And so in the second part of this thrilling mini series we come to my number one official government wind up. The one bureaucracy, that seems to gas light me, provoke me, depress me, and anger me more than any other. The dreaded Department of Work and Pensions. I’ve only had to engage with them three times in my life. A testament to how I’ve always made ends meet, but that has been enough. The first time was around 2008/09. I was splitting up with my first wife, my earnings were down and I was sliding into bad debt. So I decided to sign on and look for a job. The truth is I didn’t really want to find work. I think I just wanted to say to them, “Look, I’m lost. I just need some space to work out who I am, and what I want to do. I’m exhausted, burnt out. I find normal life baffling, I don’t connect. I don’t want to be a burden to the state, or indeed to anyone but I need to take a step back from it all. No I’m not desperate. No, I’m not suicidal, I’m just confused, I need space”. I had a feeling that this was not an acceptable response for the average Joe at the DWP, so I just agreed to look for work.
I decided that I would go for teaching assistant, an easy job that seemed most suited to my status as broken down clown performer. I think in my heart of hearts I considered myself to be quite unemployable. I didn’t know why at the time, but the idea of having a job caused me great anxiety. I was scared of messing it up. Even then, my mind was dominated by the idea of not getting things done, of not finishing, of not completing tasks as people want them completed. It was bound to happen. My stupidity and rank incompetence would, eventually, be found out. I started applying for these jobs in earnest, and with some enthusiasm. I actually got some interviews. Of course when I didn’t get the jobs, no amount of philosophical attitude could stop me from taking it very personally and the whole process started to depress me. Going into schools also depressed me. With this institution and it’s human contents I was confronted with the 2.2 children I had failed to have, the dream job that I had failed to study for in school, and the house and garden that I had failed to buy, or indeed aspire to. It’s fair to say that my initial enthusiasm waned somewhat. I started just to go through the motions, copying and pasting my job applications. I wouldn’t say they were bad, that would have taken up too much creative energy. I just didn’t spend any time on them. The DWP seemed happy with this, just as long as I presented my looking for work diary to them every fortnight, but I, most certainly was not happy. I was also shocked at how depressing and desperate the job centre felt. A grey building, with grey people who seemed to hate their work. Even in the naughties it felt like the staff at the job centre didn’t want me to be there. I was another case to be ‘dealt with’. Yet more overtime for them and less time to plan their dream holiday in sunny Benidorm. It probably wasn’t like that… but that’s how it was in my extreme daydreaming head. That’s how it felt to me. As luck would have it I secured a freelance performing contract at this time. I was sorted for a few weeks so I decided to sign off. And so, I did what I always seem to do. I went back to being a street performer.
And so my brief time as a ‘work shy scrounger’ was soon forgotten. Truth be told I needed the rest. I needed to take a step back. There is a lack of acknowledgement in the neurotypical world of the benefits system that for someone who has ADHD, these brief times to re group and deal with our burnout are vitally important. We always come back stronger. That was the case for me. After that I had my most lucrative and fulfilling time as a street performer, and of course it goes without saying that I paid the most tax. I even started to think that I was, perhaps, dare I say it… good at my job. There is also a lack of understanding that for every pound well spent on support for those with ADHD, many pounds will be gained when we become productive. We are potentially the world’s big achievers.
Post pandemic, I signed on again when I was living with my sister. Again what I didn’t do, as much as anything led to a heavy dose of the ADHD tax. I arranged to pay rent to my sister which is fair enough really. Having a 58 year old brother who sometimes acts as a man child living in the house was an inconvenience. The DWP ruled that they would not pay housing benefit as I was living with a relative. I felt I had no choice but to move out. An idea that, at the time, filled me with dread. I received my first payout from the DWP. “Strange,” I thought, “the figure doesn’t add up.” They had given me more money than was agreed. I got out my trusty calculator and discovered that the overpayment was exactly the figure that I was paying in rent. I had received no word that the decision not to pay my rent had been overturned. I had a feeling deep down that this was a mistake, so what was to be done? Nothing seemed like the best option. So that’s exactly what I did. I stayed living at my sisters and used the money to pay the rent. After all it wasn’t my mistake, they have given me the money so they can’t take it back right? Well wrong actually. There then followed a series of draconian phone calls and demands for paperwork, with no explanation of what was going on. It took just one missed message in my work journal, a terse demand for some paperwork (paperwork that I’d already submitted three times to them) for my rent payments to be stopped. I then found out what was going on in the form a new demand to pay back over a thousand pounds in overpaid rent. There were appeals, not called appeals, that would, if successful, lead to more appeals. It all seemed baffling and very overwhelming. There was also no communication about the appeals process. In fact the only communication I received was to harangue me to pay the money back. I eventually had to settle and pay the minimum instalments. The DWP seemed to have a strange way of calculating what I could afford to pay to say the least. At one point I signed on again and this automatically triggered a three hundred per cent rise in the monthly payments that they were demanding. Yet more anxious hours wasted on hold for hours trying to speak with someone to sort the situation. Hours spent trying to calm myself down and as politely as I could, explain that as I was now in benefits I couldn’t afford the sums of money that they were demanding. They changed the agreement back. Apparently I should have informed them that I was now claiming Universal Credit, even though they obviously knew that I was. The onus was always on me (the one struggling with poverty and undiagnosed ADHD) to contact them and sort things out. It all felt very de humanising, and deeply anxiety provoking. This carried on for over a year. The whole affair was ended with just one message in my Universal Credit Journal. It simply said that they had ruled that I now didn’t owe the money, and that any money that I had paid would be paid back. No apology, no acknowledgement of any failure on their part. It left me wondering what the point of any of this was. A thousand pounds that was nothing to the state, but everything to an individual on the breadline.
There is no getting away from it. I’m angry about this.
One could argue that this attitude is changing with initiatives such as Access To Work. But even here the barriers are up. I know of so many good and talented people with ADHD who are self employed and don’t qualify as they are not deemed ‘successful’ enough to have the status of self employed. Even though some, like me, have been self employed all of their lives. There still is a sense of ‘prove that you are good’, or ‘prove that you are worthy’, something that I know I struggle with. With the self employed the labels of ‘criminal’, ‘lazy’ and ‘work-shy’ have been removed only to be replaced with the labels of either ‘extreme success’ or ‘utter failure’. More awareness is definitely needed for sure . The diagnosis alone should be proof enough. Yet again they are as good as saying “Come back when you don’t need the support and then we’ll give it to you.” I guess it’s fair to say that I rank all of these organisations in order of how much they fail to understand certain things. In my view they fail to understand and care about the very poorest in our society. Their ignorance and contempt almost criminalises those they claim to help. The same goes for those who are marginalised, have mental health issues, or are neurodivergent. I just don’t know how that ingrained attitude, fostered over decades of austerity and lack of investment into human talent and capability, can be changed overnight.
Let’s end however on a positive note. I am at present, applying for my access to work grant, I can reveal that I have found the perfect way for me to deal with The Department of Work and Pensions, with almost zero anxiety. I have got someone else to deal with it on my behalf. So far it’s working great for me.