I’m a single mother with MS on benefits – Labour’s welfare cuts will ruin us

We’ve heard much about disabled people in the news these past weeks as we waited for the government to announce their heavily trailed benefit cuts. I’m one of those who come up in the figures of disabled people in receipt of social security support.

I have multiple sclerosis and am unable to work because of my poor health. I am also a single mum to two teenagers, both of whom have additional needs. My daughter, 18, is autistic, and my son, 18, is autistic and has ADHD, dyslexia and dyspraxia. That is my every day; coping with my own health problems while trying to look after my children, and advocate for their additional needs to be better met.

The news that the work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall is cutting disability benefits payments has stunned me. The process of claiming disability benefits is already such a humiliating and unpleasant experience. Claiming personal independence payments (PIP), which the government says will now have its eligibility tightened, is dehumanising. It is anything but an easy benefit to claim.

Kendall has said she will not only be cutting payments but also making more frequent assessments of people’s ability to work. Can we really be reassessed more than we already are? I have been unable to work for the last seven years. During that time, I have had an assessment nearly every year.

The work and pensions secretary also announced cuts to the health element of universal credit; often called the limited capability for work-related activity group. I get these payments, which will now be cut in real terms and reduced for new claimants.

All this makes me feel hopeless. I already put every penny I have into the children and their needs and I can’t tighten my belt any further. There will be so many families that will be pushed further into poverty because of these decisions. I would urge the government to think again.

Last week, I and others who take part in the Changing Realities low-income study, met with the education secretary to talk about the need to provide more support to families struggling with the dual challenges of life on a low income while bringing up children with special educational needs. Families like mine need more support and compassion – not these cuts to the support on which we rely.

There is so much that they could do to make things better and what was announced today will only make things worse. Take the assessments to determine eligibility for disability benefits support. These are currently not carried out by medically trained staff. My last assessment was over Zoom and lasted 3.5 hours. I was grilled mercilessly and brought to tears several times. The experience was humiliating and traumatic. I had to go into great detail about my illness, my chemotherapy and my domestic violence trauma. To make this assessment process – which needs to be radically overhauled – more frequent seems horrific. Where is the empathy? No one wants to be this poorly with constant hospital appointments.

People with disabilities deserve to be treated as members of society, not as scroungers, whose handouts are to be cut back again, and again and again.

A simple solution to assessment would be to judge eligibility by talking to the doctors and consultants who have intimate knowledge of the claimant’s disabilities. Let’s make the assessment more personal by getting information from people who genuinely know and assist us, rather than making us try and score points to get an ever smaller sum of money.

We must also ask why the government’s efforts to balance its books are focused on people in poverty and those people with disabilities. This scrabbling to save money from people already struggling will only plunge them further into poverty as a result.

Perhaps the government might look to bigger fish for savings. The big companies that don’t pay tax. Or the MPs who claim such high expenses. I don’t have the answers – but I do know that I feel criminalised. This extra stress will massively impact my mental health. I will be unable to support myself and my children. Will I be forced into work? When I am in such massive pain and have days I can’t leave my bed? I am demoralised and dehumanised. This simply cannot go on.

Gabriel Kennedy is an alias. Gabriel is a participant in Changing Realities, a collaboration between almost 200 parents and carers on low-income, researchers at the University of York and Child Poverty Action Group.