I welcome Max Fishel’s call for more reporting on the effects of benefits assessments on sick and disabled claimants (Letters, 8 July). The appalling quality of some assessments has been publicised, but less often mentioned is their unnecessary frequency.
People with long-term health conditions, repeatedly assessed and found unfit for work over a period of decades, may well just get a two-year award of employment and support allowance on reassessment despite no improvement, as though some healing miracle is likely to take place. Disability living allowance used to be granted indefinitely where appropriate; but it is now being replaced by personal independence payment, which is awarded for fixed time periods.
Atos assessors who recommend an indefinite award are overruled by the DWP. Benefits applications involve prolonged effort and intense anxiety. Frequent repeat assessments are dreaded and a blight on people who in any case have a very poor quality of life. They must be expensive for the government in the short term; the longer-term agenda is presumably to discourage claims.
Patricia de Wolfe
London
• In your article (A million older people ‘badly let down’ by lack of social care funding, 9 July), you highlight the striking number of older people who are being neglected by our social care system.
This is an issue we must urgently address, but it does not just affect elderly people in our society. Eight in ten people we recently surveyed, who would have been eligible for aids and adaptations from their local authorities, are missing out on free equipment. This can be a grab rail in the bathroom or kitchen aids to help someone make meals for themselves. By not providing people with these means to stay independent for longer, we are putting strain on other health and care services, which are already under pressure.
We are calling on local authorities to ensure people with arthritis know about, and can access, the support they’re entitled to. But we also need central government to step up and support local authorities in fulfilling their duties.
With 17.8 million people with arthritis and related conditions in the UK, the potential impact of the proper provision of aids and adaptations should not be underestimated.
Dr Liam O’Toole
Chief executive officer, Arthritis Research UK
• Thank you for your excellent and well-deserved celebration of the NHS – but I have watched out in vain for a matching tribute to that other component of the welfare state, the construction of a universal range of social benefits. Its centrepiece was the National Assistance Act, the vesting day of which was also 5 July 1948. Its chief proponent was the highly effective minister of national insurance, Jim Griffiths. Together with Aneurin Bevan, this meant that two Welsh ex-miners who left school at 13 were responsible for the founding of the welfare state.
Eric Midwinter
Harpenden, Hertfordshire
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