Bad Back ? You need a biopsychosocial intervention - ie your benefits will be cut

John Hutton called for a 12 week period of consultation on his earlier Green paper on Incapacity Benefit Reform . This ended on 21st April 2006 and he has now announced his plans for an overhaul the incapacity benefit system. It is not a "penny-pinching exercise but designed to help millions of people," the work and pensions secretary, John Hutton, insisted yesterday.

You could have read about this earlier this year when Lord Patel offered a 2 part introduction on February 6th 2006.

Incapacity Benefit, / Unum Provident UK / UK Gubment Part 2

Can't work or won't work. Part 1 of the Incapacity Benefit story in the UK

Mr Hutton said: "Alongside the legislation, we are working with and consulting very closely with a whole range of organisations to try and design and implement the system more successfully.

You can be sure that the UnumProvident Centre for Psychosocial and Disability Research £1.6million centre at Cardiff University, headed by Professor Mansel Aylward CB, recently appointed Chair in Psychosocial and Disability Research at Cardiff and based in the School of Psychology and sponsored by income protection provider and insurer UnumProvident UK will loom large in these discussions.

However the top Guru on the work shy, is crystal ball gazing Professor Peter Halligan from the School of Psychology at Cardiff University, the brains behind the partnership with UnumProvident UK. He said earlier this year... very prophetically : "Within the next five years, the work will hopefully facilitate a significant re-orientation in current medical practise in the UK, whereby ‘enablement’ rather than disability will be the positive focus and goal for those involved in managing disability and those affected by unexplained symptoms."

Basically we are going to cut Incapacity claimants , especially the young, by 1 Mn.... and it will of course be amply cloaked in academic respectability by the Cardiff Chair in Psychosocial and Disability Research.

Challenging Economic Inactivity, Cardiff News March 2006

"Sickness and incapacity must be recognised as social rather than medical problems" , a University expert has told an audience at the Welsh Assembly.

Professor Mansel Aylward, Director of the UnumProvident Centre for Psychosocial and Disability Research, School of Psychology, addressing an audience of Assembly Members, researchers and officials at a briefing on: Challenging the paths to economic inactivity: A programme of research for effective interventions in March. The Cardiff News refelected that the presentation was particularly timely, following the UK government’s green paper announcing plans to help one million incapacity benefit claimants back into work.

Professor Aylward said: “The paths to economic inactivity can be challenged by promoting health at work by providing the right opportunities and encouragement to support people back to work.”He advocates the adoption of biopsychosocial interventions to overcome obstacles to recovery and barriers to return to work; and illustrated the success achieved adopting this approach in the UK’s Pathways to Work initiative.

Get ready for these snappy slogans mined in the Cardiff academic groves of Psychobabbble

1. Health problems must address obstacles to recovery and barriers to returning to work.
2. Sickness and incapacity must be recognised as social rather than medical problems.
3. Challenging the paths to economic inactivity.
4. Adopting biopsychosocial interventions to overcome obstacles to recovery and barriers to return to work.

Which can be roughly translated to cut the benfits and this will sharpen the idle bastards up.

Pic. No 1. The Welsh Wizard Professor Mansel Aylward CB
Pin No 2 . TYpical claimant who expects chauffeur driven car, free grace and flacour flat, rail travel , has messy life with children by ex married girlfriends - in denial about what a lousy employee he is. Needs a severe biopsychosocial intervention.