'Patronising' to move disabled on to dole

Photo / Wairarapa Times-Age

A disabled group says a Treasury proposal to shift 80,000 sick and disabled people on to the dole is "naive and patronising".

Disabled Persons Assembly policy manager Wendi Wicks said most disabled people wanted to work, but needed help with healthcare, transport, education and housing to get suitable jobs.

"To say that it's just about getting a job is incredibly naive and patronising," she said.

Other social lobby groups also reacted angrily to a Treasury report to the Government's welfare working group which recommends moving work-capable people off the sickness and invalid benefits on to the dole, making sole parents look for work before their children turn 6, and contracting out welfare services to private providers.

The report proposes a work-capacity assessment, possibly contracted out, to reclassify sickness and invalid beneficiaries into three groups - those with no long-term capacity to work, who would get the invalid benefit; those with limited long-term capacity, who would get the sickness benefit; and those with some capacity to work in the short term, who would be transferred to the dole.

It says similar reforms in Britain found 69 per cent of applicants were "fit for work". In New Zealand that would mean more than 80,000 people now on sickness and invalid benefits.

But Ms Wicks said the British reform was causing hardship and sparked a Facebook "Black Triangle" campaign, named after the black triangles mentally disabled people had to wear in Nazi concentration camps.

"We know that disabled people there are both terrified of the poverty and angry about what is being done," she said.

A report based on 92,000 complaints to Britain's citizens advice bureaus found numerous cases of "seriously sick and disabled people" being refused sickness benefits.

"People with serious illnesses and disabilities who could not reasonably be expected to work are being found fit for work," the bureaus said.

"Other people who might, with considerable support, be helped into work, are being 'written off' by being found fit for work and therefore not eligible for [the sickness benefit]."

The Disabled Persons Assembly has told the welfare working group that disabled people would need help to cover work-related costs such as taxis.

Child Poverty Action Group economist Susan St John said other countries that required sole parents to go back to work when their children were young provided subsidised childcare - which was being cut in New Zealand.

A report to Treasury by consultant Michael Fletcher said moving sick and disabled people into work would have high "short-term costs" such as more case managers, vocational rehabilitation programmes and possibly job subsidies.

"Even if some or most of any reductions in benefit expenditure are offset by other additional expenditure on programmes to assist people back into, or to stay in, work, there are both social benefits to the people affected and economic gains from increasing the size of the workforce," he said.

The report proposes more case managers for sick, disabled and sole-parent jobseekers, asking case managers to co-ordinate client's medical treatment and rehabilitation, and "a targeted set of wage subsidies" for sick and disabled workers.

ON THE WEB

www.ips.ac.nz/WelfareWorkingGroup/Meetings.html