BY KATE BELGRAVE PUBLISHED 29 JULY 2012

Encouraging news out of the High Court on Thursday for opponents of the loathed Atos’ work capability assessments (WCAs) : the court granted permission to two disabled people for a judicial review to challenge the operation of WCAs. 

Represented by the Public Law Project, the claimants argue that WCAs discriminate against people with mental health problems. Says the Public Law Project’s Ravi Low-Beer, the reasonable adjustment they want is for the onus to be on the Department of Work and Pensions “to make sure they have medical evidence from medical practitioners from the beginning of the process,” for ESA applicants with mental health issues.

Most people will know WCAs as the face-to-face interviews and brief physical tests that are conducted by Atos healthcare to assess people’s eligibility for the Employment and Support Allowance. 

As things stand, says Low-Beer, WCAs are conducted by Atos healthcare professionals who are not mental health experts. “At present,” the Public Law Project says, “the DWP do not routinely ask for expert medical reports from an applicant’s community-based doctor.” Interviews are often hurried and people must be able to explain their problems in detail. The claimants contend that not everyone with mental health problems is always in a position to do that – it may be, says Public Law, that “conditions fluctuate in seriousness, or [people] cannot easily talk about their disability” – which means people can be found fit for work with less than their whole stories told. That, says Low-Beer, pushes people who may already be struggling into a notoriously stressful appeals process.
 

“For some people, having to negotiate an appeal is an agony. It causes a tremendous amount of distress. It’s a confrontation with the state that they’re ill-equipped to endure.” For those reasons, says Low-Beer, medical evidence should be available and considered at the beginning of the process, and it should be up to the DWP to make sure it is. Last year, the Public Law Project and the Mental Health Resistance Network began to meet to consider a course of action around the problem. 

Now, they have one. It’s certainly a slap in the face for the government – and for a despised assessment process that has long been mired in strife and acrimony. Sites like Broken of Britain, AtosVictimsGroup and Jayne Linney‘s have grown and grown as people have looked to rein in an assessment process that they say is imprecise, unfair, fails to account for medical evidence and even to reflect discussions which take place in Atos assessment rooms.

The Guardian has reported “hundreds of thousands of people” flooding to contest decisions made against ESA eligibility as a result of these assessments:  “a 56% rise during 2010/11 in the number of people appealing rulings that they are fit for work,” and an overloaded tribunals system to boot. “Since the system was trialled at the end of 2009, at least 390,000 people have gone to appeal. Tribunal courts have been forced to open on Saturdays and to increase staff by 30% since January 2010 to deal with the backlog.”

God knows I’ve talked to people who’ve been stuck in it. People I’ve interviewed with mental health problems and bad experiences of WCA include Paul*, from Cheshire, a man who’d worked for nearly 40 years, but who suffered from severe depression and had made a suicide attempt when his department was restructured and his job changed. He told me that “there was no sympathy all,” at his WCA:  “They even got my date of birth and my medication wrong. They said I went out shopping and visiting my brother – none of which was true. I can’t go out of the door on my own.” Atos found him fit for work – a decision which was, like many, overturned on appeal. He almost didn’t get there – he was so stressed by the thought of the appeals process that he did not want to go through it. In the end, he only appealed because his wife insisted and helped him with it.

A Newcastle man with schizophrenia, Steve*, also failed in his application for ESA. He told me that few questions were asked in his assessment about the impact his schizophrenia has on his life and his ability to cope. He was found fit for work and needed the help of his community mental health team to go through an appeal.

*Surnames withheld

New Statesman