You couldn't make it up !

[paul kersey]

http://www.eveningnews24.co.uk/news/...user_1_1328358

It seems that the offices of my local Disability assesment centre, do not allow anyone to visit in a wheelchair. Anyone who uses a chair, has to apply for a home visit. How can this situation come about, when many small businesses have had to pay for expensive alterations to allow disabled access?

[faginsgirl]

[narabdela]

Normal for Norwich.


(nfn, is a medical shorthand used in the area.)

[Moor Larkin]

The *sudden outrage* is possibly linked to a longer-running story.
http://benefitclaimantsfightback.wor...s-latest-news/

Oddly enough St.Mary's does crop up in last September's campaign blog but nobody seemed to have thought of this particularly apposite angle of attack, back then.

Norwich
Friday, September 30 · 4:30pm – 5:30pm
Atos, St Marys House, Norwich

Local poet Vince Laws will be protesting outside Atos, St Mary’s House and invites people to join him

[Dame Starry]

http://www.eveningnews24.co.uk/news/...user_1_1328358

It seems that the offices of my local Disability assesment centre, do not allow anyone to visit in a wheelchair. Anyone who uses a chair, has to apply for a home visit. How can this situation come about, when many small businesses have had to pay for expensive alterations to allow disabled access?

Not everybody who is disabled needs a wheelchair. The chances are that, anybody who DOES, genuinely, need a wheelchair would have difficulty travelling to and from the centre anyway and it would cost the DWP more to arrange than a home visit. Basic economics really - it comes out of your taxes after all!

It makes perfect sense.

[golightly]

There's a piece in this weeks EYE about a woman with advanced Parkinson's and how she and her husband struggled to get a home visit, advanced Parkinson's and she's taking a back to work fitness test! Now that's a waste of taxpayers money.

[CaptainWaggett]

Surely it fits in nicely with Atos policies - if you can struggle to their office, you must be fit for work

[paul kersey]

In my Grandads day back in the 40's and 50's, you had to visit the Doctor to get a sicknote. The Doctor had his surgery on the upper floor of a normal terraced house. Being more compliant /less savvy, Grandad struggled up the stairs and was refused a sicknote on the grounds that as he had made it up the stairs he was fit enough to work. Grandad was a labourer on a building site.

[Dame Starry]

There's a piece in this weeks EYE about a woman with advanced Parkinson's and how she and her husband struggled to get a home visit, advanced Parkinson's and she's taking a back to work fitness test! Now that's a waste of taxpayers money.

I agree wholeheartedly - I suspect that the ATOS office in question is very short-staffed, has targets to reach and has decided to use bully-boy tactics in order to fulfil their contract.

ATOS, in general, is a waste of public money - not surprising as Labour employed them. The people filling out the assessment forms are seldom, if ever, medically qualified because they seem to have a huge turnover of staff who leave because they get paid peanuts and dislike the underhand tactics used.
40% of claimants who 'fail' the assessment win on appeal, so figures about the percentage of people who are actually fit for work are just propaganda. ATOS gets commission for everybody they fail - I wonder if they have to give it back when people win an appeal?

It's really just another legacy of Labour's talent for false economy, but I suspect that the coalition don't consider it a priority to investigate this company and get a more efficient one which would, undoubtedly, cost the country less in the long term.

[Steve Crook]

There's a piece in this weeks EYE about a woman with advanced Parkinson's and how she and her husband struggled to get a home visit, advanced Parkinson's and she's taking a back to work fitness test! Now that's a waste of taxpayers money.

The Eye has been reporting on Atos Healthcare for some time now. They are just box tickers. If you don't fit into any of their categories then they declare you fit for work - even if you're dead

Steve