We understand that benefits and welfare reform are issues of fundamental importance to a huge number of people with mental health problems. That's why it is a priority campaign for Mind.
We are working on a number of fronts to fight for the interests of people with mental health problems in the welfare reform process.
Some of these changes can be challenged as part of our work on the Welfare Reform Bill but other changes, and the general direction of travel, need to be challenged more broadly.
The Work Capability Assessment (WCA) is the gateway to Employment and Support Allowance (ESA), which is replacing existing incapacity benefits (IB). New applicants for ESA have been going through the WCA since October 2008, and reporting significant problems with the process. Current IB claimants have also begun to be transferred to ESA via the WCA.
Last year's Independent Review of the assessment was a vital opportunity to feed in our concerns and call for improvements. Mind Chief Executive Paul Farmer sat on the Scrutiny Panel as an advocate of the disability sector, in order to represent the needs and concerns of people with mental health conditions and other disabilities in the Review process.
As a result of the high quality input of Mind and other organisations, including stories and experiences of those going through the WCA, we feel that the Review has correctly identified many of the problems with the assessment as it stands.
Professor Harrington, who lead the Review, also asked Mind to work with Mencap and the National Autistic Society to produce proposals for improving the criteria used for assessing mental health, learning disabilities and autism.
Our initial proposals were developed further by a panel of health experts before being submitted to the DWP.
We are now hoping to test our proposals and compare them to the current assessment in the new year.
Although the Government committed to implementing the Review's recommendations, we are concerned that the assessment has not yet been sufficiently improved and that IB migration should have been delayed.
We have raised these concerns as part of our submission to the second year of the Independent Review.
The Government has announced that it wants to see a 20 per cent reduction in the future cost of DLA through the introduction of an 'objective' assessment of eligibility.
We oppose this cut: DLA provides vital support by recognising the extra costs of living with a disability and is claimed by far fewer people than are currently eligible.
The name of the benefit will be changed to the Personal Independence Payment (PIP); claimants will be reassessed more frequently; and the current 'care' component, which has three levels of payment, will be changed to a new 'daily living, which will have two levels of payment.
We are very concerned that people with mental health problems, particularly those on lower levels of payment, may lose out as a result of these reforms.
We are campaigning against these changes but also engaging with the reform process to ensure that the interests of people with mental health problems are properly represented. Read our response to the DLA consultation.
The Government has also released a set of draft assessment criteria for the new benefit. Read Mind's response to these proposals, which were informed by input from Mind supporters.
We will also be responding to the second draft of the new assessment and you can read our initial comments.
The Work Programme will be introduced in the summer of 2011 and will replace all existing back-to-work schemes with one central programme. We have a number of concerns about the current plans and we have submitted our concerns to the Government.
Although there is no formal consultation process for the introduction of the Work Programme, we will continue to closely monitor the process and pressure the Government to ensure that there is suitable support for people with mental health problems to return to work.
We are particularly concerned about some of the conditions and sanctions that people could be subject to as part of the Work Programme and we will be challenging these changes in the Welfare Reform Bill.
We strongly oppose the tone of much of the media and political rhetoric on people claiming benefits.
Not only is it misleading to focus so heavily on fraudulent claims when these make up a minority of cases, but it is also damaging to the majority group of honest claimants.
People claiming benefits because they need support due to a mental health condition feel demonised by terms such as 'scrounger', and the negative way in which they are portrayed can significantly set back their recovery.
We have achieved significant media coverage around particular welfare reform milestones, such as the IB migration pilots, and have challenged negative press, most recently through the production and distribution of our own tabloid paper - The Daily Stigma.
We will continue to push for more balanced coverage of this issue.