Coroner finds DWP’s decisions and safeguarding failings were ‘trigger’ for suicide of Jodey Whiting

A coroner has found that the decision of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to wrongly stop a disabled woman’s benefits after a string of safeguarding failings was the “trigger” for her to take her own life.

Coroner Clare Bailey found that Jodey Whiting’s “deteriorating” mental health had been “precipitated” by the withdrawal of her out-of-work disability benefits after she missed a work capability assessment (WCA).

The decision of the coroner follows an eight-year campaign for justice by the family of Jodey Whiting – who died on 21 February 2017 – led by Jodey’s mother, Joy Dove.

The first inquest in 2017 lasted just 37 minutes and Dove fought for years through the high court and the court of appeal for a second inquest, with the support of solicitors Leigh Day.

She also worked with Disability News Service for years to campaign for a public inquiry into DWP deaths, including a parliamentary petition in 2019 that secured more than 55,000 signatures.

The coroner at the first inquest had failed to examine DWP’s role in Whiting’s death, or take evidence from any DWP witnesses, and had failed to criticise the department.

Although the new coroner at this week’s second inquest declined to send a prevention of future deaths report to DWP (see separate story), she became one of the few coroners in the last 15 years to conclude that the department’s actions had triggered the suicide of a benefit claimant.

That conclusion particularly echoes the inquest into the death of Michael O’Sullivan in September 2013, and a coroner’s ruling that the trigger for his suicide was being found fit for work by the department.

Bailey concluded at the end of Monday’s long-awaited second inquest, at Middlesbrough’s Teesside Justice Centre, that Whiting had taken her own life.

She said: “Her actions were in the context of her benefits having been wrongly withdrawn by the DWP in circumstances where there had been five missed opportunities to avoid the significant errors.

“This had the effect of negatively impacting upon her mental health and was the trigger to her [decision to take her own life].”

She said the context of her suicide was “a deteriorating mental state precipitated by the withdrawal of state benefits”, and she concluded that she had probably intended to take her own life.

She had told the inquest that Whiting’s life “was all about her family” and that she had “just loved being a mum”.

The inquest heard that she was the mother of nine adult children and six grandchildren, and that eight years after her death – at the age of 42 – she was still “deeply missed by all of her large family” (see separate story).

Whiting, from Stockton-on-Tees, had multiple health conditions, including chronic pain and longstanding mental distress – including a diagnosis of emotionally unstable personal disorder – and was on eight different medications, including two lots of morphine, a tranquiliser, anti-anxiety medication, and two anti-depressants.

By the time of her death, she was rarely able to leave her flat and was unable to afford a mobility scooter because DWP had cut her personal independence payment.

She had missed a WCA in January 2017 because she had recently come out of hospital for treatment for pneumonia and a cyst on her brain, was not coping well with her correspondence, and had not opened the appointment letter from Maximus, the private sector contractor paid by DWP to carry out assessments.

DWP wrote to her that month to ask her why she missed the assessment.

But Maximus and DWP had both failed to consider her request for the WCA to take place in her own home, while DWP then failed to phone her to check why she missed the assessment, and failed to consider a safeguarding visit, and failed to contact her GP for more information about her health.

On 6 February 2017, Whiting received a second letter from DWP, telling her she had provided no good reason for missing her face-to-face assessment and therefore would be considered fit for work and her employment and support allowance (ESA) would be stopped on 17 February, while her housing benefit and council tax benefit would also stop.

DWP made this decision, even though it had been told in 2014 of her suicidal thoughts, that in October 2016 she had made it clear she was seeing a psychiatrist and was under the care of a mental health crisis team and could not cope with work or looking for work, and that a “vulnerability” red flag had been placed against her name on DWP’s system.

Her mother described to the inquest how her daughter had been left “shocked and distressed” and “felt desperate” and “looked as though she had lost all hope” because she believed she would be left destitute.

On 20 February 2017, the jobcentre rebuffed Dove’s attempt to help her daughter, and when she told her what had happened, she said she saw the hope fading from her eyes and said: “Mum, what am I going to do? I can’t walk out the door, I can’t go and sign on, I can’t breathe.”

The following day, concerned that her daughter was not answering her phone, Dove rang the police and then she and two of Whiting’s daughters – Emma and Amy, who were also concerned – visited her flat and were let in by the concierge.

They found her dead on the sofa, next to a notebook of individual messages she had left for each of her children, and for Joy, and other notes which the coroner said showed “how desperate Jodey felt about her financial situation and her inability to pay her bills”.

Just weeks after she died, on 31 March, in response to an appeal lodged by Dove, DWP overturned the decision to stop her benefits and admitted that she did have good reason not to attend the assessment and had been entitled to ESA.

Dove took up the fight for justice, and complained to the Independent Case Examiner (ICE), which two years later concluded that her benefits should never have been stopped and that DWP had failed five times – a conclusion supported by the coroner – to follow its own safeguarding rules in the weeks leading to her death.

A DWP director told the inquest that the department was “deeply sorry” for its failings at the time and that it accepted the ICE findings.

Psychiatrist Dr Trevor Turner, who was commissioned originally by the family’s solicitors and then by the court, concluded in his second report that DWP’s failings had “substantially affected” Jodey’s mental health and decision to end her own life.

He found that the decision to cut her benefits would have had an “acute and pervasive effect” on her mental state and could be seen to some degree as “the straw that broke the camel’s back”.

He said the key factors affecting her mental state were the psychiatric diagnosis, her chronic pain condition, and the withdrawal of her “necessary benefits”, and that “her mental state at the time of her death, in particular the negative and depressive conditions, would have been substantially enhanced by the experience of her benefits being withdrawn and the seemingly insurmountable difficulties that would present in her day-to-day life”.

Dove said on Monday that Whiting had been “a perfect daughter” and “would help anyone in need or with problems”.

She said she had always believed that DWP caused her daughter’s death and that it should not have taken an eight-year fight to secure “justice for Jodey”.

She said it had been an “uphill battle trying to get answers and accountability”.

Whiting’s father Eric told the inquest that his daughter “always put others before herself” and was like a “pied piper” because she always had children around her.

He told DNS that the way DWP had conducted themselves had been “appalling”.

He said: “I just hope that the DWP have learnt a few things and start to make a lot of changes so other people and families don’t go through what our family have and are still going through.”

He said that DWP had tried to “sweep things under the carpet and hide this for the last eight years” but today “it has all come out”.

The family’s solicitor, Merry Varney, from Leigh Day, said DWP had been the cause of many deaths.

She said: “Today’s conclusion shows the importance of thorough inquests that properly investigate how a death occurred.

“Without them, the dangerous and sometimes deadly way that those unable to work due to ill-health or disability are treated by the DWP will remain covered up and unchecked.”

*The Department: How a Violent Government Bureaucracy Killed Hundreds and Hid the Evidence, DNS editor John Pring’s book on the years of deaths linked to DWP, including those of Jodey Whiting and Michael O’Sullivan, is published by Pluto Press

**The following organisations are among those that might be able to offer support if you have been affected by the issues raised in this article:  Mind, Papyrus, Rethink, Samaritans, and SOS Silence of Suicide

Credit for this article goes to John Pring with the Disability News Service