“Millions of cancer carers missing out on benefits“
I shall overlook, on this occasion, the oxymoron of the Telegraph headline – they go on to say that 5% of the 1.1 million cancer sufferers in the UK ARE claiming benefits, which leaves just a shade over one million – not “millions’ who are not claiming.
No, what has really got my goat, on a subject which is close to my heart, was the conclusion which has been drawn from MacMillan’s survey.
The figures could explain why 46 per cent of carers, who help cancer sufferers by administering medication, assisting around the house and offering emotional support, suffer from mental health problems including stress, anxiety and depression, the charity said.
I’m all for MacMillan helping those in financial need to access the complicated benefits system, which after all, only provides the magnificent sum of £55.55 a week (providing you are not already in receipt of a pension or other income….) but to suggest that all the stress, anxiety and depression of caring for someone you love who happens to be suffering from cancer will magically disappear if you just sign up to be a paid State employee ‘doing a job’ is madness.
Apparently, if I was in the UK, I would automatically qualify for weekly DLA of £129.45 and £55.55 for Mr G – irrespective of my financial circumstances – i.e. whether I actually needed that money or not! – and Macmillan think I should be claiming it.
Why?
The key problem, Macmillan said, could be that only four in ten people who look after cancer sufferers identify themselves as “carers”, meaning they may be unaware of the support they are entitled to, or reluctant to claim it.
Or put another way – 6 out of 10 people are quietly getting on with looking after someone they care for without bothering to find out about their ‘entitlement’ to turn their act of love into a job as a State drone. That is not to denigrate those who need the financial support, they deserve all the help they can get – and they are likely to get far more help if Macmillan don’t drain the national handbag by putting forward the theory that failing to ask for financial help that they don’t need is somehow the key to avoiding the perfectly natural anxiety and depression that comes from watching someone you care about go through Hell.
Cancer is a terrifying illness; partly because of its historic reputation as the harbinger of a slow and painful death. It is not death most of us fear, I certainly don’t – but dying. Cancer itself is a relatively natural occurrence, the bodies response to certain stimuli. It has always been around, probably always will be. We may be able to cure some cancers, we are unlikely to eradicate its occurrence altogether.
Quite why the State has chosen to award Cancer special financial status in this way – almost a case of ‘whoopee, you’ve hit the jackpot, pass Go and collect your bonus’ is hard to ascertain. Why Macmillan would want to remove probably the only consolation available to anyone with cancer – the knowledge that their last months will be made tolerable by the presence of someone who will put up with all the vomit, crap, and tears simply because they love you and are acting from the heart with a person who is merely carrying out their duty and collecting their ‘entitlement’ is a total mystery.
Macmillan should stick to what they do best – counselling those who need it, supporting those who need it, and leave the social engineering of stubbing out family values and replacing them with State entitlements to the Fabians.
Anna is the landlady of the Raccoon Arms. She lives in the Monbazillac area of South West France and still takes a keen interest in British politics.
{ 21 comments }
When I was caring for my dying wife, the last thing on my mind was asking for a state handout. But I found Macmillan very supportive and, even if they’re out of step on this issue, they provide great help which is not forthcoming from the rest of the NHS.
Same experience for me. They engage and also seem to be uniquely able to make necessary things happen, and quickly.
I do confess to having kicked the head office last summer re playing party politics. I don’t recall the topic so I guess it wasn’t that important.
I have to agree with both Ed and binao. The Macmillan organisation is wonderful in the support it offers, particularly to terminally-ill patients, and it seems to me that Macmillan support must be triggered as an intrinsic part of NHS cancer care and that I applaud. In my experience, the Macmillan organisation seems to have been alerted as soon as the terminal diagnosis had been made and a couple of gentle, calm, honest and caring Macmillan Nurses came round and described the loving and intelligent framework of care to they could offer to the terminal patient, which surely has to be a good thing. They also immediately put in place the financial assistance Mme R descibes and, even though we said we didn’t need it and didn’t want it, I can only think now, as I did then, that the mechanism of the Macmillan organisation finds it easier to pay every patient that to which they are entitled than to put the ‘they don’t need this cash’ spanner in the works.
For those families struck by the terminal cancer diagnosis, Macmillan’s financial help – and it is a modest but steady amount – can help buy or rent the wheelchair so that the patient can be taken out each day and see the haw-frost or the ice on the water or the crisp sunshine reflection of the lake’s opposite shore in an absolutely ripple-free mile-wide lake while their dog gambols, unaware that this is one of the last days out together. It isn’t a bad thing and it may even be good that this help is given without having to ask.
The political spin on this is quite another thing. See above.
And below! Mudplugger’s comment!
If it’s any help to you and Mr G, there’s an awful lot of people who read your blog who care about you.
btw, the reason why DLA and Carer’s Allowance is a universal benefit to people with cancer is to avoid the stigma and unfairness (eg £1 above the threshold etc) of means testing. Just imagine the headline “Cancer Patient Means-Tested For Benefits”.
Thre’s nothing to stop well-off (now that’s an oxymoron) recipients donating the benefits to cancer charities.
Totally agree with the sentiment but, like another respondent, I’m a bit uneasy about having a go at MacMillan.
I never use the term ‘carer’ for the reasons you set out above, but I’ve been one for nine years now, looking after 3/4 parents and so have some experience of MacMillan nurses out there doing the job. The ones I’ve had contact with were wonderful.
This report is no doubt being pushed by some overpaid fat cat in their comfortable head office who is in receipt of a bonus of some kind. Or a potential ‘performance related’ pay rise.
Ray.
>the knowledge that their last months will be made tolerable by the presence of someone who will put up with all the vomit, crap, and tears simply because they love you and are acting from the heart with a person who is merely carrying out their duty and collecting their ‘entitlement’ is a total mystery.
I don’t think that DLA and whatever takes the carer away.
We were helped by Macmillan to be aware of the available DLA, and pretty much spent that amount on extra heating, and other bits and pieces to help ‘oil the wheels’ of caring, costs of running around, family visiting etc.
It’s more likely the cash would allow the carer to switch to part time work etc to be available.
Is it being cynical to think that “Surveys” such as this are fed to the media to not necessarily highlight the result, but to gain publicity for the ‘commissioner’?
Joe, how can you even think such a thing? Other than experience of the ‘suits’?
Experience of the Macmillan organisation shows it to be a two-headed beast. On the ground, they have some wonderful people who provide excellent support to families at very difficult times.
However, behind it is a cynical, money-grabbing, politicking structure – it even extends to getting the ground-crew to ‘lean on’ sufferers at their most vulnerable time to donate cash. This second, and very ugly, facet undoes most of the good work their troops do and stops many from supporting them financially.
If they dropped that cynicism, they could be amazed how the genuinely voluntary donations start to flow.
Totally agree.
Macmillan, like other charities, seem to feel that they are somehow accredited to spend government money.
They are not dissimilar from NHS staff in that the NHS feel they are qualified to advise on everything from smoking (smoking may be bad for you, but they propose the solution – and it is not so much of the ‘stop smoking’ route, rather the we know how to stop you smoking -they are sure that increasing the price will decrease demand – are they now economists?); to the speed at which we drive our cars (are they also mechanical engineers? – I’d rather have an accident at 50mph in a Volvo than at 30mph in an old BL Mini); and of course doctors can only be judged by other doctors as the common folk wouldn’t understand that the possible 800 plus murders by Shipman couldn’t possibly by understood by laymen; and finally – all nurses are angels – crap. When my brother lost his left leg in a motorcycle accident the nurses were terrible, one of them even dumped her files on his stump, he screamed, and she said ‘Ha Ha, shut up – you don’t know pain until you’ve had a baby’, what an angel.
Macmillan like many other fine organisations should concentrate on their core values and leave the politically crap at home.
The late Mrs Paine took exception to the Macmillan nurses bleating on about ‘benefits’ (aka other peoples’ money taken by force) for her and me as her ‘carer’. She told them we didn’t want the money. They got shirty and said it didn’t matter – we were “entitled”. At the sound of that evil word, she told them to get out of her home and never come back. I was never more proud.
OTOH if even your likely-by-definition-to-be-smarter readers think it’s fine to take the money you don’t need and give it to charity (forgetting that there’s massive wastage of all money passing through government hands and that the charity is probably a government front) then she was probably wasting her breath.
I don’t recall this kind of experience at all. My wife had never felt the need for Macmillan support in earlier years, but was persuaded by a new oncologist, whose sidekick was Macmillan trained. I just think of the confidence inspiring competence and having someone to call for advice when yet another problem cropped up. Someone that always responded.
So I’ll just think about the care that was given, and who by.
I didn’t take any money either, I don’t need it though more than a few people said I should get on DLA anyway. My, I admit limited, experience of McMillan nurses was that one was great and one useless, the first gave good advice and the second had me convinced I had no hope, very depressing she was. I was also very annoyed when they politicized the scare stories using a Labour activist and complained to their head office that this was wrong. Personally as I long as I am able I want nothing from the State or any of their interference in my life.
Is it true that you received 250,000 pounds from the UK government because you suffered ‘stress’? (You asked for 500,000).
I’m not surprised that you don’t need the money.
If it is true, maybe you should shut up.
No, it’s not true. Next question.
Why is it written for all to see. Why don’t you sue? How much did you get?
It is written by some monumentally insignificant people on some monumentally insignificant tin foil hat sites in an attempt to bully me into concealing the truth about some of their fat fraudulent idols. I don’t intend to dignify such people with further attention. Since one of them lives off his girlfriend and anyone else he can con money out of, and another suffers from an acknowledged mental illness, it would be a cruelty to some very dumb animals to take them, or anyone else who bothers to read their sites, seriously.
End of subject.
Now, I note that you only appear on this site in order to mount personal attacks on me, and you also are a reader of some very disreputable sites, I have to say James, that you have one more chance to discuss any of the political or ethical subjects under discussion here, before I assume that you too are merely a mentally challenged troll and make you only the second person ever to be blocked from this site.
You have been warned, your questions have been answered, so either grow up or crawl back under your stone.
Ban me. That’s quite alright. I am legion. As are you.
How many people believe in all your commenters, neatly slotting into a time frame which suggests that they are hanging onto your every word? Anna writes, and the respondents are right in there. Yes, Gildas, I am talking about you, as well as others.
Ban me, because I don’t care. Also I will make a point of exposing you on other less censored blogs.
No one has supporters who are on board within minutes. This is orchestrated nonsense. BTW, you did not answer my question.
Bluff and outrage is so passe. I tried to put the accent in there but it’s too hard. Of course, I don’t live in France.
Ah, James, up out of bed at the crack of dawn again? Did you wet the bed again?
That was your last chance, you opted not to take it.
Quite right, you are now banned, for the criminal offense of boring us all to tears with your endless monotone whinging.
Since you don’t like this blog, I shall save you the trouble of reading it in future.
Goodbye.
“..neatly slotting into a time frame which suggests that they are hanging onto your every word? Anna writes, and the respondents are right in there…No one has supporters who are on board within minutes. “
Never heard of Twitter and RSS feeders, James…?
Poor boy, modern technology passed you by, didn’t it?