Some time ago on a course I wrote a project on the subject of 'The built environment' ..not the natural environment but the built one and how accessible buildings are designed to be for disabled people.I live in a city, London known to have one of the worst transport systems for disability access and certainly most of our underground rail is difficult to access, I for one cannot manage escalators. This is especially relevant now some years later when people with often limited mobility are being declared fit and well and having to claim Job Seekers Allowance.
If a benefit claimant with disabilities has been as quite likely they will be, declared fit and well by ATOS and stripped of their sickness benefit, made to claim Job seekers allowance and look for a job, they will be considered able bodied and have to look for work as an able bodied healthy person would. I have a heart condition, high blood pressure, arthritis, sight problems and mobility issues after a fracture, but because I am on JSA and so deemed to be fit and well, I have to go upstairs at the Jobcentre to sign on and I cannot manage the stairs. Claimants only sign on downstairs if they are seeing a Disability Adviser, which the majority of claimants of JSA will not do.At my last signing I was signed downstairs by an adviser who came downstairs , but this has only happened since the staff decided that if there was a fire, they could not get me down if I was upstairs....It has taken them two years during which I apparently wasn't safe, for them to decide this, and it is clear that the staff are not convinced of my inability to manage the stairs because I don't look sick.
Even when I did see a disability employment adviser when I got incapacity benefit, she sent me on a course for writing CV's and cover letters in a building with no lift, I got there and had to go back home again,terrified that my money would be stopped because I had not attended the course ....That time I was lucky. The adviser was on leave when my next signing on appointment came up, and the adviser I did see didn't know or seem interested that I had been sent.
Recently, I applied for a telephone fundraising job, which I felt my skills, experience and interests were well suited to and as it was desk based, I might be able to manage it. It may well have had something to do with my asking the interviewer if it would be a problem if I arrived for my shift and couldn't do it because the lift was out of action and the office was ten floors up.
This sort of situation is happening frequently and will continue to happen because sick and disable people are being forced to apply for jobs that they can't even get to, because if they don't apply for them and say to themselves like I do,'Well, Its a job I might be able to manage as its desk based or on phones' they are terrified of facing sanctions on their benefits.
As for my most recent interview....I didn't even make it to the interview place.I got the first bus,then had to change at a big roundabout on the Croydon Road/ Purley Way, a huge roundabout and not designed for pedestrians, especially not those with slow mobility with four exits and traffic coming at you in all directions. Its the road to Gatwick and eventually Brighton !!! and I didn't know it has no pedestrian traffic lights and you are at the mercy of the traffic if it stops or not. I got half way across and it didn't stop..and I thought just imagine trying this on my reduced speed in the dark when my shift finishes at 7.30 pm, and you can't see the cars coming at you..only lights....eventually I got across and went to the bus stop in the opposite direction....and went back home !!!
The days since have been spent frantically applying for anything and everything so that I can prove when I go to the Job centre to sign on that I am meeting my Job search agreement to apply for jobs and shouldn't be sanctioned ....
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