DWP to increase support for vulnerable claimants after series of suicides

The Department for Work and Pensions is to overhaul its safeguarding systems following a series of high-profile failures in which mentally ill claimants took their own lives after having their benefits cut off by welfare officials.

The department’s permanent secretary, Peter Schofield, told MPs on the work and pensions select committee that vulnerable people had sometimes “fallen through the cracks” in the social security system and been left without support.

Recent cases include Errol Graham, 57, who was found starved to death in 2018 after his benefits were withdrawn when he failed to attend a jobcentre meeting, and Jodey Whiting, 42, who took her own life in 2017 days after her benefits were withdrawn.

The National Audit Office revealed in February that over the past six years at least 69 suicides could be linked to problems with benefit claims, and that the DWP had failed to investigate many of these cases properly or learn from them.

The work and pensions secretary, Thérèse Coffey, told MPs she had introduced the measures to protect vulnerable claimants. “I’m very conscious that when things go wrong they can go badly wrong for people and we need to be much more agile about how we pick that up,” she said.

The changes include issuing new safeguarding guidance requiring frontline staff to support vulnerable claimants who fail to cooperate with jobcentre staff, by liaising with other agencies such as the NHS and police, rather than removing their benefits and abandoning them.

The inquest into Graham’s death, held in 2019, heard that officials wrote to Graham after he failed to attend a fit-for-work test, made three unanswered phone calls and texts and made two “safeguarding” visits to his flat on successive days, none of which elicited a response. They then cut off his benefits.

Asked by the coroner whether this was reasonable, given the DWP knew Graham had a long history of serious mental illness, a DWP official replied that by the terms of the safeguarding guidance at the time it was “the right decision … for us to have made”.

Graham’s emaciated body, weighing just 28kg (62lb), was discovered by bailiffs sent to evict him eight months after his benefits were removed. His family believe he would not have died had the DWP done more to understand his mental health issues before cutting off his only source on income.

The family has launched a legal challenge accusing the DWP of failing to make proper adjustments to protect vulnerable claimants, leading in Graham’s case to “degrading and inhuman suffering” and, ultimately, his death.

Schofield told MPs the new guidance was coupled with the introduction of regional safeguarding officers and a new top-level DWP serious case panel. “We genuinely want to listen and and learn and make sure that when we see things that have gone wrong, we make changes that make ensure they do not happen again.”

He admitted that things often went wrong after a vulnerable claimant “falls through the cracks” when information was not shared with other agencies. “What we have not been great at, I would say, is pooling the information we have got.”

Under the new guidance, a case conference with other agencies would be called to understand more about a claimant who failed to attend a “mandatory intervention” such as a jobcentre meeting. “Basically, what we would seek to do is provide support, not removal of benefits,” said Schofield.

Alison Turner, Graham’s daughter-in-law, told the Guardian the changes outlined by the DWP had come far too slowly, given how long shortcomings in the safeguarding system had been known about. “The changes outlined today should have been standard procedure years ago,” she said.