The parents of a severely disabled teenager say they have been forced to spend hours hunting for jobs he can’t do in a “nightmare” battle with the DWP. Connor Donnelly, from Mauchline, East Ayrshire, is wheelchair bound, blind, non-verbal and barely able to sit up after being starved of oxygen at birth.
But since he turned 18 and left school in May, dad Steve, 46, and mum Helen, 44, say they have been facing an ongoing struggle to prove he is unfit to find work while claiming for Universal Credit. Unable to get him to their local job centre, which is inaccessible for his wheelchair, the family requested a face-to-face assessment.
But in the meantime, they say they were told to keep looking for work for him. Steve told the Record: “Both myself and my wife are feeling embarrassed and hurt.
“With Connor’s disabilities, every day is a challenge. You’re having to fight for absolutely everything.
“We explained his complex needs, and it just fell on deaf ears. The woman on the phone was saying he needs to stick to his commitments and do this and that.
“I’m so angry at the fact they expected him to do job searches. We’re getting questions like ‘has he got a mobile phone? Has he got access to the internet? Has he got interview clothes?’
“We’re saying ‘he’s in a wheelchair and can barely sit up unaided.’ What they were asking him to do is a physical impossibility and what we’ve been put through is an absolute nightmare.
“At one point we were sitting thinking ‘is it really worth it for what he’ll actually get?’ I then realised there is bound to be someone else out there like us, going through the same struggle.”
A single person under 25 receives £338.58 per month in Universal Credit. In Scotland, disabled individuals can claim Universal Credit for living costs while simultaneously receiving separate disability living assistance.
You can qualify for additional monthly payments on top of your regular Universal Credit allocation if a medical condition or disability prevents you from working. Your evaluation results will determine the precise monthly additions.
Connor, who has three younger sisters and a big brother, was previously eligible for the benefit as he was enrolled full-time at Willowbank School in Kilmarnock until earlier this year.
Now he has become an adult, Steve said the requirements the family have to fulfil on top of caring for his complex needs have hit them “like a freight train”.
He said: “We had to go through the courts to get guardianship for him because he’s non-verbal and we’ve only got that for five years. We’ve already had a battle over his Motability car and had to prove he was disabled enough to have a vehicle every year.
“His condition is not going to improve. As he’s getting older, it’s getting more complex. It’s not as if he is going to miraculously be able to walk one day. It’s never going to happen. His mum has had to sit and fill out his Motability forms every year in tears, noting down everything that’s wrong with him.
“That has been recently resolved, but Universal Credit is still the issue, and what’s happened with the job centre has just been a disaster. His mum is his carer. The job centre said, ‘You can come in and sign on for him’. But is she supposed to leave him sitting at home?
“Currently, Helen is his appointee, and she has had the commitment to do two hours of job searching a week for Connor. If anyone had actually seen him, we wouldn’t have had to waste time doing this.
“There’s not a job out there that he could possibly do. We also have to provide sick lines to say he’s not fit for work until this gets sorted out.”
If you’ve been raising your child for a long time and are aware of his limitations, it seems like a slap in the face when a paper pusher tells you that he must be able to work and that you need to put in more effort.
I don’t know why this occurs. It should be sufficient to demonstrate his disability and the nature of his disability if he is on PIP.
A UK jobcentre can be breaking the law if it has no wheelchair‑accessible entrance and has not provided any reasonable alternative access. Under the Equality Act 2010, public bodies must remove physical barriers or provide an equivalent, safe way for disabled people to enter and use the service.
Lunatics in charge of the nut house springs to mind.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 