track the application down. When I eventually got it in Glasgow I was told a decision had been made 3 weeks previously that I wasn’t entitled to anything, but nobody had bothered to send me a letter!
I also had a man from the DWP in Edinburgh tell me over the phone that “breast cancer is no excuse for trying to access the benefits system” followed by “I do not wish to discuss your medical history”. Absolutely shocking conduct if you ask me.
Ironically, we go to a lot of business things and constantly get Jobcentre people asking us if we are looking to take on staff!
My employer offered me 6 months full pay (I have worked part time 20 hrs/week for them for 8 years). They said I would then go onto SSP. When ringing to tell the Working Tax Credit office that my youngest was starting 6th form, ie a ‘young person’ and no longer a ‘child’, they asked about my employment status and said that I would have been getting SSP as the bulk of the payment from my employer, and it would stop after 28 weeks - two weeks hence. He said “WTC is to help working people, if you’re on the sick you’re not working, are you, so you’re not entitled”. I thought his words were quite accusatory - the term ‘on the sick’ seems to imply the serial benefit scroungers. Employer checked with their tax office and confirmed I had been getting SSP from the fourth day of my absence, plus a top-up to my usual pay, and it would all stop at the end of September.
They sent details about IB, I rang Jobcentre Plus on 24 Sept and went through a 40 minute interrogation. They sent the follow-up pack to the wrong address and 3 weeks later I have just got a duplicate, saying it has to be taken to the local Jobcentre by 24 October. I am in a complete panic, unused to the benefit system, scared that my ex’s voluntary and unwritten maintenance will mean I won’t qualify for anything, and actually really frightened about going in with the other ‘scroungers’ to have to beg for some help to get through the winter. I’ve just finished chemo, am waiting for rads, look reasonably ok, just overweight and tired to an onlooker, and I am capable of walking in there unaided. Why do they make it so intimidating? I used to think I could cope with forms but this pack has left me so wobbly and upset I’m not sure I’ll get it in before the deadline anyway.
Do you have a Maggies centre near you? They have benefits advisors who may be able to help you.
Good luck,
Dot
x
In some areas of the country Macmillan and CAB have got together to help patients with a diagnosis of cancer re entitlement to benefits. This is being rolled out in CAB offices but I know, at the moment, it’s not countrywide but I think they’re hoping that it will be.
I emailed the Macmillan website on their contact form and an adviser phoned me up. It was via Macmillan that I found out my OH could try to get WTC as he was self employed in a start up business, they even sent us the forms. We were refused on the first attempt as you have to be very careful how you fill the forms in. However, on the second attempt we were awarded £96 a week which was an absolute Godsend as it covered out council tax, gas and electricity payments. OH was working hard to establish himself for very little income and we were so grateful to Macmillan.
The Jobcentre and the DWP don’t tell you the half of it and that’s what makes things so stressful - I got fed up being given the wrong info as well.
Most CABs have benefit check computer programs that can work out roughly what benefits you may be entitled to. Jobcentre staff are told NOT to offer advice. CAB advisers can usually get some advice from DWP - but we, ordinary mortals, can’t get it!
I can accept the fact Jobcentre staff are not there to give advice. However, I find it unacceptable to be given the wrong information by 3 or 4 different members of staff and even more unacceptable to be told by a DWP person that “having breast cancer is not an excuse for trying to access the benefits system” given that I had paid into the system since 1977 and had taken little or nothing back out.
When I see people who are getting benefits without having ever worked it just makes me furious, given that people with cancer who have worked hard have to jump through hoops.
Hi everyone.
Just to say I recieved Incapacity benefit once I went onto half pay without much hassle. I recieved full pay fo 6 months. A friend tried to get it after she went onto no pay after 3 months and was told that she had had to be off sick 6 months before being eligble. Once you get it it effects your tax code considerably. It is not means tested but if you recieve a pension the amount is reduced. I then went back to work for 2 years before being diagnosed with secondries and claimed again when I went onto half pay.
Maddison
Maddison - your friend was given the wrong information - unless he/she was getting SMP from his/her employer.
I just hope that you reported the idiot who was so rude to you about bc. But if you didn’t then perhaps a doll to stick pins in might help. I know that they are very understaffed and undertrained( I have a friend who works at jc+) but that is not an excuse for his appalling attitude. Hope everything goes well for you.