DWP fails to meet Information Commissioner deadline for possible benefit related deaths

FOI: The NAO Report titled ‘Information held by the Department for Work & Pensions on deaths by suicide of benefit claimants’ ( 7 Feb 2020) states (at para.14) that DWP has established a new unit responsible for a number of activities that relate to the issues raised in the NAO briefing.Please send me any documents indicating the purpose and role of this team.

Response:  The department has historically used a number of routes to diagnose the situation where something has gone wrong for customers. In Summer 2019, the decision was taken to bring together this work into a new Customer Experience Directorate, with the intention of rationalising and improving current customer experience diagnostics in the department, and building on this with new processes, policies and governance to ensure cross-cutting organisational learning is taken forwards and embedded across the department.The Customer Experience and Learning team, is responsible for driving the development of a learning culture by gathering and using data, insight and past learning to make Service Delivery more efficient and effective while improving the customer experience

There’s been some very interesting reporting by DNS recently on an issue arising out of the publication of the recent NAO report on benefit deaths.  See https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/net-closing-on-government-departments-that-refuse-to-publish-deaths-reports/

The issue is summarised in the attached FOI (which is currently at review stage)

Vicky Foxcroft’s recent written answer, when read alongside the information in the NAO report, appear to suggest that there are two unpublished PFDs: https://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/written-questions-answers-statements/written-question/Commons/2020-04-28/41123/

The published PFDs can be found here: https://www.judiciary.uk/related-offices-and-bodies/office-chief-coroner/https-www-judiciary-uk-subject-community-health-care-and-emergency-services-related-deaths/

The dates in the written answer suggest that the PFDs for the Health and Safety Executive are those relating to the deaths of Kenneth Bardsley and Zane Gbangbola. 

So it seems that there are likely to be two unpublished PFDs from 2015 and 2016, one relating to a suicide and one relating to another cause of death.

“The department has historically used a number of routes to diagnose the situation where something has gone wrong for customers. In Summer 2019, the decision was taken to bring together this work into a new Customer Experience Directorate, with the intention of rationalising and improving current customer experience diagnostics in the department, and building on this with new processes, policies and governance to ensure cross-cutting organisational learning is taken forwards and embedded across the department.The Customer Experience and Learning team, is responsible for driving the development of a learning culture by gathering and using data, insight and past learning to make Service Delivery more efficient and effective while improving the customer experience”

Emperor’s new clothes, anyone?

“cross-cutting organisational learning”...............what?????

Benny Fitzpatrick - 22 May 2020 12:56 PM

“The department has historically used a number of routes to diagnose the situation where something has gone wrong for customers. In Summer 2019, the decision was taken to bring together this work into a new Customer Experience Directorate, with the intention of rationalising and improving current customer experience diagnostics in the department, and building on this with new processes, policies and governance to ensure cross-cutting organisational learning is taken forwards and embedded across the department.The Customer Experience and Learning team, is responsible for driving the development of a learning culture by gathering and using data, insight and past learning to make Service Delivery more efficient and effective while improving the customer experience”

Emperor’s new clothes, anyone?

“cross-cutting organisational learning”...............what?????

Gobbledegook.  All of it.

It’s certainly a masterclass in how to use the maximum amount of verbiage to say precisely nothing!

Sir Humphrey would be proud!

Via Disability News Service:

The equality watchdog has rejected calls for it to investigate deaths linked to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), more than a year after an MP asked it to launch an inquiry.

Labour’s Debbie Abrahams, a former shadow work and pensions secretary, first approached the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) in April last year with her concerns about links between DWP and the deaths of benefit claimants, and the wider impact of DWP policies on disabled people.

Eight months ago, the commission said it was reviewing what “potential” work it could undertake to tackle “discriminatory decision-making in the social security system” and would respond to Abrahams “in due course”.

Now, 14 months after she first raised concerns with the commission, and following another “holding reply” in February, EHRC has finally decided that, “due to the pandemic”, it will not be able to carry out an inquiry into DWP this year.

More: https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/watchdog-snubs-call-for-probe-into-dwp-deaths-after-delay-of-more-than-a-year/

News story: https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/dwp-ignored-coroners-call-to-take-action-to-save-claimants-from-suicide/ 
Original documents: https://www.judiciary.uk/publications/faiza-ahmed/

That is presumably one of the two apparently unpublished PFDs, perhaps there will be further reporting in weeks to come.

Edit: this is presumably the second previously unpublished PFD - https://www.judiciary.uk/publications/miriam-smith-cox/

This gives us two reports published in 2015 and 2016 so matches the information released via the NAO and parliamentary questions

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/nov/05/family-of-mentally-ill-single-mother-accuse-dwp-of-failing-to-protect-her

“The family of Philippa Day, a single mother who died aged 27 in October last year after not recovering from a coma caused by an insulin overdose, believe she took her own life and accuse benefits administrators of failing to take sufficient account of her vulnerability, despite several warnings.

Day’s community psychiatric nurse team had asked the DWP for a benefit assessment to take place at her home because of her poor health and agoraphobia. Officials rejected the request, insisting that she travel to a nearby assessment centre.”

This lady died after the DWP chief psychologist had stated, at the inquest into Errol Graham’s death, that DWP were reviewing DWP safeguards - it’s unclear whether that review ever existed or, if it did exist, whether it went anywhere.  The death came at around the same time that the NAO announced that they would be looking into benefit deaths

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/jan/30/errol-grahams-family-tells-dwp-to-act-after-he-starved-to-death
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/suicide-welfare-benefit-claimants-national-audit-office-nao-frank-field-a9164836.html

Further information from Leigh Day: https://www.leighday.co.uk/News/Press-releases-2020/November-2020/Death-of-Philippa-Day-aged-27

And some news from Leigh Day regardin Jodey Whiting: https://www.leighday.co.uk/News/Press-releases-2020/November-2020/Jodey-Whitings-family-given-permission-to-apply-f

More information about Philippa Day: https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/philippa-day-disabled-woman-left-note-implicating-dwp-and-its-pip-failings-in-her-death/

And BBC reporting on Jodey Whiting: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tees-54907346

DNS has linked to this Safeguarding Adults Review: https://www.mktogether.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/fv_-Adult-D-Overview-report_Nov2020.pdf

DNS reporting is here:
https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/roy-curtis-autistic-man-killed-himself-as-council-waited-two-months-to-begin-urgent-assessment/
https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/roy-curtis-autistic-man-killed-himself-six-days-after-latest-fitness-for-work-demand/

DNS reporting that DWP IPRs show staff repeatedly failed to follow guidance: https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/dwp-staff-repeatedly-failed-to-follow-suicide-threat-guidance-secret-death-reviews-reveal/

John, at DNS, has shared some of the documents on which the story was based.  These are attached to this post and the following posts.

Two more IPRs

Another IPR