#I miss DWP so so much sometimes

[mirandyficlists]

Fic Searches sometimes take Time.

Hey there my Mirandy Dandies hope you're all well.

After a number of particularly noxious Anonymous messages from someone, or possibly several someones, kvetching about oh so many shortcomings with my Tumblr site and my other actions in the fandom as a whole, I felt I needed to make this post to clarify a few things about:

What I do,

What I'm able to do.

What I'm willing to do

The way this platform works...something, bear in mind, that I can't change.

I am a diehard Mirandy Dandy and one of the things I love to do is to SHARE the goodness and to chat about fics whenever I can. Having been a victim of the loss of Angelfire and Geocities when so much amazing fic was lost to us in the Xenaverse and other of my earlier fandoms, when I became a Mirandy Dandy I was not going to see myself in the same limbo and made a point of fully harvesting all fics as they were posted and keeping external copies of my treasures, updated monthly whenever possible. I did this, by the way, from the beginning on LJ to the present and let me tell you, keeping track of and harvesting fics from LJ was not easy and took a hell of a lot of time copying and pasting but I did it to the best of my ability.

The Mirandyverse is now 18 years old (we should all buy us a drink…well in the UK anyway, lol.) and we have people finding the Dark Side every week. Now these newbies and youngsters have often never set foot on LJ, if they’ve even heard of it, some have never set foot on FFnet even not to mention places like Passion & Perfection and the Pink Rabbit Consortium, and therefor have missed out on some great gems and giants of the days when new fics came out thick and fast. Thus the difference between the 3732 fics recorded for DWP on AO3 and the 5422 fics I have listed on my spreadsheet. Added to this the number of fics that have since been deleted or lost in other ways and you end up with the Newbies truly missing out.  And so I try to spread the goodness as best I can and share my harvested treasures when asked, as well as letting the masses know about that on several different platforms.

Because I love the fandom as I do, a significant amount of my time is invested in it, but as with everyone, I have a real 3D life that demands my presence and attention regularly and sometimes exclusively when, well, when shit happens as they say. Add to this my personal disabilities and I sometimes struggle being able to do things and thus have to let some things, like fandoms, slide in order to cope with the day to day. But when I’m better I always come back. And my disabilities can bear good fruit too, in this case my fic Spreadsheets, necessitated for my enjoyment because of my medically induced memory problems but that have been used and enjoyed by the fandom as a whole. Silver linings and all that.

I am always willing to share the Mirandy goodness in anyway I can manage. I LOVE being able to send deleted fics to people who either haven’t read them or aren’t able to access their old favourites because they were deleted. Hence my spreadsheet which keeps track of the existence and whereabouts of about 97% of all Mirandy fics online. And also my Themed Rec lists, now numbering 157 different groupings. All of which assist me in helping out with fic searches which I always try to source whenever they are presented, and that sourcing includes seeking help of other Dandies on different platforms.  Now, just to clarify, none of these things are complete or exhaustive, but I do keep them up to date within the limitations stated above AND try to make sure to share them online at least every couple of years. I don’t mind doing it, it gives me pleasure, but to my nasty Nonnies from earlier and any other Trolls who might be lurking…I AM UNDER NO OBLIGATION TO DO ANY OF THE THINGS I DO FOR THE FANDOM. I do it out of love of the Mirandyverse and the vast, VAST majority of truly wonderful Mirandy Dandies.

Tumblr is, as we who tumble know, both glorious and hideous as far as social networking platforms go, and has always been meddled with by admin for the sake of selling it off and trying to monetize it into oblivion and not to actually improve the functionality for the users in anyway. And that is the arena in which I operate this Tumblr and adapt how I do so in order to accommodate my needs.

So just for your collective FYI specifically regarding Anonymous asked fic searches…

If you have sent an anonymous fic search and have not seen an answer posted for a very long while:        

I am NOT ignoring you.

                                I am NOT ‘being lazy.’   

                                I have NOT deleted your request.            

                                And believe it or not I have NOT forgotten about you.

I check my in box weekly to remind myself of the searches I am still tracking down, so

not getting a response to an Anonymous ask only means I have not yet found your fic, but I am still looking for the fic, when time permits me.

Because you sent an Anonymous ask, if I try to answer it and let you know that I’m still looking for the fic, the ask is removed from my in box and I no longer have it in an easily accessible place to remind myself to continue the search.   So instead, I keep the asks in my in box until I find the fic requested, which lets be honest my Dandies, given some of the descriptions or key points you sometimes give could be one of several thousand fics and it takes some time to sift through, lolol.  If you want to be kept updated on the search progress, then it is much better if you PM me directly so that I can communicate with you.

To finish off I do want to say, ANY Mirandy Dandy is ALWAYS welcome to contact me with asks and questions in what ever way best suits their needs all I ask is that you appreciate any limitations attached to your preferred method and behave accordingly.

The Mirandyverse is generally a stress-free and positive place to be and always has been, and it is my dearest hope that it continues to be a space free from the toxicity that often invades other fandoms.  To that end I will always continue to offer my services to fellow Dandies in a spirit of helpfulness and sheer Joie de Vive.

Long live the Mirandyverse!

[madeofcc]

When you’ve been waiting months to get a free cc on patreon to realise weeks later that you still have to pay to get it or to go to simsdom ...

[ms-demeanor]

You are the one who reblogged a post with a bunch of resources about treating wounds and foraging and using a rifle. You, other anarchists, are where I’m getting the sense of the “life” I’m supposed to look forward to. Not movies.

You know how I know you’re not talking about me?

Because I’m actually really, really fucking cautious about not reblogging information about foraging because I literally know someone who poisoned his dumb ass foraging and died and I would not share that kind of resource with someone who I’m not 100% sure is excellent at woodcraft and has a shitload of outdoor experience. I actually pretty stridently recommend that you DON’T learn how to forage from online resources.

Juuuuuust in case I double checked my blog back through august.

What are you talking about? No forage resources or rifle resources here, at least not for the last 22 days. The one wound treatment thing I’ve reblogged this month is a link to CERT classes, which are community emergency response classes.

I don’t make a secret of the fact that I am pro gun ownership but I also don’t make a secret of the fact that I think if people are pro gun they also need to be pro gun safety education - there are way too many firearms in the US for us to *not* teach kids how to handle them safely. But I sure do NOT talk about having gun battles on this blog because I think that’s glorifying a fantasy version of a fast, easy revolution that I don’t believe in.

(however, as always, if you’re in my general area, don’t know how to use guns, and would like to learn I am available to teach you the basics, as much as social distancing and global pandemics allow anyway)

But. Also.

Buddy, let’s pretend it’s four years ago, or nine years ago, or twenty years ago. Let’s pretend that whatever party is in office doesn’t matter and is totally unrelated to everything.

Have you ever lived through a large earthquake?

A tornado?

A hurricane?

Sometimes infrastructure fails and knowing how to treat wounds is a very, very, very good idea.

Everyone should take a first aid class. I think first aid classes should be a requirement for graduating high school. I first got CPR certified with my girl scout troop when I was 12 and my mom took me to a mobile morgue class when I was 7 because my mom was the department safety coordinator for the DWP in Los Angeles and she was in charge of earthquake drills and first aid training and disaster preparedness and the Northridge quake had just happened.

I grew up taking first aid incredibly seriously, reading “Hatchet,” and my idea of fun is getting a vehicle stuck in an inland sea or going backpacking and encountering a bear. Learning woundcare and treatment for heatstroke and hypothermia is. Like. It’s a pretty big part of making sure I’m doing stupid bullshit as safely as possible.

Also, yeah, I’ve totally superglued my finger closed and used fishing finger wraps to seal a cut and used coffee stir sticks and electrical tape to make finger splint. Even with insurance it still costs me a couple hundred dollars to go to the ER or several hours to go to an urgent care, and that’s when I’ve HAD insurance. Knowing how to safely treat non-life-threatening injuries is just something you should know how to do if you’re broke in America; I’m lucky that I can afford to go to the ER now; that has not always been the case for me.

You ever hung out with really drunk friends? Do you know how to check eye tracking? Do you know how to put someone in the recovery position?

You ever had a friend get clocked with a boot in the pit? Do you know how to check pupil dilation to see if you need to get to a hospital ASAP?

Buddy, you don’t have to be worried about the end of the world to want to get prepared to handle an injury while camping and you don’t have to be an anarchist to think it’s a good idea to know how to treat heatstroke.

ANYWAY there’s this flaw in the human brain called negativity bias, which is where we remember negative, scary stuff more than we remember good, positive stuff.

I’m generally a pretty positive blogger, the resource lists I reblog tend to be things like “here are mutual aid groups” and “learn how to be a hacker” and “here’s how to support people who lose access to abortion.” If you’re getting primarily negativity out of the stuff that I’m reblogging I believe you’re missing the forest for the trees, bud.

The way to handle and cope with negativity bias is to be aware of it! If you’re sitting there going “everything is terrible!” ask yourself “is everything actually really terrible or am I only remembering terrible things?”

2020 is actually a fucking FANTASTIC example of that because there has been a lot of bad shit going on but there have also been really great examples of humans helping each other and people working to take care of each other and apparently Venus might have aliens and that’s just really fucking cool. There is a BUNCH of negative shit out there and we do hear about it all the time but don’t let that bury the positive shit.

You know what I want people to take away from that resource post? That you can and should protect your community from speed traps by reporting cops on traffic apps, and that by reporting cops on traffic apps you are doing a tangibly good thing to prevent marginalized groups from being targeted by police.

That’s a real, simple, easy thing that you can do to actually help people - speed traps don’t work if people don’t know about them and it’s why cops have tried to make it illegal for drivers to warn each other about them.

The idea that the government of the United States is going to collapse tomorrow and things will devolve into gun battles in the streets and foraging to keep from starving seems fairly farfetched but even if that does happen you know that mutual aid helped people survive the great depression, right?

And I don’t want to do the “you should feel #blessed that you’re better off than those people in POOR, UNDEVELOPED countries” thing but people get up and live their lives every day in conditions that require them to forage and navigate violent areas.

It’s shitty that people have to live like that, I wish they didn’t have to and I don’t want more people to have to live in extreme poverty in places that are violent, but it seems kind of. I don’t know. Arrogant? To decide you’re better than that so you might as well lay down and die.

“What do I have to look forward to” - buddy, the world doesn’t owe you a happy ending. You have the rest of your life to look forward to. You have friendships and laughter and cool projects and the people you’ll help someday and the people who will help you someday and sunsets and ripe fruit and meteor showers to look forward to.

Nearly everywhere in the world, through all of history, even peasants danced.

You’ve got the world to look forward to.

And if everything does go to hell in a handbasket and there are gun battles in the streets and you’re trying to make sure you’re gathering morels and not deathcaps then you’ve STILL got the world to look forward to and how you go into it is going to be up to you no matter how a fucking election turns out.

[alexafaie-asd]

Panicking about the PIP appeals tribunal

I’m reading through some advice to try and calm me down, though its not really helping all that much.

One of the suggestions for preparing for the tribunal hearing is:

“Don't dress up or make a big effort with your appearance. It is important that the panel see you as you are on a normal day. Otherwise, they might get the impression that you don't need help, even if you do.”

And that just has me so so so worried because I can’t cope with leaving the house unless I have put a lot of effort into my appearance. But they could use that against me. Like it says its important that the panel see me as I am on a normal day, but isn’t it illegal to be naked in public? Like most of the time I will not wear anything at home, or will just through a pyjama dress on, or will be in older clothes with holes and stuff because I save my nicer stuff for the days when I actually go out and do something (which is rarely). But I can’t go out in just a pyjama dress! I couldn’t deal with doing that. Just thinking of that causes me so much stress because its WRONG. Its not what you do. If you go to an appointment with other people there it is RUDE to be dirty and wear old clothes. That’s what my Mum taught me. And the things I am comfortable wearing at home would not be warm enough for going outside and travelling via public transport (its unlikely they will have parking to go by car).

Like this is a big enough thing that I ended up missing psychiatrist appointments and doctors appointments because I had been in too much of a bad place and hadn’t got the spoons to wash myself and get dressed appropriately in order to leave the house. So I didn’t go at all even though I needed to. If I haven’t managed to wash in a while I will not be able to bring myself to leave the house to go to the corner shop to pick up any food I might need, so I won’t eat.

I have even missed meeting up with friends because I couldn’t cope with washing or dressing appropriately in time to go, so my boyfriend ended up going alone.

But now I’m worried that they are going to see me in what I HAVE to wear in order to cope at all with leaving the house and being seen in public and think that means that that is my normal. But if I try to go in wearing my normal and looking my normal? Then its very unlikely to happen. I didn’t sleep the night before my PIP assessment because I was so stressed about it and didn’t know if I’d picked ok enough clothes or not and knew that if I went to sleep late, then I wouldn’t manage to wake up in time to wash, dry myself, and get dressed. Its probably not a good idea to do that the night before the appeals tribunal whenever that might be.

And they only give 2 weeks notice of when the appeal date will be and send that out by letter which always takes fucking ages, so it will be less than 2 weeks really. Which doesn’t feel like long enough to figure out when I need to wash and stuff (I try to have a bath once a week, but often its more like once a fortnight or longer). And 2 weeks might not be enough time for my boyfriend to ask for a day off to come with me. They will probably be fine. but I’m worried that they won’t be and so I’ll have to go alone which would mean I wouldn’t be able to go at all because the whole thing requires me to talk in front of 3 people and whoever else is there (1 judge, 1 doctor, 1 disability expert, plus maybe someone else if the DWP decide to send someone and I have to request that my tribunal is not open to the public otherwise anyone can turn up). And I tend to freeze and stumble my words when talking to multiple people. I never know who to focus on. I was totally overwhelmed when I got seen by a clinical psychiatrist and someone learning from them and that was just two people. Both asked questions and I didn’t know who I was meant to be responding to and it was overwhelming and upsetting. And this tribunal will have at least three. Oh and the Clerk who will pop in and out of the room just to add extra distraction and annoyance and to make the whole thing even harder to cope with as if I’m talking and they open the door, suddenly there are an extra 100 things to process going on whilst sticking to my train of thought and just not good.

And the bit on the form about accessibility basically only asks it as if the only disability you can have it to require the use of a wheelchair. Like other disabilities exist too! Not all of them are visible (and not all requiring a wheelchair are visible either). Like can I ask that the Clerk either remains in the room or doesn’t come in until the end so there are less disruptions? Does that count as a reasonable adjustment I could ask for? I DON’T KNOW!

And then can have up to 5 appeals tribunals in just the one session (split at lunch) meaning that the whole tribunal could only last 30 minutes. Which sounds like that’s a good thing - not too long. But I’m terrible with being succinct and to the point and have zero concept of time so that doesn’t feel like it will be long enough for me to answer any questions they may have for me. I mean my PIP assessment was supposed to last 45mins to an hour and ended up taking 2 hours and even that wasn’t long enough for them to decide in my favour. For any presentation I’ve ever done I’ve overran the time given even when I’ve panicked and not been able to speak at all. Like I froze for long enough, but they let me stay stood there without telling me I could stop for over the time I was meant to talk for so like??? How is 30 mins going to be enough to discuss everything which needs to be said?

And they apparently lead the questioning and it says not to worry if they don’t ask about a particular part, but what if they didn’t ask because they thought it was obvious, but it was actually a part I was concerned would get misconstrued? What then? How do I trust them to know which bits to focus on? Its MY LIFE they are looking at and questioning like I’m a naughty girl when really I’m just trying to get access to the disability benefit I should still be entitled to. And even I’m not sure how to tell which bits are most relevant or not.

And I am irrationally worried that they will try to send me to prison. Like its not a criminal court at all. They don’t even require you to be sworn in (something I greatly disagree with because there is no book I would swear on) And the judge doesn’t wear robes and a wig, just regular clothes. And it is round a table in a room like an office rather than in a proper court - there is no standing in a dock to give evidence. But I’m still scared that I will get sent to prison as its something I used to get threatened with as a child. Like I was told if I phoned childline and they thought I was lying about the abuse, I could be arrested and sent to adult prison as a child as it was that serious an offence, so I should put the phone back down. So maybe I could actually end up being sent to prison. Like maybe if I struggle to talk at all or answer the questions in a rude tone of voice or something they could get someone in to arrest me and put me in prison for life. I don’t want to go to prison. They make you get up early and that hurts. And there are lots of people and that hurts. And you can’t chose when to have the lights on or off and that hurts. And you can’t pick your food and that is BAD. Or maybe not prison, maybe they will just make me go and stand in the naughty girl’s corner. Which is like prison, except its standing facing the wall until you stop crying, but standing for ages facing the corner where you can’t see if you’re going to get smacked again makes me cry and is really bad. And you aren’t allowed to talk, or leave to go to the toilet, or allowed tissues (though you are yelled at if you make a mess with tears/snot like by wiping them on your sleeve) and you have to be there for hours and hours and hours and forever maybe even. So its basically like prison but there are no bars, just keeping yourself stood there. I don’t want that either.

And I’m scared and I want my Mummy except not my Mummy because she would just tell me off or smack me for saying anything about any of that. So like my Mummy when she decides to be nice, not when she is mean. So the Mummy when I was very very very little and struggled to get to sleep so she’d sing me the Lullaby of Broadway and stroke my forehead. But that stopped when I got too big. And I’m still too big. In fact I’m even bigger. So I can’t have that Mummy any more. I just have the one who sometimes punches me in the face or drags me along when I’m half out of the car so my feet and legs end up scratched up. That’s much less nice. I don’t want that.

[thatgirlwhowantedmore]

21 Questions

So, I was tagged by @80swonderqueen and I’m sorry I haven’t been able to get to this but I haven’t been on in awhile. Thank you so much for tagging me though, lovely

1.) Height: roughly 178cm last time I checked

2.) Zodiac: Scorpio

3.) Last movie I saw: Deadpool 2

4.) Favourite musician: This is such a hard question because my taste in music is literally anything I like. But a favourite of mine would be Mabel (I’m currently addicted to her song “Don’t Call Me Up”)

5.) Favourite actor: this is similar to the one above, but I really enjoy watching Eva Green and Cate Blanchett.

6.) Favourite fan fiction: I read too much fan fiction to have a favourite but a few I like to reread are The One Fixed Point by fiveainley_ohmy, Ever After by writtensword and Soul Hates by triscuitandsoup.

7.) Favourite movie: hmmm, I always like rewatching most musicals, for example Chicago and Descendants.

8.) Favourite anime: again not a favourite, but I would rewatch Fruit’s Basket and Shugo Chara now and then.

9.) Play an instrument: I can play the piano though I have not in a long while.

10.) Random fact: um, oooh, I got another puppy a while ago and since I’m back Uni, I now have two dogs to miss instead of one.

11.) Lucky number: 13

12.) Do you get asks: unfortunately not, loves

13.) Favourite fandoms: Marvel, DC, DWP, OUAT, Harry Potter, Carol,

14.) Favourite song: Right now, it’s between Don’t Call Me by Mabel and Lay Up by Ella Mai

15.) What are you wearing: Nightie and socks

16.) Hair colour: Dark brown it sometimes looks black.

17.) Eye colour: Brown

18.) Favourite food: Pasta

19.) Hobbies: Writing, reading, sleeping, scrolling tumblr, swimming,

20.) Favourite weather: This really just depends on where I am and what I need to do for the day. If I can go to the beach, I would want it to be hot but I usually prefer rain and cold weather.

21.) Favourite superheroes: Wonder Woman, Black Panther, Jessica Jones, Daredevil, Luke Cage

That was really fun, also, if I tag you, don’t feel you have to do this, only if you want to, lovelies.

@femreader @thasminlover @thasminlover @cooltennant @julielilac

[chainofclovers]

end of year fandom meme

(Not sure where this came from, but @sapphoshands did it and I want to do it, too!)

1. Your main fandom of the year? For the first time ever, the answer to this question isn’t The Devil Wears Prada! I read and wrote in DWP pretty consistently for the whole year, and I still love it, but as soon as I started watching (well, reading a Telanu fic and then watching) Grace and Frankie, my heart zoomed over there. Writing stories in the G&F fandom has given me some of my happiest times as a writer ever, no exaggeration.

2. Your favourite film watched this year? Get Out. I watched and enjoyed a decent number of movies this year, but that one was my favorite and, if someone was in a hole all of 2017 (lucky!) and came out and wanted to watch ONE movie to get caught up on what the year was all about, that’s the one I’d recommend. 3. Your favourite book read this year? I didn’t finish as many books this year as usual (*nods solemnly in direction of septuagenarian vibrator entrepreneurs who have taken up an embarrassing amount of my time*) but I read a decent amount of good novels and poetry. That’s an annoyingly general answer, but I’m dodging this question as this is an anonymous fandom blog. :)

4. Your favourite TV show of the year? Grace and Frankie, Big Little Lies, The Good Place.  5. Your favourite online fandom community of the year? The G&F community, hands down. I’ve connected (and in some cases re-connected) to some incredible folks, and in addition to all the great fannishness around the show itself, I love how the community is a thoughtful place to discuss so many things through the lens of G&F: sexuality, sex, aging, friendship, family dynamics, privilege, race (addressing the lack of discourse on a show is a good place to start sometimes), bravery, feminism, food, alcohol, queer narratives, queer intimacy, the epic friendship between Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, and on and on and on.  6. Your best new fandom discovery of the year? Broadly, Grace and Frankie. Specifically, how much I love and admire Jane Fonda. I always thought she was cool, but I did not anticipate spending the second half of 2017 getting deeply invested in, like, her actual happiness.  7. Your biggest fandom disappointment of the year? I actually don’t think I experienced much disappointment related specifically to participation in fandom. I was disappointed by plenty of media, by plenty of public figures, etc., but as a fan I tend to love what I love and leave the rest alone.  8. Your fandom boyfriend of the year? No one! #lesbianprivilege 

But I would platonically snuggle Chidi Anagonye from now until the end of time, so.  9. Your fandom girlfriend of the year? If by “girlfriend” you mean “upsettingly beautiful character whose complicated brain you got lost in and you might not emerge again for several years, that’s how much you love it there,” then Grace Hanson is my fandom girlfriend. 

If by “girlfriend” you mean “girlfriend,” then Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo and her purple hair can be my fandom girlfriend.  10. Your biggest squee moment of the year? Well, I’ve sustained massive levels of nervous energy about Season 4 of Grace and Frankie for several months now. Does being amped as fuck about a Netflix sitcom count as squee? Does dissecting every second of a 3-minute trailer count as squee? 11. The most missed of your old fandoms? N/A, mostly, as I haven’t really left any fandoms this year. In 2016 I dabbled a bit, but I knew from the get-go that none of that was going to stick. I suppose I miss feeling motivated in a fandom sense by Miranda Priestly. I spent almost 10 years obsessed with that character, and while I’ll still read--and could very well still write--in the DWP fandom, I have a feeling it won’t be the same again.  12. The fandom you haven’t tried yet, but want to? I’m kinda standing on the outermost reaches of the Star Wars fandom, and could see myself dipping my toes in time to time. Probably for very specific reasons that everyone reading this can spot from a mile away.  13. Your biggest fan anticipations for the New Year? I think the movies of 2018 will be more exciting for me than (most) movies of 2017 were. At risk of sounding like a broken record, though, I’m most anticipating watching S4 of Grace and Frankie in January, and then spending much of 2018 nervous and excited about S5.

[brownbill5-blog]

Universal Credit managed migration: the next big challenge

Professor Jane Millar, Professor of Social Policy, IPR

There are just under one million people now in receipt of Universal Credit. By 2023 there should be, if all goes to plan, up to seven million households in the system. That is a lot of people and a lot of benefit claims still to be processed.

There are three ways to get onto Universal Credit. The first is through a new claim. The second is through an existing claim, when your circumstances change (this is called, in DWP terms, ‘natural migration’). The story so far has been about these two routes. Depending on where you live in the country and on your family situation (single, couple no children, family with children), new claims and natural migration have been the way in. And not without difficulties and problems, as we know.

The third route is due to start next year. This comes through being transferred from an existing benefit or tax credit to Universal Credit via a process known as ‘managed migration’. The roll out of managed migration will take place between July 2019 and March 2023. The DWP has recently published the draft of the regulations that will govern this, and an explanatory memorandum. And the Social Security Advisory Committee (SSAC) has issued a consultation document, calling for evidence to inform their response (deadline to SSAC 20th August).  Sir Paul Gray, outgoing SSAC chair, noting the ‘the challenges encountered so far’ has stressed the importance of this consultation, as the ‘move to full national rollout unquestionably raises those challenges to an even higher, more demanding, level’.

The draft transitional protection rules are set out in 14 pages of detailed regulations. This is not reading for the faint hearted. The welfare rights experts will no doubt be taking a close look. Here I just look at the central part of the story - how the DWP proposes to get around three million people from their current claims for benefits and tax credits (the ‘legacy benefits’) onto Universal Credit. The answer, as set out in part four of the regulations, is to end their current claim and require them to make a new claim.

Managed migration means making a new claim for Universal Credit

It is proposed that all current recipients will be sent a ‘migration notice’, informing them that all awards of their existing means-tested benefits and/or tax credits are to be terminated and specifying a ‘deadline day’ by which they must make a new claim for Universal Credit. This deadline day ‘must not be within the period of one month’ from the day of issue of the migration notice, which seems to mean that there will be a notice period of at least one month and possibly up to three months (that detail is not specified in the draft regulation). The current awards end on the day before the deadline day, which is called the ‘migration day’ (keep up, these terms may become very familiar as the managed migration gets under way).

Thus existing claims will be ended automatically and it will be the responsibility of the claimant to set a new claim for Universal Credit in train. The rationale for this is not immediately obvious but perhaps it is because our benefits and tax credits system in general requires people to make claims. We do not have a system that seeks to identify people eligible for benefits and then pay them. Instead the onus is on the individual to make a claim. And it is also the case that Universal Credit claims will require some different information from the legacy benefits, and therefore the information must be provided to make the assessment.

So everyone gets a ‘migration notice’ giving them at least a month’s notice of the need to lodge a claim for Universal Credit. What could possibly go wrong?  First there must be a risk that people will miss the deadline day for making their new claim. People miss deadlines all the time. The migration notice informing people that they are required to make a new claim may go undelivered, be lost, or not read, or the requirements not understood. This is quite a complex message to absorb and act upon.

Then, for those who do start their new claim, this is not always straightforward. The recent DWP full service survey showed some of the difficulties and problems people have had in making their Universal Credit claim. Only just over half of all claimants were able to make their claim online without any help. About half were able to complete their online claim in one attempt, a fifth took three or more attempts. About a third experienced difficulties in gathering the necessary information and documents. There are a range of barriers that could prevent some – possibly many – people from being able to complete their claim by the deadline day.

Much therefore needs to be done within DWP not just to communicate the requirements to make a claim in time, but also to make the system easier to access and use.  Not least because there could be serious financial implications of missing that deadline.

Miss the deadline - lose transitional protection

If you don’t claim in time, you obviously do not get any money from Universal Credit, until you do claim. But that is not the only financial loss. Those who miss the deadline day will not be eligible for the proposed ‘transitional protection’. There are some exceptions proposed (if missing was due to administrative error, or failure of the computer system, or if the claimant has a disability, or medical evidence of illness preventing a claim). But in general hitting that deadline day will be crucial.

Transitional protection is a familiar concept for those versed in the details of social security. When benefit rules changes, some people may lose out financially. So in order to protect people from a sudden fall in income, transitional protection kicks in. In the case of Universal Credit, it is only those who move onto Universal Credit through managed migration that are eligible for transition protection (the lack of protection for ‘natural migration’ was a key issue in a recent High Court ruling). The protection is in cash terms only, without any uprating over time. And it only continues as long as circumstances do not change, or until the Universal Credit award reaches the level of the previous award. Thus the transitional protection is limited in many ways, but it is certainly worth having, making it even more important not to miss that deadline day.

Note, by the way, that transitional protection is needed because some people get less in Universal Credit than they did in legacy benefits. Less money. Cuts in income. So some people will get a short term protection before they find themselves with a reduced income. As the recent Equalities and Human Rights Commission report pointed out, the cumulative impact of tax and benefit changes have fallen hard on disabled people and families with children. Not all these cuts are directly or only cuts in Universal Credit - the benefit freeze, the bedroom tax,  the benefit cap and the 2-child limit are important parts of the story. But Universal Credit is now much lower than was originally proposed, as the Child Poverty Action Group has pointed out. Without these cuts, there would not be as much need for transitional protection.

Gaps in income between legacy benefits and Universal Credit

If you do claim on time, there is still a gap in benefit income between the legacy benefits and Universal Credit. After the claim is made, there is a month’s assessment period and then a week to do the administration before the first payment. So the process takes some five weeks by design. Current benefits and tax credits are paid weekly, fortnightly or four weekly in arrears. So there is likely to be a gap for claimants being migrated onto Universal Credit between the final payment of their legacy benefits and their first monthly payment of Universal Credit.

This sounds like a difficult prospect, to say the least. It will certainly leave some people with little or no money during the managed migration process, possibly for several weeks. For those without family or others to call on, this is likely to lead to debts and hardship, as we have already seen among new claimants to Universal Credit, with about two-fifths reporting financial difficulties in the full service survey.

There is some mitigation already in the system, including measures introduced in the 2017 Budget. There is the possibility of an advance of up to one month’s payment, but this must be applied for and then repaid from Universal Credit within 12 months. The ‘transitional housing payment’ keeps housing benefit in payment for two weeks, and does not have to be repaid. Some further measures were announced in June 2018, affecting capital rules, the disability premium, the treatment of childcare costs, and maintaining transitional protection for a new claim to Universal Credit within three months after a short-term exit into work. These are all welcome, but whether this overall package will be sufficient to deal with the scale and depth of the potential problems remains to be seen.

And it is also the case that in practice some people have been waiting longer than five weeks. The latest DWP figures, for payments due in February 2018, show that 83% of new claims to Universal Credit Full Service received full payment on time (i.e. after the five weeks processing) and 90% received some payment on time. There will always be some people who do not receive full payment on time because of verification requirements, and sometimes third parties (landlords, childcare providers) must also provide information. Of the 17% who did not receive their full payment on time, about one third waited a further four or more weeks. This is an improvement on the figures quoted in the National Audit Office report, but does still show that there are gaps due to late payments.

Ready to go or not?

These are draft regulations and so may well be changed, not least from SSAC input. But it is clear that managed migration is a massive challenge. It is no wonder that Sir Amyas Morse, head of the National Audit Office, in his letter to Work and Pensions Secretary Ester McVey again stressed that the ‘department must now ensure it is ready before it starts to transfer people over from previous benefits’.

The DWP is no doubt working hard on the process and the systems, although not helped by aspects of the design of Universal Credit, nor by ongoing policy tweaks and changes. Being optimistic, these proposals might generally work, especially if there is more recognition of the need to minimise financial hardship. But there will certainly be people and families for whom managed migration does not work smoothly – who miss their deadline day, who do not have any income to tide them over the gaps, who do not get access to advance payments, who suffer delays waiting for payments – and this must be of concern. As the roll-out goes on, we are likely to continue to see high levels of difficulty and stress. Universal Credit will stay in the headlines for some time to come.

Source: http://blogs.bath.ac.uk/iprblog/2018/07/09/universal-credit-managed-migration-the-next-big-challenge/

[youngerdrgrey]

an after credits scene, if you will // a Dear White People fic

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lol finished watching Dear White People and immediately needed this little moment written; SPOILERS ABOUND for the series; picks up right after the end of the finale.

post-Defamation, Sam’s got a lot to process too. + on ao3

/

/

And it’s after Defamation, after everyone’s cleared out and Sam and Coco wind up walking the halls back towards their rooms. After un-muting and then re-muting all of her Twitter notifications that Sam stops walking and just turns to Coco. Sam turns with her palms out but her hands still way too close to her sides for her to be as casual as she wishes she could be.

“Can we just…?” She doesn’t know — can they just pretend for a second? Pretend they’re still friends and still the people that they turn to when shit goes sideways? When the guy that they both sort of needed to exist in their crappy amazing school is suddenly the only one locked up? When every thought about his privilege needing to save him rages against the very real possibility that nothing around here is ever going to change for the better? Sam just — she might need to pretend, for a minute or two.

Coco lifts a shoulder in a shrug. She even rolls her eyes before starting, “Dear white people, just because some people are screaming doesn’t mean you have to start screaming too.” She scoffs, and the whites of her eyes pop as the bass slips into her voice for a second. “We get it. You have problems too. But your problems are playing on every TV station, radio station, and podcast throughout the world. Give someone else a chance sometimes.”

Sam smiles. Her mouth cracks open for a ‘thank you,’ but her throat closes up a bit at the thought of actually saying it. So, instead, she says, “Dear white people, you can pretend that the fairest and the finest of black folk are yours to own as much as you’d like, but eventually, they all show their true colors.” Like the Dean, whose tear stained cheeks will taunt Sam for months to come, for sure. But maybe this is what they need. She can swing by his office once Troy’s out, once he’s gotten a moment to grieve and console the fact that he couldn’t brainwash his own son into being anything other than who Troy was meant to be. She can try to get him to defend AP, to convince the donors that spaces like Armstrong Parker give the black kids somewhere to go so they don’t get caught up in anything else. Or something.

“Dear white people,” Coco preens for a beat, full on pops one of her own curls, “yes, this is all me. Just because you don’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not real.”

Sam corrects her, “Just because you don’t see us.” They’re still very real. Full, complete people who have a whole world of bullshit to navigate within themselves and nowhere near enough energy to also deal with the bullshit coming from everywhere else.

But she digresses. (She wants to digress.) (She needs to.) Honestly, they’re supposed to be having fun. Having a conversation with an audience who only hears the term of address and rarely anything else unless she says it with a smile and enough platitudes around it that she doesn’t seem threatening. And that’s still so weird — that’s a thing that she’s always wanted to express, how absolutely fucking weird it is that she’s barely over five feet and somehow she is still threatening to so many people. That she’s only palatable when she’s infallible and spritely. That her own people only want her around when she can serve their greater purpose and that some of them don’t know what to do with her when she doesn’t dedicate every aspect of her being to being that person for them. No, not a person; an idol, a figurehead. How is she any better than Troy?

Sam rolls her shoulders back. Grinds out, “Dear white people, you don’t have a monopoly on dehumanization. You might do a damn good job of reducing everyone and everything around you to property cards like Park and Broadway, but we all have a way of seeing only what we want.“

Coco barely breathes after that. She says, “Like?” But the word’s nothing more than a link for Sam’s sentence, a bridge for her thoughts that have the both of them rooted in the middle of the hall on a Wednesday night.

But how is Sam supposed to keep going? How does she string together more words for people that are literally nowhere around? And how many times does she have to use the phrase ‘dear white people’ before she’s required to recognize the little internalized part of her that needs these reminders too? Maybe not all of them, but some. She needs a lot of reminders.

Like, Dear Sam White, you can laugh all you want about Olive and the president in Defamation but it won’t fix your own tragic love life. Or, Dear Sam White, making jokes about your blackness does not stop those who look at you and question its legitimacy. Dear Sam White, fucking one of your best friends will always ruin everything, even if you’re both sad and yearning and he’s everything you’re supposed to want in a man. Dear Sam, you can write as many one-sided letters as you want but until you respond to these ones from yourself? Yeah, you’re not going to actually do any good for anyone.

“Sam?” Coco stares at her — at Sam — with the softness that gets locked away under picture perfect smiles and practiced precision. With the same care that went into freshman year YouTube spirals on how to do perfect pompadours and dumb product hauls that cost more than either of them would ever willingly, willfully spend on curl defining cremes and conditioners. The same amount of love that apparently still exists, after two years of petty bullshit and not nearly enough of anything else.

Sam’s voice cracks on the first word. “Dear white people,” Coco’s secret shame was hating them, and Sam’s hated so many for so long. Hated yet nurtured them. Poked at them for the sake of reminding them that she is not the only one at the sleepover and not the only one who hates feeling like the motherfucking only one whenever she doesn’t just grin and bear it and tamp down on the parts of her that make her feel whole and home. Goodness fuck! “I’ve missed…” growing up with other black friends that she chose for herself, and getting to go through college with this black friend in front of her who she picked before she even knew she really was. “I miss my friend. And I never would’ve had her without AP.” And Sam taps a foot into the ground to try and quell the tears building in her eyes, and she glances away, but they slip out regardless of how composed she wishes she could be. And Coco doesn’t rear back, or hide away, or search for some distance. Coco’s not telling her that they won’t work out like Gabe did, or ignoring her like Reggie is, or-or whatever it is that Jo’s doing now. “And I don’t know if I’m doing anything right anymore. So it’d just be really appreciated, white people, if you could stop fucking up long enough for me to get my own shit back together.”

Coco laughs. One sharp crack of joy before she tamps it back down. “I’m sorry. I am. Really, I feel you, and you’ve got the music video tears going down your cheeks but—“ another laugh “—sweets, when did you ever have your shit together?”

Sam shoves Coco’s shoulders with a “Really, bitch?” But it’s enough to break the cloud a bit. Enough to get her smiling too.

“I’m just saying, freshman year to now, only real difference are better clothes.”

“You know what, I’m taking the compliment and ignoring the rest,” Sam says.

Coco shrugs. “You know what they say about ignorance.”

Sam rolls her eyes. Her phone jumps in her pocket. She tugs it out to a new message from Reggie.

Reggie to Sam // 10:34pm // It’ll take some getting used to, but hey we been through worse. // my sister

Progress, right? Maybe their friendship can be fixed.

Reggie to Sam // 10:35pm // So about your boy Troy, I got an idea.

Sam smiles. Time just keeps on moving, doesn’t it? Nothing much they can do but find the little moments and keep on moving with it. She tucks her phone back into her pocket and turns to face the hall. “Is ignorance what keeps the people in Florida from recognizing the bleach? Or is that the whole labels thing?”

Coco strolls down the hall with her. “People in Florida drinking bleach now?”

Sam’s turn to laugh. “And you call me ignant.”

“You are.”

“I’m woke. App official and everything.”

“It’s a stupid app.”

“If it’s stupid why do you care?”

“’If it’s stupid why do you care?’”

Sam rolls her eyes. “Okay, real mature. See, this is why I moved out.”

“‘Cause you don’t know how to have fun?” Coco taunts.

“Oh, I can have fun.” Just maybe, not while Troy’s still in holding. Tomorrow works. After they’ve had a little time to process. It’s a lot for a day, like a whole ten chapters worth.

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anyways, I adored the show and would be very down to talk about it with people. + peep more dwp moments in this series I’m doing

[gaiatheorist]

Choices, behaviours, consequences.

The latest stop on my voyage around the NHS Mental Health service has wiped me out. I’ve dumped myself into one of my self-judgemental phases, and I need to haul myself out, because it’s making me physically ill, when I’m already emotionally fragile. I don’t have the capacity to deal with both-at-once, on top of all the pre-existing conditions. I’m allowing myself one rabbit-hole, then I’ll either ‘post’ or ‘close.’

Choice- I have the choice to ruminate in fragmented snatches about the therapeutic pathway I’m being allocated onto, or purge it all in one go, and ‘close the box’.

Behaviours- I’ve had a couple of days (my concept of day/night is as skewed as everything else) of having intrusive snatches of “That’s not MY fault!” and “That’s a useful behaviour, I want to keep that bit.” It’s not productive, but ‘blocking’ emotional responses is what I need to work on. (Badly phrased, I need to work on stopping-blocking, and learn to do the whole ‘mindful/in the moment’ thing. I can’t do that on my own, that’s what the therapy is going to teach me to do.) 

Consequences- A fair old chunk of self-loathing, and a few spikes of “I’m not changing THAT!” I’ll ‘make this worse before I make it better’ by typing this, but, for now, rules/routine are my least-harmful coping strategy. My pretend-rule of ‘once I type it, it is done’ might well be a strategy the therapist advises, or not, the old ‘diarising/mood-journal’ thing, for now, it’s all I have.

The choices/behaviour/consequence tag is borrowed from a behaviour policy implemented at the school I used to work in. “If you choose to continue with behaviour ‘x’, you are choosing consequence ‘y’.” Logical, linear, rational, which worked with the students who understood the concept, but not the students who didn’t feel that their behaviour was a choice. That’s where I find myself, like a twelve-year-old having a screaming meltdown in a maths class because everything-is-awful, and now there’s algebra in it as well. 

That’s a difficult admission. When I’m focused on something, it doesn’t happen, when my mind is engaged, there’s less capacity for the disjointed thinking, and disordered behaviours. When I’m ‘in the zone’ I can be phenomenal, I haven’t had a zone of late. I’ve had two years of drifting, ironically, having ‘won’ my disability benefit, and now having the capacity to address my physical and emotional health is in-part responsible for the drift. 17 months of that two years were spent engaged in a battle with DWP. Pyrrhic victory? Possibly, I’ll need to do it all again in nine months. I’ll still have brain injuries, but I might have had some therapy for the Mental Health side of things. (Externalising, raging against the machine, there. The systems are atrocious, though.) This distracted-drifting phase isn’t good for me, and there’s only so much of it I can fill with free OU courses. 

There are two prongs to that difficult admission. I ‘caught myself’ showing off yesterday, that’s one of my behaviours. I was plodding through an OU course on juvenile delinquency, and my notes for section 3.3 turned out to be a more condensed version of section 3.4. Look at me, aren’t I clever? No, not especially, it was an introductory level course on a subject I already have some broad awareness of. I was almost-but-not-quite that gobby kid in the classroom, who kicks off with “We’ve already done this!” during a revision class. Slightly more self-aware than I was when I was at school, I chose to expand-out on my knowledge, rather than dismiss it as baby-work. (I very clearly remember the Special Needs teacher assessing me when I moved schools, “Miss, I’ve finished.” “Well done, now turn over the page and do the next sheet.” “Miss, I’ve done all of the sheets.” That was repeated with last year’s neuro-psych assessment, but in reverse. “I don’t know.” “Would you like me to repeat the question.” “No, repeating the question won’t help, I still won’t be able to calculate the answer, the numbers are 3, 8, and 4, I just don’t know how to move them around.”) 

That one is a learned behaviour, the educational system taught me that ‘being intelligent’ was rewarded, taught me to crow-when-I-know, and I’ve built that into my weird defensive mechanisms, trying to ‘prove’ I’m clever. Sometimes I’m unkind with it, my delusions of grandeur are going to have to go. Sometimes I’ll argue for the sake of it, not so much now, because I expose myself to fewer people to argue with. Sometimes, I’ll get an idea into my head, and refuse to back down, my patented tactic of “Other people will eventually agree, just to get me to shut up.” 

The MH assessment was horrible on many fronts, I think that the one that has hit hardest is acknowledging that I’m not as intelligent as I like to project. “Did you use any of the strategies your last counsellor gave you?” “Not really, they were strategies I already knew, from being a Learning Mentor. I didn’t think that the sort of thing I’d teach a 13-year-old was appropriate.” (I bloody hate worksheets, long-standing issue with generic strategies for individual issues.) “Maybe that foundation level is where you need to start from.” She might as well have punched me in the guts, that winded-wounded me, but she’s right, ‘knowing’ something is not the same as ‘doing’ it, I’ve been ‘acting clever’ for most of my life. I was acutely aware of my tendency to ‘shout out the answer’ during the group-work I had to do to access further intervention. (Now chuckling at the time I whacked myself in the face with a rolling-pin after my brother’s ex and I imposed a rule that only the person holding the rolling-pin could speak, we were both babblers.) I wasn’t fully engaged with the course, because I was consciously suppressing my urge to act-up, show-off, be-clever. 

My Dad told me I was stupid, ugly, weak. My ex compounded that, by belittling me at every opportunity. I stopped speaking to them both, because I’m Little-Miss-Can’t-Be-Wrong, but now a qualified mental health doctor has very gently pointed out that I’m not-all-that. I am undone. (I did have a really unpleasant period of wondering whether there was any point existing if I couldn’t be ‘that’, but, if I can’t be ‘that’, I’ll just have to be something else.)  

Cognitive Analytic Therapy. A sixteen-session course of relational therapy, 1:1 with a therapist, where we’ll pick apart my disordered thinking, and work on re-routing it. Learned behaviours can be un-learned, right? I’ve had my two days of don’t-want-to stompy tantrum, and accepted that I cannot be a smart-arse about this. I need to go in with an open mind, and not roll my eyes when the crayons come out. (There will be crayons, there’s a ‘mapping’ exercise, which ISN’T the same as the one I did in RE in secondary school, thank you very much, dismissive-superiority-complex head.) I’ve always had disordered thinking, and now I have a damaged brain as well, I could ‘cope’ with the cognitive tangents when my brain was intact, with a variety of maladaptive strategies. It’s going to be a case of taking guidance on what I need to let go of, Marie Kondo for my mind. I need to not obsessively cling to my security blanket of weird, the therapist is not going to ‘take’ the fundamental essence of me away, they’re going to help me to make it more functional. 

I don’t ‘have to’ be an Instagram-Stepford-wife, nobody is going to force me to take up kitten-plaiting and cake-decorating, but I will have to relinquish some of my control-behaviours. I will have to accept that parrot-repeating a theory is not the same as understanding and applying it, and that I can’t continue deflecting intense emotions with my bizarre tool-kit of avoidance tactics. I give lip-service to the notion of recognise-reflect-respond, but tend to skip the ‘reflect’ stage, and ‘respond’ by putting the emotion on the ‘things to deal with later’ pile. They’re not going to try to make me into something I’m not, some of my coping mechanisms are acceptable, and you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. 

Onwards. I have the referral for the CAT, which I acknowledge that I need. I have a referral to the MH social prescribing team, which will probably come through first, a holding-strategy of day-centres that probably smell funny, and ‘little bits of voluntary work.’ I’ve also requested a formal diagnosis, I need an official name for ‘this’, apparently I shouldn’t use ‘Complex PTSD’ due to the absence of flashbacks and nightmares about the original abuse, I was too tired to mention the panic attacks and nightmares I have about the more-recent compounding factors. I’m moving forwards, and I have to seek-and-follow, because I can’t untangle this mess on my own. Every time I’ve tried to put myself back together, I’ve followed my usual DIY practice of deciding not to put ALL the screws back in, because it’ll be easier to access the next time it breaks. It’s not going to be a quick fix, but at least it’s not medication, I was able to articulate that the ‘Prozac fog’ on top of the brain injuries posed a risk of self-neglect. (Smirking, that my adorable GP knows me well enough to keep prescribing enough medication to kill a small horse, he knows I’m going nowhere along the overdose route.) 

I don’t know whether the therapy or diagnosis will happen before my disability benefit comes up for review. I do suspect that DWP will attempt to declare me fit-for-work regardless of whether anything has changed, so I’ll just have to deal with that when it happens, and not rabbit-hole myself about how the punitive-scrutiny of the DWP systems and processes are part of the reason I need help. I was damaged before the brain haemorrhage, before the separation from the ex, before the kid going away to uni, before I lost my job, and had to throw myself on the mercy of state benefits, it’s the cumulative toll of all-of-it that’s tipped me. Saying “That happened, accept it and move on.” isn’t actually accepting, it’s deflecting, and I can’t keep doing that. 

[maximilianyap-blog]

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[gaiatheorist]

DWP- Dealing With Paranoia.

I have different coping strategies to a lot of people. When I engaged with the outside world more, there was an air of bravado to me, a carefully nurtured appearance of being carefree. There was nothing I couldn’t deal with, I ‘thought on my feet’, and saw through whatever chaos or calamity was happening, to pinpoint a logical, or at least acceptable pathway. In some ways it was innate, just how my mind functions, to triage a situation or potential future situation, map-out possible outcomes and risks, and razor-sharp, whittle down to the preferred outcome with minimal risks attached. 

It was a useful skill to have in my previous employment, the ability to brush the dirt from the knees of my trousers after attending a first-aid incident, then distract or divert a student who was behaving inappropriately, before meeting with yet another parent who wanted to shout at someone about some policy or other being “Paffetic!” Some days we’d have a fire alarm, or a dead pigeon to deal with, or the brilliance of a “Dog in the playground!” I miss “Dog in the playground!” incidents.

It’s also a useful skill to have in terms of working around my brain injuries, the constant background rattle of risk assessment for every task, however mundane, keeps me mostly-safe. (You don’t have to fall off the toilet many times before you figure out a strategy to reduce the risk of it happening again, nobody wants to have to phone an ambulance with their trousers around their ankles.) 

The flip-side is the anxiety over all of the ‘What if?’ outcomes. Mostly it’s just background noise, “What if I fall over?” “I won’t fall over if I use the furniture as hand-rails when the vertigo-thing is bad.” “What if the fatigue hits early, and I forget to do something important?” “Do the important things early in the day, the less-important things can be rolled over to tomorrow if needed.” Most of my functional deficits are manageable, with some adaptations, I manage day-to-day because I over-think everything, and have contingency plans for everything within my control. 

It’s the things beyond my control that are the most difficult to deal with, the ‘unknowns’ that are entirely dependent on other people or agencies. Right now, I’m dealing with more unknowns than I’m comfortable with, DWP, Student Finance, and the NHS are my current ‘sea of troubles’, and I have Thalassophobia. It’s not the NHS’s fault that they’re stretched beyond capacity, but they are in part responsible for the precarious state I’m in now. If there had been more capacity for appropriate guidance when I was discharged from hospital following the brain haemorrhage, I probably wouldn’t be where I am now. There wasn’t, and I am. I had my monitoring brain scan last week, and I ‘should’ have the results within 2 weeks. I won’t, I’ll have to chase it, at the same time as trying to rescue my son’s Student Finance, and feeling like DWP have me on an electronic tag for the ‘crime’ of needing state support while I try to sort out my health.

Universal Credit, “Rolling six benefits into one!”, except it isn’t really. Despite numerous objections to the scheme, the government are carrying on regardless with the roll-out. The flagship has no lifeboats at all, but the band is playing on, the captain charging ahead, while the crew focus only on their discreet tasks. “That’s not my department, sorry.” The current phase of roll-out is transferring current claimants onto ‘Full Service’, the new, all-electronic system. How thoroughly modern, to cut out the pointless ‘time-sheet’ my work coach used to insist I present to her, to evidence what I was doing to actively seek employment. (That’s just my personal niggle, everything I was doing was hand-written in my note-pad, and then typed up into the ‘homework sheet’ for the coach to initial. If this system kills me, the note-pad will be on my desk. The evidence was already online, every task logged on the ‘Universal Jobmatch’ website, I was effectively not just duplicating, but triplicating the data, as back-up. ‘Just in case’, like the time my printer wouldn’t work, and my coach had to look up her password to log onto the system, rather than allow my handwritten notes.) 

If I wanted to be kind, I’d say there are ‘teething problems’ with the roll-out of the new system. The guidance for work coaches on transfer-claims is 19 pages long, all very linear-flow-charts, it’s not the lines that are bothering me, it’s what’s between them. My work coach gave me a sheet of paper in June, “Universal Jobmatch is being phased out, but you already have a CV, don’t you? You don’t need to do anything yet.” Then, at my last appointment, last month, she advised that the ‘live’ service was being replaced by the ‘full service’, but she hadn’t been on the training for it, she had to call over a colleague to ask what would happen next. “You’ll get a message when you need to come in for an appointment with your ID.” (The same ID as I presented a year and a half ago, that they already have on their systems, but I suppose it’s a fraud-prevention strategy.)

I didn’t get ‘a message’, on September 26th, two brown envelopes landed on my doormat, I skimmed them very briefly, and put them on my ‘do that tomorrow’ pile, because my anxiety was already ramped up high about the horrible brain scan I had booked on the 29th. Without going into too much technical terminology, one letter isn’t dated, and says ‘get ready to switch’, and that ‘we will write to you and tell you when you need to switch and how.’ That’s the UC491. In the same post came the UC492, the ‘call to action’, which stated “If you don’t complete all the activities to switch to the online claim by 3/10/2018, your payments may stop and your claim may be closed.” Info-sheet, with no actual information on it, and ‘first warning’, in the same post. (The UC492 is dated September 19th, second-class post, I didn’t receive it until the 26th, or read it properly until the 27th. Six days to register, input all the details they already have, book, and attend an appointment. I’m female, but I’m not Doctor Who, and two of the six days were already tied up with the brain scan. The scans always knock me sideways the following day, the sensory issues from my brain injuries are not conducive to being trapped in a noisy metal tube, and then getting home on public transport with a whopper of a headache, and exacerbated sensory over-stimulus.)

I panicked. Initially that I’d be called for my appointment on the same day as my scan, and incur a sanction for refusing to cancel the scan to attend the appointment. Working around that, one of the ‘commitments’ I’m currently obliged to fulfil is ‘seek and follow medical advice’, the particular scanner they use for my brain is a very expensive MRA machine, cancelling that scan would inconvenience the NHS, and there would be an additional wait for a new appointment. 

I typed in the link from the letter. Which didn’t work the first time I tried it, I’d probably made a typo, cold hands, and eyes that sometimes go a bit ‘off’, I frequently hit the key to the right of the one I’m aiming for. (They have my email address, and mobile number, they could have sent the link electronically.) I eventually got ‘in’ to the site, and, after a bit of searching around, found the right link-out from there. Then my laptop crashed, full black-screen meltdown, so I had to restart it. It took me four hours to complete the forms, part of that is my disability, but I’d already side-researched, and the system times-out after an unspecified period of inactivity. Taking my fatigued eyes away from the screen for six minutes in every hour wasn’t an option. (Yes, there’s a ‘save’ feature, but I was panicking. The inference that if I failed to complete the activities, my benefit ‘may’ be stopped was enough to tip me into major anxiety.) I thought I’d finished it all, when I was presented with another layer, ‘VERIFY’, where I entered my contact details, bank details, and had to take a photograph of the front and back of my provisional driving licence, along with a photograph of my actual face. (Which probably doesn’t look like the photo on my driving licence, it’s 8 years old, and I’ve had a stroke since then.) That all seems as dodgy as hell to me, I wouldn’t hand over my bank details and photographs of my driving licence to a real person, but the system said I needed to do it to complete the online application, so I did it.

The ‘VERIFY’ thing couldn’t be completed, it’ll either be my stroke-y face, or my inability to hold my phone completely still for photographs. All of the faffing about with ‘VERIFY’ meant that the transfer-application had timed-out, and bounced me back to the start-screen. Four hours, gone, and I didn’t have another four hours of functionality in me to do it all again. I had to ‘phone the helpline’, as per the on-screen guidance. I hate telephone conversations, I can’t read the non-verbal cues, and I never trust the person on the other end of the line to record what I’ve said accurately, if I say it accurately in the first place. I have verbal aphasia, sometimes I can’t find the ‘right’ word, so substitute one quickly, and hope it’s not too far out of context. There’s a very slim probability of me using the ‘wrong’ word, and triggering fraud procedures, because my brain doesn’t work properly all of the time. ‘Kenneth’ was able to confirm that my transfer details had saved, and I didn’t have the capacity to go off on a rant about the details already being in the system. Between 10.57, and 11.21, he repeatedly assured me that I shouldn’t worry, and that the deadline on the letter, of 3/10/18 was ‘more of an incentive, really.’ Kenneth didn’t have access to the parts of the system that hold the records on my ‘limited capacity for work’, and the UC branch of DWP don’t communicate with the PIP branch, who have all of the medical evidence and details of the functional impairments my disabilities cause. Kenneth booked me a ‘Personal Security Number and evidence’ appointment, and, when he asked the standard question about ‘any accessibility needs’, I explained that an appointment earlier in the day, rather than later would reduce the risk of my cognitive fatigue having an impact. 

“Right, Kenneth, I have brain injuries, so I’m going to read back everything you’ve asked me to do, to make sure I have it all right?”

(Attend this place, at this time on this date, and provide these pieces of evidence of identity, is that everything?)

“Ah, no, not this Friday, next Friday.”

“That’s why I read it back to you. Next Friday is outside the timescale stated on the letter.”

“Ah, don’t worry about that, you’ve made the appointment, and it’s in the system, you just have to attend it now.”    

I did worry. The letter had stated that the online transfer had to be completed, and the appointment booked AND attended, with appropriate evidence, by 3/10/18, and Kenneth had booked me an appointment on 5/10/18. Kenneth had also told me to take my bank card, driving licence and tenancy agreement, and to get a mini-statement from an ATM as evidence that I had access to that bank account. “Is that everything?” “Yes, that’s everything.” That wasn’t everything. I could be kind, and say that the system is new, and staff are navigating their way around it, but Kenneth didn’t tell me I’d need to provide ‘two months of rent statements or bank statements.’ (Like anyone has a physical ‘rent book’ anymore?) 

On the Monday, as I’d spoken to Kenneth on the Thursday, my email pinged, confirming the appointment. I skimmed it on my phone, and didn’t notice that the time had changed, from 10.50, to 15.30, I was still fuzzy from the brain scan. On the Tuesday, my email pinged again, “You need to read a message in your Universal Credit online journal. Sign into your account today.” ‘Today’ is going to present an issue for me if they send messages later in the day, I’m not fully functional in the afternoon and evening, there’s a much higher probability of cognitive slips. It wasn’t a ‘message’, it was another list of tasks to complete, including ‘preparing for work activities.’, and some equal opportunities monitoring stuff. (Interesting that they wanted a definition of my gender and sexual orientation, but there was no field for disability.) 

I noticed the change of time for the appointment, and entered a query online, requesting confirmation as to whether the appointment was 10.50, 15.30, or both. It took over 24 hours for an agent to respond, and he still wasn’t answering my question. I pressed for clarification, stating that the anxiety about potential ‘failed to attend’ processes was impacting on me. He confirmed that it was just the 15.30 appointment. As much as my son ‘hates’ the world-swerve to having to fact-check everything, I hate the way these systems are making me paranoid, I’m developing obsessive over-checking behaviours, because if I’m marked as ‘failed to attend’, DWP can stop my payments.

Yesterday, fatigued after the sensory overload of going for my ‘flu jab, I checked my email. (Conscientious to the end, I’ve never had the ‘flu immunisation before, but, single-and-disabled, if I catch the ‘flu, I won’t be able to feed myself, or manage my medication, I’m a potential cost to the NHS or social care.) There had been an email from DWP while I was walking back from the immunisation, and I must have been in an area with no signal, because it hadn’t ‘pinged.’ An operative at the local job centre had sent a message asking if I could attend an appointment at 12.00. Instead? As well? I still don’t know, because I’ve replied in the ‘online journal’, and had no response as yet. I even went so far as trying to telephone the job centre to query it, mindful that I might not notice an electronic response late in the day. I tried, I Google-searched for the Job Centre telephone number, which is now on 0345 number, not a standard one. That defaults you to an automated message, advising that all Universal Credit queries must now be handled online. I tried the Universal Credit full service transfer telephone number, same message, everything is online once your application is in.  

Some DWP departments only ‘allow’ you to change an appointment twice, there’s the ‘without good reason’ qualifier, and I’m very, VERY good at reasons. Technically, that appointment has now been set for three different times, so I could be on a ‘second warning’, after the first ‘call to action’. I haven’t requested any of the changes, and I haven’t been obstructive, only stating in one message that I had requested an earlier appointment rather than a late one in my original communication, as my ‘reasonable adjustment.’ 

I need to reserve enough functional cognitive capacity to work around systems that aren’t working, and, in spite of my disabilities and circumstances, I’m one of the ‘lucky’ ones. I know how to use a computer, and I have a relatively stable broadband connection. Some people aren’t as adept with tech. Some people won’t open the initial letters, because brown envelopes are never good news. Some people won’t have the functional literacy skills to understand the letters. (The ‘call to action’ tasks are in a margin-block, away from the main body of the letter, and the potential consequences are on a second page, the formatting of the letter does look as if the first page contains all the information, it doesn’t.) After the ‘charitable’ gesture of making the helpline a free-phone number last year, this government has proven that to be an Indian gift. Acknowledging that some claimants would be in such abject hardship that they couldn’t afford phone-credit, or to keep their land-line connected, and then making the next phase of the roll-out completely electronic. “Just pop into the Job Centre, you can use our computers!”, if it took me four hours, I dread to think how long it’s going to take hunt-and-peck typists.

I have a paranoia-loop about my ‘claim’, there’s a streak of righteous indignation that DWP already have all of my information, and I didn’t ask for a new system to complicate matters, but I need to be very careful how I word that to DWP staff, lest I’m seen to be obstructive. If DWP don’t like the look of my ‘evidence’ of rent, they’ll delay the claim, they did the first time, it was 9 weeks between my initial claim and them finalising the ‘housing element’ that doesn’t actually cover my rent. The point they had issue with at the time was clarified, and I know how to work around it again, but I shouldn’t have to, they already have it on record once. If they decide to play hard-ball on the ‘housing element’, I can technically cover my rent, by topping-up with my PIP disability benefit. I shouldn’t have to, that payment is intended to cover the additional costs to me of living with complex disabilities, it’s not for DWP to use as a non-refundable overdraft facility, while my documents sit in a drawer somewhere, until I chase progress. 

I have a little money in the bank, some people won’t. I have additional funds coming in from my PIP, some people don’t have that safety net. I am paranoid that DWP are going to ‘sanction’ my payments on technicalities that I have no control over, technicalities that are deliberately worked into the fabric of their systems, a safety-net that’s more holes than substance. October should have been the start of me addressing my on-going, complex and permanent health issues, with my son back at uni, the PIP awarded, and the ‘limited capacity for work’ notice applied to my UC commitment. Instead of allowing me to focus on my health, as the initial step to being able to work in the future, DWP are exacerbating the mental health issues, and compounding the cognitive components of my brain injuries. 

I’ll have a clearer idea of where I stand after Friday. I’ll attend the 12.00 appointment, ‘acting on last instruction given’, and clarify then whether the 15.30 still stands or not. (Good luck to DWP if they try to suggest that attending two appointments means I’m fully capable of any/all employment, none of my ‘points’ on the PIP award were for mobility or planning, I over-plan.) What I need to NOT do is sit in this chair any longer, ‘just in case’ I miss an email from DWP, that’s a maladaptive coping mechanism. I need to eat, and sort out some mundane housekeeping, AND I think I’m a bit foggy after my ‘flu jab, which isn’t helping. The Marionette PM has stated that she wants a society ‘for everyone’, but not all ‘everyones’ are equal. Some people will fall through the gaps in the systems, collective collateral, who will likely be dismissed as ‘scroungers’ by elements of the press. I won’t fall through, because I’m paranoid, and then the NHS will be left to address the paranoia that the DWP has created and compounded.