Benefits sanctions mean some people with mental health problems are too terrified to walk into a Jobcentre Ayaz Manji, a senior policy officer at Mind, offers his point of view on how benefit sanctions can affect claimants’ mental health

Sanctions are one of the most controversial aspects of the benefits system.

People in receipt of Universal Credit and some older benefits can be sanctioned if they fail to meet their claimant commitment – which can include looking or preparing for work – that was agreed with the Jobcentre. This means their payments might be reduced or cut completely for a set period.

Sanctions exist to encourage claimants into meeting their work-searching activities, which will ultimately lead to employment. But some welfare advisers say they can be punitive and unfair for vulnerable claimants, including those with mental health problems.

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i has covered sanctions and the impact they can have on claimants as part of its coverage on Universal Credit. Some said that sanctions impacted their mental health.

In this piece, i has spoken to a senior policy officer at charity Mind. Ayaz Manji offers his point of view on how benefit sanctions can affect claimants’ mental health.

“If you have a mental health problem, the fear of possibly losing a significant chunk or all of your benefit money can become all-consuming.

Evidence shows that sanctions, and particularly the fear of sanctions, can and do make people’s mental health problems worse.

In 2016, Mind commissioned YouGov to carry out a survey of over 1,500 people who had experience using mental health services. It wasn’t specifically about benefits but what was stark was that of the people who had either attempted suicide or considered suicide, nearly a third said losing benefits or the fear of losing them was a significant contributory factor.

We hear it week in and week out.

A woman called Rebecca came into Mind last year. She was working in events but lost her job after developing post-traumatic stress disorder.

She was struggling to leave the house without somebody with her. She was feeling a lot of guilt and shame around the fact that she couldn’t do things like take her son to nursery and the weekly shop.

At the same time Rebecca had started claiming Universal Credit and was being made to turn up to appointments every two weeks. And because she couldn’t travel without somebody else, a community psychiatric nurse would go with her. She said she would have panic attacks on appointment days. She would feel suicidal afterwards. It was the threat and the fear of sanctions if she failed to do what she was asked to by the Jobcentre staff.

It got so unmanageable that she had to ask a family member to become her appointee and essentially take over her benefits claim because she just couldn’t cope anymore. She saw herself as someone who was capable of making decisions about her own life, and she wanted to get back to work, but the fear of sanctions was so bad that not only did her mental health deteriorate, she had to give up more and more control of her own affairs.

It’s common for us to hear from people who haven’t been told that they will be sanctioned but who are preoccupied by the fear that it might happen. They worry about losing their benefits if they are late for an appointment or if they miss it altogether.

Sanctions can lead some people to stop claiming benefits entirely – even when they’re too unwell to work. We’ve heard from people who found the requirements to receive their benefits too much and who try to find a way to survive without that support. For some people it means being trapped in living situations which aren’t safe or appropriate, or even being homeless.

The Government says that sanctions are meant to encourage people who can work into finding employment. For people with mental health problems and disabled people more generally, there’s no evidence that they are fulfilling that purpose.

A 2016 report from the National Audit Office showed they often do they opposite for people claiming Employment and Support Allowance. When people with disabilities or mental health problems have been sanctioned, they actually spend longer in receipt of benefits.

We see so many people who really want to return to work but who don’t ask for help from the Jobcentre because it’s not somewhere they feel safe or somewhere they trust. Research from Demos last year found only one in four people trust the Jobcentre staff to treat them fairly.

Lots of us rightly talk about the harm sanctions cause and the need to remove that harm, but it is also a huge shame that there are lots of people out there who want help to regain their independence or to find work and who, because of sanctions, don’t see Jobcentres as places where they can get that help. Some people are either too terrified to go into the doors of the Jobcentre or are doing everything they can just to manage that process and feel relieved when they’re out of there.

The way the benefits system is designed makes it incredibly hard for people with mental health problems. There are so many different parts of the process where you are essentially being made to prove that you’re unwell over and over again. That’s true of sanctions but it’s also true of constant reassessments for disability benefits, or the process of moving to Universal Credit.

There are clear things the Government could be doing that would make it an easier system to navigate. One of the biggest would be to get rid of sanctions altogether for people who are too unwell to work.

Another would be to end the cycle of constant face-to-face reassessments for disability benefits so that people have enough time and security to look after their mental health. We also need to see an independent regulator who can hold the Government to account and make sure that anyone with a mental health problem is treated with dignity and respect when they apply for benefits.

We know that a better benefits system is possible and at Mind we’ll keep on campaigning until that’s a reality.”