Disability benefits in various countries?

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Here in the US, it's very hard to get disability benefits (SSDI) for anything, and getting them for Asperger's is even harder. (More than half of people who apply for disability are denied). And even if you do get it, you will live in poverty, because the "benefit" is so low - ~$1,000/month or so.

It's GOT to be much better in most other developed countries? Please tell us the situation in other countries you're familiar with (besides the US)?

Can you receive disability benefits while earning a paycheck, let's say for minimum wage or something near it? I'm not familiar with the laws surrounding disability benefits...

My apologies if you've already stated this, but how is AS preventing you from maintaining an entry level position at even miniumum wage? Just trying to understand your situation.

I live in Sweden and here one needs an insurance to be able to collect indemnity after getting an AS diagnosis. For me, who didn't have the right insurance, I got no money at all! I think we talk about 10 000 us dollars in indemnity. Because of my diagnosis I get a ceiling of how much I have to pay for medicines every year. When I get up to around 200 us dollars I get my medicines for free after that. But after the year passes I have to start over from nil. There is also free health-care card for people like us. Dental care is free too.

What else. Yeah, we have the benefit to get help with cleaning at home once a week (or in some cases more). Help with economy. And in some cases live in residual homes specially designed for people with psychological disabilities. Ceiling on bus travels.

There is probably more, but there is many bad stuff too for people like us. We don't have the automatic right to have a doctor or psychologist. No information about the disorder. Hard to get into psychiatry due to lack of space. There are also many people who desperately tries to get the AS diagnosis to be able to take advantage of the benefits of having the diagnosis.

In Poland we have 2 kinds of benefits, given by 2 different administrative agency.

"Team decisive about disability" can give you the paper that you are disabled. I am not sure how hard it is to get but probably a doctor diagnosis might be enough, assuming the team agrees with the diagnosis - I am trying to get it now but diagnosis process in Poland takes time - 2 doctors already said I have AS but noone gave me any written opinion about it yet.
If you get it you can use parking spaces for disabled and cheaper tickets, get rehabilitation/therapy/daily life help/disability tools if needed and most important - companies that decide to hire you get money for having you in the company every month (40-100% of minimal wage depending on disability level - if you are severe and getting minimal wage company uses you for free because government pays them your whole wage) and you have right to ask for accommodations in workplace.

"The insurance company" is responsible for giving money to disabled people who are partially or fully unable to work. To get right for this you need to prove that something prevents you from getting a job. The money are hard to get - even severely disabled people won't get it if they are able to work and I heard AS people are refused for reasons like "Disabled people don't graduate college and you did so you don't need any help."

SSI disability is even worse, you get 733 usd a month, you currently automatically can get food stamps and medicaid(at least for now) because it such a low income. really though 733$ 'hey here's 3 bucks'....why not just 730 or 735, but 3 such an odd number. But I'd be curious to know how this sort of thing works in other countries as well.

You can work a limited number of hours on disability, for limited wages...oh and at least on SSI you cannot save up more than 2,000 dollars in money and assets, so it seems to discourage getting a job. I think you can make like up to 60-45$ a month and anything more than that they deduct out of your SSI check, so its not like by working you are rewarded with an opportunity to improve your living standards because whatever you earn they deduct that much from your SSI payment.

If you could try working and be able to fall back on SSI until you're able to actually become somewhat stable, it would work a lot better. But the cap on saving is kind of ridiculous, with the cost of living 2,000 dollars doesn't do a lot...well not to mention I imagine it also includes your montly payment so if you had 1,500 saved up your SSI deposit of 733$ would put you over the limit and they could cut revoke it...regardless of if you have a job or are still disabled by your condition.

In the UK, someone with a diagnosis of Asperger's Syndrome or ASD is entitled to the Disability Living Allowance (due to be replaced by the Personal Independence Payment) of up to about £75 per week, unless they are in supported accommodation, in which case that is paid for for them. They can also claim Housing Benefit of up £1000 per month to rent accommodation on contract, and are provided with specialist support/tutoring at school and university if they require it. The latter is assessed initially in each place of education. These benefits will still be paid if the person is employed, up to a certain level of income.

This is a general overview. Under the current Conservative government, benefits of all kinds are under constant scrutiny and even those with severe disabilities are having their assessments challenged.

I wish I could get £75 a week and £1000 a month for rent just for being diagnosed.

I think your post is a very optimistic and a bit misleading. Just being diagnosed with any condition does not automatically qualify anyone for disability benefits (unless it is a terminal illness). Disability Living Allowance, or PIP as it is now known, is only given after a medical assessment that awards points for functional impairments. In order to qualify for the benefit you have to score enough points. For example if you can prove you need help communicating complex information verbally you might score 4 points.

Many feel the assessments are not fair because the people doing them are incentivized to reject as many claimants as possible and as a result <50% of new claims are successful. Many claims go to appeal process which can take months or years to resolve and there are no payments made while the appeal is ongoing. PIP can be awarded while in work but I think the chances of anyone who actually qualifies for PIP benefit being well enough to work is tiny.

Housing benefit is horrible now they capped the amount and rules are very strict for the under 35 age group who are only allowed to claim enough money to rent a bed-sit or room in a shared house. How could people with ASD or mental illness cope with a noisy shared house of strangers?

In my area the maximum housing benefit I could claim is £90 a week and that would rent the nastiest bed-sit available in the roughest area. But of course many private landlords will not accept tenants on benefit anyway. Trying to find an affordable property to rent while on benefit is incredibly hard, especially for a single person with ASD or any disability.

I can't talk about school because I wasn't diagnosed until recently but there are some support structures in place if you attend University. Someone with ASD could claim disabled student allowance (DSA) which doesn't provide money in hand but does pay for support services such as study skills tuition and specialist mentoring... probably 1 hour a week with a tutor and 1 hour with a mentor.

So yes, disability benefits in the UK are increasingly hard to claim and the amounts of money awarded usually provides for an existence rather than a life.

Also disability rights movement and the government response to such is based on the social model of disability and is aimed towards those with physical impairment where adjustments to the environment can enable people to work. The problem is for those with chronic illness or mental disorders sometimes the barrier (disability) to work is the illness itself, not the environment or other social factors.

This makes it very hard now for people with fluctuating conditions and mental illness to 'prove' their right to benefit and also to not be seen as 'work shy' or 'scroungers'.

I was just citing examples of people with a qualifying level of ASD that I know of in my area, and did say that I was speaking in a general way. This is part of the problem - what you can claim varies from region to region. Specialist tutors are now provided in State schools, although their quality varies - although I think rarely in independent schools. Many universities offer mentors & tutors for those with ASD, but again the provision isn't uniform.

There's no doubt that the current government is planning some draconian cuts to disability benefits.

I am on disability in Ontario, Canada for social anxiety not AS which is provided by my province, not federally.

For this disability you only have to prove that you are unable to maintain employment due to your health condition which is a lower quantum of proof needed to get approved for CPP federal disability. I only have benefits in this province as a result. They are however in my situation for life.

It takes on average 10 months or more to get accepted if you do here but if you are accepted, you get back paid for every month you had to wait. I have personally helped 3 of my friends successfully get ODSP benefits.

I get most of my meds covered for free except sleep meds and antihistamines. I get free essential dental care, taxi rides to appointments and an allowance which isn't enough to live on my own but is enough to get by living with my parents.

OZ here; I think it's about $1200 a month.

The process isn't that easy unless you have an advocate to help you with the forms (lots of paperwork and various doctor visits), but they recognize that autism is capable of causing severe disability.

I'm on it.

I wish I could work and drive, but eh, life isn't what you want it to be, rather what it is.

My ipad glitched and deleted my message, but I wanted to emphasise that things in the UK are becoming very difficult for those with disabilities as the government is hellbent on painting the disabled as feckless and lazy.

£75 is not the lowest rate of DLA - I get a bit more than that a month. It is, however, non-means tested.

DLA is being phased out and it's substitute, PIP, requires people to be more disabled. Furthermore, lifetime awards are no longer permitted and even the most profoundly disabled must be regularly assessed to ensure they haven't improved and dropped subthreshold.

DLA was based off descriptions of disability, so it didn't require a diagnosis but as even truly diagnosed individuals could be rejected and have to appeal (my mum had to appeal for me and I've since been put on a lifetime award except that it's not because soon I'll have to change to PIP). In practice this means it is based on reports from professionals about the difficulties a person faces in various activities.

PIP, by contrast, includes assessments by undertrained people from a private company that was contracted to reduce the welfare bill.

The pot for help to get reasonable adjustments at work has been axed.

And the payments for those who cannot work Incapacity Benefit/Employment Support Allowance (renamed as the latter to remind the scum what they ought to be doing) is undeniably aimed to get as many people removed from it as possible - 90 people a month are dying after being deemed 'fit for work'. The information has only just been released after the government were forced into doing so - they've been blocking the Freedom of Information request for some time.

All in all, the UK is facing a United Nations inquiry into violations of the human rights of disabled people.

Oh, and those who are deemed fit for work have faced benefits sanctions for missing or being late to appointments and the wonderful massively over budget system means that people are receiving sanctions (not being paid benefits for varying lengths of time.) for needing to go to the toilet or being in hospital.

It has recently been revealed that the government faked profiles of people who'd benefited from having their benefits sanctioned. These were entirely fabricated - for example one featured a women who said she didn't see the point in having a CV (propaganda about fecklessness, again!) but once she'd been sanctioned she wrote one. Sanctions can mean people end up homeless and the welfare bill is actually going up as over services are over stretched for ideological reasons.

The government have also introduced 'workfare' for the unemployed which means people must work for benefits, usually in places such as pound land, under the guise of learning essential skills. Mean while, they earn less than minimum wage.

Canadian here, through AiSH, an Alberta government program, I get $1588 a month. It's not bad, but my rent eats up most of it, so I have to be very careful with what I do with the rest. Still, it's better than what I was getting before through Income Support, which is intended more as a short term solution for people either in between jobs or awaiting AiSH.

Applying for AiSH took a while, but it wasn't as hard as some make it up to be. Then again, getting an assessment from a neuropsychologist helped a LOT, and I was able to get that because I was briefly in Job Corps, an employment training program. Even though Job Corps didn't work out, they were still willing to do the assessment.

I often wonder how AiSH compares to the programs they have in other provinces.

Between October 2013 and February 2014 I was on plain social assistance. I got $550/month ($285+60 for Rent, the rest for Food). My rent at the time was $400.

Between March 2013 and October 2014 I was on EIA Disability where I got approx. $1040/month ($365 for Rent, the rest was for Food). Rent from March 2013 to August 2014 was $400. Rent from August 2014 to current is $425. Both are renting part of a house.

Was diagnosed with AS in October 2013 but it was 6 mos. after that that I actually got EIA Disability. I feel like a mouse that a cat is being played with.

Between November 2014 and June 2015 I was forced to apply for and get CPP (Canada Pension Plan) Disability. I was getting ($754+$300=$1054). Rent is $425 (same as previous).

June 2015 to current...back on EIA Disability. Getting $1097/month. Rent is still $425. Rest is for food.

My Diabetes meds. are all paid for and I get a monthly transit pass (worth $86). I also get a "Diabetes special diet" (worth $80). This is included in the $1097/month I get now.

When I was working and sometimes when I was getting unemployment insurance, I found (10 yrs. ago) that I could live comfortably between $1100 and $1400 per month. So for me anything below that is "poverty".

I always intend on saving at least $100 to my RSP out of this, but with current food prices it is quite impossible. Plus I have no one to cook for me and sometimes I get tired of doing that, so I go out to eat at the cost of $15-30 per meal. The money I get sometimes runs out before I get my next cheque, and I don't drive nor smoke nor do I do drugs.

I've heard about something called the Guaranteed Annual Income. Basically the idea is to pay people approx. $20 K/yr to be on assistance and their lives will be enriched because they can more easily afford Housing, attend Entertainment events like Concerts & Movies. It was tried right here in a part of Manitoba Canada in 1974 as a trial, but no politician has gone with it permanently. I think it would reduce the crime rate because those in poverty tend to be the ones who do the crimes. I think it would raise mental health because people would be able to do more stuff they wanna do like attend concerts & movies, perhaps travel a bit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guaranteed_Annual_Income