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Five grassroots groups of disabled people have asked psychiatrists to explain why they have not spoken out publicly about a scheme that allows work coaches to refer universal credit (UC) claimants for mental health treatment. Mental Health Resistance Network, Disabled People […]
A new campaign aims to force the government to scrap its insistence that finding a job or returning to work is an important health “outcome” for those with mental distress. The claim that stable employment is “an important outcome for recovery […]
Grassroots activists have challenged the government and mental health professionals over their failure to address widespread attacks on their rights. Members of the Mental Health Resistance Network (MHRN) were outside a conference in central London on Tuesday to protest at the […]
Disabled activists say the new “minister for suicide prevention” could leave herself “legally compromised” by her continuing failure to promise to warn local agencies that claimants of out-of-work disability benefits face a higher risk of taking their own lives. Jackie Doyle-Price […]
Government plans for a huge expansion of personal health budgets could help to deliver independent living for disabled people, according to a leading disabled peer. Baroness [Jane] Campbell (pictured), who has been receiving a personal health budget herself for more than […]
The Department for Work and Pensions has refused to name the charities and other organisations being paid millions of pounds to help deliver its new disability employment programme across England and Wales. All six of the new Work and Health Programme […]
Disabled activists have called on the charity Mind to explain how seconding a senior member of staff to work for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) over the last year has affected mental health service-users. In an open letter to […]
“Staggering” new figures show that the proportion of people claiming the main out-of-work disability benefit who have attempted suicide doubled between 2007 and 2014. The new analysis of NHS statistics, being published for the first time by Disability News Service (DNS), […]
Campaigners have taken part in a vigil outside the Royal Courts of Justice, as the high court was hearing claims by a disabled woman that new benefit rules are “unfair and discriminatory”. Regulations that came into force in March mean that […]
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is using lost appointment letters for face-to-face assessments as an excuse for turning down disabled people’s benefit claims, to help it cut spending on social security, it has been claimed. Concerns have been raised […]