the essential
Charlotte Easton, a 40-year-old British woman, is blind and hard of hearing. She recently applied for social benefits, unable to find work due to her disability. A request which was refused because she was able to go to an interview, accompanied by her mother.
Blind and suffering from several disabilities, she was refused social benefits… because she went to an interview with her mother. This is what the British media The Observer reported on Saturday November 9.
Charlotte Easton, 40, is blind, hard of hearing and suffers from Pfeiffer syndrome, a rare genetic disease characterized, among other things, by skull malformations. She lives in Hertfordshire in north London with her brother who acts as her carer. According to The Observer, she cannot leave her home alone and without help and therefore cannot find a job. This is why she applied for “Employment and Support Allowance” (ESA), an allowance intended to help people who cannot work due to a disability or illness. Summoned for an assessment to be able to obtain this help, Charlotte Easton had to go to Archway in north London.
A humiliating process
There, she was asked how she was able to get to her appointment. Her mother then explains that they took the train and that she had to “guide her and make sure that people didn’t [lui] don’t fit in there”, among other things. “Because my mother was able to take me there, they told me that that, and the fact that I had dogs in the past and that I let them into the garden, meant I was quite capable of working,” Charlotte Easton told The Observer.
The 40-year-old was assessed for further support by the UK Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), this time by telephone. She received a reply by mail which she therefore could not read. According to the Sense association, which fights for the inclusion of people with disabilities, Charlotte Easton’s experience is far from isolated. Of 1,001 people with complex disabilities surveyed, 43% reported being contacted by the DWP in a format that did not meet their needs. 51% said they felt humiliated by the process of seeking aid.
For its part, the DWP assured that it intended to “work closely with disabled people to reform the current system”.
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