{"id":7716,"date":"2012-01-12T00:01:32","date_gmt":"2012-01-11T23:01:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=7716"},"modified":"2012-01-12T00:04:32","modified_gmt":"2012-01-11T23:04:32","slug":"the-scandal-that-is-the-wca","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=7716","title":{"rendered":"The scandal that is the WCA"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Nine months ago, I did\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=5322\">a posting<\/a> about how I had accompanied a good friend of mine with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) to an interview as part of a Work Capability Assessment (WCA) because he had applied for the new\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.direct.gov.uk\/en\/DisabledPeople\/FinancialSupport\/esa\/index.htm\">Employment &amp; Support Allowance<\/a> (ESA). He was refused the ESA, he appealed, and he has now been called for an appeal hearing. Today I posted a statement of support which I hope will help him to win his appeal.<\/p>\n<p>Ironically, this morning the &#8220;Guardian&#8221; newspaper devoted <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/society\/2012\/jan\/10\/atos-wca-citizens-advice-right-first-time?INTCMP=SRCH\">a whole page<\/a> to a feature on how poor the WCA assessments have been. Citizens Advice found that, in a sample of 37 cases, 43% revealed serious levels of inaccuracy. Meanwhile 39% of appeals are being found in the claimant&#8217;s favour.<\/p>\n<p>Then, this evening, the House of Lords defeated the Government three times on its proposals to tighten up further eligibility for the ESA allowance as explained <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/uk-politics-16515414\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The deficit in the Government&#8217;s finances has to be cut &#8211; but not at the expense of the most vulnerable in our society when they most need a measure of support.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nine months ago, I did\u00a0a posting about how I had accompanied a good friend of mine with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) to an interview as part of a Work Capability Assessment (WCA) because he had applied for the new\u00a0Employment &amp; Support Allowance (ESA). He was refused the ESA, he appealed, and he has now been [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-british-current-affairs","category-my-life-thoughts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7716"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7716\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7723,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7716\/revisions\/7723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}