Deaths by Welfare Podcast

Thousands of people have died at the hands of the Work Capability Assessment (WCA), introduced in October 2008 to assess entitlement to Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) - benefit for people who are unable to work due to disability or ill-health.  In March 2023, the Government announced the intention to scrap the WCA. This episode was recorded before this announcement, but remains relevant, as the suggested replacements (if they come to pass) will by all indications continue to threaten disabled people's lives with increased use of sanctions and work coach discretion to decide people’s ‘fitness’ for work. By contrast, our guests offer perspectives rooted in lived experience, campaigning knowledge and research, as an invitation to collectively imagine and campaign for alternatives that are truly just.  This episode is a conversation between Rick Burgess and Ben Baumberg Geiger. Rick is the co-founder of the War on Welfare Petition and Manchester Disabled People Against Cuts, amongst many other things, and Ben is the co-lead of the Work, Welfare reform and Mental Health programme within the Centre for Society & Mental Health, at King's College London, and author of ‘A Better WCA is Possible’. For BSL interpretation, full transcript and further resources, please visit healingjusticeldn.org/resources/dwp-ep4

In the summer of 2014, Disability News Service and a number of disabled people’s anti-austerity campaigning groups began to question whether the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) had a system for recording deaths linked to the benefits system. This began a long battle to learn more about government investigations, known as Internal Process Reviews, into what the DWP calls the ‘death of a customer’. In this episode, we are joined by John Pring from Disability News Service, and Imogen Day, whose sister Philippa (Pip) took her own life in 2019 after her disability benefits were stopped. Imogen has been at the forefront of campaigning with other bereaved families to demand a public inquiry into benefits-related deaths. Content warning: This episode includes a conversation with a family member of someone who died by suicide because of their experiences of the welfare system. There are no details of methods of suicide. Much of the episode is about government denial of accountability for people's deaths. Please listen, or not, in a way that feels right for you. For full transcript and support resources, please visit healingjusticeldn.org/resources/death-of-a-customer-ep3/

Both research and the testimonies of disabled activists and bereaved families have repeatedly shown the harms of benefits sanctions and how sanctions lead to people’s deaths. In this episode, we hear from a range of people with lived and learned experience about the complexity of sanctions, how they make life unliveable, and about routes to justice.    We are joined by "Ben", who shares his experience of being sanctioned; Jamie Redman,  who’s done research to understand the rationale behind sanctions from the perspective of frontline workers at job centres.   Content warning: attempted suicide, systemic racism. There are content warnings in the audio just before suicide is discussed, which advise about where to stop and start listening depending on what you feel able to listen to at this time. Please do what feels right for you.   For full transcript and support resources, visit healingjusticeldn.org/resources/dwp-ep2

Campaigners have been telling us for years that welfare reforms kill people. This is a story of disabled people and people impacted by the welfare system, joining forces with bereaved families to bear witness to and protest the deadly welfare policies enacted by the Department for Work and Pensions (the DWP). Through their collective genius and creativity, these campaigners push the boundaries of how we imagine and practice resistance, to re-envision justice both within and beyond the State. In this episode, we bring together Dolly Sen, Paula Peters and Ellen Clifford to talk about evidence, resistance and justice in their experiences of living and organising against the harms of welfare reform. The discussion was held after a screening of Dolly Sen’s new film “Broken Hearts for the DWP” - documenting a symbolic protest to remember those who have not survived the cuts. Content warning: suicide, criminalisation and incarceration