Mental health patients have been told to attend work center meetings about their benefit claims, including one claimant who was told to turn up for a work-related appointment, the Observer can reveal.
Three patients at the Forston clinic, an NHS psychiatric facility near Dorchester, have been told to attend meetings in recent months – prompting complaints from the local Citizens Advice department, which has a consultant in the clinic has.
Despite appearing to contradict national guidance from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), local work center managers have rejected requests from Citizens Advice Central Dorset to guarantee that no further demands will be placed on inpatients in mental health care.
“It’s just ridiculous. It is beyond ridiculous,” Daphne Hall, South West England representative at the National Association of Welfare Rights Advisers (Nawra), told the Observer. “In no way should anyone who is in hospital for any reason – mental or physical – be expected to attend a work-related appointment. They are in the hospital. They can’t possibly do that.”
Last week, Employment Secretary Jo Churchill clarified that DWP guidelines did not require hospital patients to attend work center meetings, in response to a parliamentary question from Stephen Timms, chairman of the work and pensions committee.
“Anyone in these specific units, which are for seriously mentally ill people, should not be required to engage in any form of job-seeking, job preparation or work-related activities – they should be completely outside of that,” says Caroline Buxton, company director. and partnerships manager at Central Advice Central Dorset.
‘Surely the fact that he has been taken out of jail is enough to know that this person is not at a stage in his claims process where he could come and talk about ‘should I do an IT course?’ or whatever. This is just completely inappropriate.”
Two of the patients were not required to attend after Citizens Advice intervened, while clinic staff decided to send a third patient to an employment center so as not to delay their universal credit application.
“If (the meetings) didn’t happen, it was because we had some money for a special Citizens Advice advisor, who could pick up the phone in that unit or send someone an email and say, ‘Hey, what are you up to? doing it? this for? Why are you asking this person to come?” Buxton said.
Universal credit applicants who are not in work and are not considered severely disabled are generally required to look for work and attend employment center work-related meetings.
But the national DWP guidance on work-related requirements lists “mental health problems (for example low self-confidence and self-esteem, anxiety or depression)” as a “complex need” meaning that “it would be unreasonable to expect (claimants) to they meet their current work-related requirements”.
“Applying any form of pressure on anyone experiencing a mental health crisis is likely to be extremely damaging to their health,” Nawra’s Hall told the newspaper. Observer.
A DWP spokesperson said: “There are no references in our guidance that we would require a hospital patient to attend a meeting at an employment centre.
“Work coaches have the freedom to personalize work-related requirements for individual applicants based on the impact of their health conditions.
“In exceptional circumstances, where an applicant is absolutely not allowed to make any commitment in exchange for receiving their benefit, the obligation to do so may be temporarily lifted. This includes, but is not limited to, cases where a claimant is receiving medical treatment as a hospital patient.”