Society daily 24.11.11

Sign up to Society daily email briefing Today's top SocietyGuardian stories • Coalition health bill will undermine NHS, says OECD thinktank • Linking welfare to inflation protects the poor, says Children's Society • Coalition in 'blind panic' over pensions walkout, says union leader • Youth Justice Board saved before expected Lords defeat • Liverpool's world heritage status threatened by dockside development • Pay gap widens between rich and poor • Heather Stewart: It is time to mind the gap (again) • Patrick Butler: Will ministers resurrect the Future Jobs Fund? • Zoe Williams: Why ministers never take the blame for cuts • John Sutherland: A manifesto for old age All today's SocietyGuardian stories Other news • BBC: Councils 'may reject tax freeze' • Children & Young People Now: Fear of isolation prevents neediest parents from accessing early years groups • Community Care: Burstow toughens requirements on NHS to fund carers' breaks • Independent: Ban on HIV-positive doctors and dentists set to be overturned • Inside Housing: Campaigners threaten legal action to block transfer • Localgov.co.uk: Pension fund chief calls for BSkyB chairman to step down • Public Finance: Spending cuts should be linked to economic growth, says IPPR • Telegraph: Labour 'wasted cancer budget on NHS salaries and bureaucracy' • Third Sector: Public trust in charities is unstable, survey shows On my radar ... • Question of the day, posed by Maeve McGoldrick on the Community Links blog: Is the Benefits System "fit for work"? She writes: Our benefits advisors are increasingly supporting local people with these appeals, however a few minutes down the road we are also delivering the Work Programme (referred to in the second article) where people go if they are found fit for work. The more people we successfully support in appealing the WCA, the less people on ESA we will see coming through the doors of our Work Programme. This presents a huge problem to us. Because of the payment model of the Work Programme contract we get paid more to support a person claiming ESA that is found fit for work than we do for someone who is claiming Job Seekers Allowance. Like many organisations delivering the Work Programme, we are hugely reliant on finding work for ESA claimants to make the programme economically viable. However we are not getting to support these people into employment as they are appealing the decision. Yet we are seeing many people claiming JSA on our Work Programme; people with many complex issues in need of intensive support – that is of course costly- but we get funded very little to provide this support. One of the biggest problems behind all of this is that too much is dependant on a benefit label. WCA determines a person's capability to work. Then there's lots of support to help them become employable. Assessments should be more sophisticated if government wants to reduce the numbers of appeals, and control the escalating cost of tribunals. It is important that the right people are referred to the Work Programme based on the correct assessment of both capability and employability. Significant consequences follow from the type of benefit claimed, including the amount of money to which each claimant is entitled; the amount of money each person is "worth" to an employment support organisation; the rules for seeking work with which a claimant must comply… and the consequences if they don't. All of this creates further barriers to work and increases fear amongst people not working. Universal Credit will hopefully address this issue but that won't be completed until 2017, in the meantime maybe we should identify a person's needs for support – work related or not – rather than allocate resources based on the name of benefit they are claiming. With over 2.5 million people affected in one way or another there is a huge amount at stake for government and little time to waste. Meanwhile, the Disability Benefits Consortium and Hardest Hit Coalition are planning to send a giant Christmas card to the government as a protest against welfare reforms. They hope to get 10,000 signatures on the card, timed to coincide with the welfare reform bill reaching report stage in the Lords. (thanks to Creative Crip for the link) And a protest is planned tomorrow outside Bridewell magistrates court in Nottingham, in support of the "Atos 2" , arrested in September during a peaceful demonstration outside the offices of the company contracted to reassess people on disability benefit. • The phenomenal response to the global drugs survey launched yesterday. The Guardian is partnering with Mixmag magazine to help produce what we hope will be the biggest, most comprehensive survey of its kind in the world. We are asking people about which drugs they take, how often they take them and the medical, social and legal consequences of drug use . In the first 12 hours after the survey's launch yesterday, it received more responses than it did in six weeks last year. We'll have exclusive data from the survey next spring. • A thought-provoking blogpost by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation's chief executive, Julia Unwin, Time to confront our fears of ageing . She writes that the two stereotypes around ageing - the active, business-owning octogenerian and the huddled object of pity - prevent us from addressing the reality of ageing. None of us are ever independent and yet we fear dependence. All of us need care and support, throughout our lives, and yet we don't want to contemplate it. We all (really) hope that our lives are extinguished suddenly and that we meet death by surprise. We are willing to collude with the notion that receiving care is in some way demeaning, and so we demean the givers of care. And it is caused by our unspoken view that economically productive work is actually the purpose of life, and that any diminution of economic productivity diminishes the individual's worth. Of course older people contribute to the economy, as WRVS so recently reminded us, but there is a risk that this may blind us to the crucially important fact that there is purpose in old age that may go far beyond economic contribution. Does a good society really believe that economic activity is the only measure of value? • Two new galleries on the site to recommend. The first shows highlights from a new exhibition at Bradford's National Media Museum. Photographer Tim Smith's portraits celebrate British Asians' success stories . And we've also got a selection of eye-opening images from Children North East, which invited 1,200 children and young people in the region to photograph what poverty looks like where they live . As Carol Blenkinsop comments on our Facebook page: If you had not said these were pics of the present, I would have thought they were pics taken a long time ago. Von Murray adds: My 13 yr old son has just completed this task at Shawlands accademy and is very enlightening how much this age group understands about what poverty is and means for affected children. I believe their understanding comes from their own experiences. • A powerful new audio slideshow on our site by photographer Tricia de Courcy Ling, who spoke to care leaver Cyra about her life and how it had been transformed with the help of her key worker . Cyra, who is studying for her A-levels and involved in fostering panels, hopes to take a social care-related degree. She says: "I have always hoped to be part of a family." • Tweet of the day comes from trade unionist Jane 744 : U-turn on Chief Coroner & Youth Justice Board saved before Lords defeat #AnyChanceOfUTurnOnPensions On the Guardian Professional Networks • Business rates should fund the Dilnot social care proposals rather than being passed on to Treasury, argues Oxfordshire council leader Keith Mitchell • Lawyer Steven Wood says the criminalisation of squatting will cause the prison population to soar • Public sector managers would benefit from more training before giving evidence to public inquiries , says barrister Nicholas Cropp • Walsall council uses Twitter to ask who cares about social care Events and seminars Making your multimedia content work for you Are you using multimedia content as effectively as you can to get your stories seen and heard? 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