Updates on the Work Capability Assessment and Disability Living Allowance

Posted Wednesday 15 December 2010

Mind has submitted proposals for amending the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) and needs your input. Meanwhile, the Government has announced a consultation on the future of Disability Living Allowance (DLA).

Work Capability Assessment

As mentioned in Professor Harrington's Independent Review of the Work Capability Assessment, Mind has been asked to work with Mencap and the National Autistic Society to propose amendments to the 'mental, intellectual and cognitive' part of the WCA. 

We submitted these proposals last week and they will now be presented to an expert panel to be scrutinised before potentially going to Ministers for approval in the new year. Professor Harrington has assured us that this is an iterative process and that we can continue to feed in to the process.

Our proposals are based on evidence and experiences that people have shared with us since the WCA was introduced, although due to the short turnaround for this piece of work, we have so far not been able to consult supporters as extensively as we would have liked.

We would now like to invite supporters and stakeholders to look over and comment on our proposals (and the accompanying spreadsheet that demonstrates our suggestions)

Please send all comments to t.pollard@mind.org.uk.
These comments will help us to further refine our proposals.

Disability Living Allowance

Following on from the announcement that they wish to cut the future budget of Disability Living Allowance by 20 per cent, the Government has released a consultation document this week about the future of this vital benefit. The document explains some of the Government’s plans, including renaming the benefit as Personal Independence Payments (PIP) and the introduction of a new assessment to decide eligibility.

Mind is opposed to the 20% cut and is seriously concerned about some of the proposed changes announced in this document. We will be responding to the consultation and would encourage others to also respond directly. However, we are also looking for input from Mind supporters to inform our response and we are developing a survey for people to tell us what they think about the proposals.

Please fill in our survey on DLA to help inform our response.

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