UPDATE:
MOTION CARRIED UNANIMOUSLY!
Tomorrow is a very big day for us in the grassroots disability rights movement.
Our General Practitioners who are gathered in Liverpool for the annual United Kingdom Local Medical Committees Conference (twitter #lmclive hashtag) will be voting on the following motion which was originally put forward by Black Triangle Campaign Member and Medical Adviser Dr. Stephen Carty.
The motion is going to be debated and voted upon by UK Conference tomorrow morning, Wednesday 23rd May 2012, at 11.40 a.m.
The motion was carried almost unanimously (one vote against and a handful of abstentions) at the Scottish LMCs Conference two months ago at Clydebank.
The motion has been submitted to the UKLMC by the Scottish Conference and Hampshire & Isle of Wight LMC:
103 HAMPSHIRE AND ISLE OF WIGHT:
That conference, in respect of work capability assessments (WCA) as performed by ATOS Healthcare, believes that the:
(i) inadequate computer based assessments that are used have little regard to the nature or complexity of the needs of long term sick and disabled persons
(ii) WCA should end with immediate effect and be replaced with a rigorous and safe system that does not cause avoidable harm to some of the weakest and most vulnerable in society.
103a SCOTTISH CONFERENCE OF LMCs: That conference, in respect of work capability assessments (WCA) as performed by ATOS Healthcare, believes that:
(i) the inadequate computer based assessments that are used have little regard to the nature or complexity of the needs of long term sick and disabled persons
(ii) the WCA should end with immediate effect and be replaced with a rigorous and safe system that does not cause avoidable harm to some of the weakest and most vulnerable in society.
You will be able to follow the proceedings LIVE online by clicking on this icon or the link:
Taking ATOS money to sponsor the Paralympics is a disgrace. Their money is stained with the tears of thousands of disabled people whose lives have been destroyed by this evil multinational company. Obviously their money is more important to the organisers than the wellbeing of disabled people. Hang your heads in shame.
All very laudable, but I fail to see how the DWP or Atos will be affected. They’ll simply ignore it, as they do with all other criticism.
We have to keep faith
agree with ron atos is never going to listen .the only thing this firms understand is the boot out of country with big fine just like the americans done to its sister company as it was made from unum material jeff3
If it wasn’t for future hope and the help of knowing that i’m not alone (thanks to this website and others like it!) i think i would have given up! Thanks to you all for the good work!!! I scored zero at a WCA yet at a DLA hearing i was cosidered virtually unable to walk a month previous to WCA, they have greatly reduced my benefit money to the effect that i can either eat or pay my bills but not both… I’ve never felt so low in my life thanks to ATOS, I hate them and all that they stand for….
Once the GPs have voted to scrap the WCA, if the government refuse to do so, then they should ballot for industrial action with immediate effect.
And when the Doctors stop doing it we are left with the nurses and physio doing the assessments.
No – you’re quite wrong about that: WE’RE going to make sure that they boycott the assessments as well! The struggle continues!
They’ve already got nurses doing it. My assessment/interview was with a SRN. There wasn’t a qualified doctor in sight!
We’re lobbying HARD to get the nurses to follow suit. It should be much easier now that the doctors have spoken.
Atos and its computer generated heartless life ruining assessment needs to go.
I’ve had three WCA forms in 3 years. The first two I failed after the ATOS ‘medical’, the current one I got a few days ago. I’ve had other medicals in the past and failed those too. The past two I’ve gone through the long wait for a tribunal appeal and won both, the first with *31* points. All of the medicals I’ve been forced to go through have been done by nurses and as usual not a single bit of information was taken into account. The last one even ignored what I said and had the audacity to say I’d never sought any help despite me having appointments and waiting for news after my CPN went on long term sick leave for six months.
It angers me so much that this company dare to use the word “healthcare” in their name. They exist purely to grab money and benefit from the misery of those they declare fit to work. I’ll be very interested to see the outcome of this but I don’t think it can do anything about me having to deal with ATOS again after I send in my latest WCA form.