People must wake up to what is happening in the welfare state.

This is real and this IS happening. We must raise awareness of the realities of what is happening to disabled, sick and vulnerable people in the UK. We are wrongly losing our benefits. It is getting worse by the day.  Lives are being all but destroyed. For a disabled person like me or anyone that is too ill to work, benefits are a lifeline.

They enable us to put food on the table and keep ourselves afloat.We do not live in luxury. All we want is independence and the same chances as able bodied take for granted every day. None of us want to live on benefits. I want to earn my own my own money, have a job and be a Mum. Those options aren't open to me.

My Cerebral Palsy means I am frequently in pain and exhausted. The smallest of things that people take for granted and manage in a heartbeat are impossible or very difficult for me. Can you imagine not being able to stand and cook a meal, carry a cup of tea across a room, or not be able to get yourself in and out of the bath? Can you imagine what your life would be like if you knew you couldn't have children? Can you imagine having to think about every step in case you fall? That's what my reality is like. It's draining, it's hard...and it's heartbreaking.

  

While people have been left without vital money and the assistance that they need due to a deeply flawed system and a government that seems hell-bent on punishing and misrepresenting those who already suffer enough on a daily basis, I have to do this! We have very few people willing to speak up for us, so we have to do it ourselves.

Quite frankly a lot of us don't have the energy or strength to do this, but we are doing anyway, because no one else will. I cannot allow desperate and isolated people to commit suicide and live with myself. We have to at least try and speak out. If I sat back and nothing, I know I would feel awful. As of May 2012 an average of thirty two people are committing suicide each week as a direct or indirect result of benefit cuts.
   

 The company paid by the government to assess disabled and ill people essentially relies on a computer programme, a sort of 'tick box' system to decide if a person is fit for work or entitled to social security. Many illnesses and variations in a person’s condition are not being taken into account, and they do not accurately reflect the realities of our situation. 

What's more, the people carrying out these assessments are often not medical professionals. They are not required to be. I hear you say, 'well at least they have a person's medical records at hand'...but no, often, THEY DON'T. Can you imagine if someone with no knowledge of what you did everyday walked in and, after meeting you only once, had the right to decide if you got paid or not?! Is that fair? No. 

  

Many people with lifelong conditions and terminal illnesses are being put through this process, which only adds to the stress and anxiety they already live with.

  

It's not just the assessment it's the waiting for that letter to drop on the doormat. For me, and many others, it is almost psychological torture. I’m often anxious and unable to sleep Every time the letterbox goes, I find myself thinking 'is this it?' 'Have I saved enough money?  

If my benefit is cut I lose my independence that I have spent my whole life fighting for. I won't be able to visit friends independently if I can no longer afford a taxi. My husband will have to come everywhere with me. I won't be able to help pay some of the household bills and there will be no mobile phone to keep me safe.  

These things are essential. Helping to pay a bill and maintain a household makes me feel 'normal'. There are so many 'normal' things that are painfully out of my reach through no fault of my own!

There are others in far worse situations than myself - People with chronic illness who have been left without enough money for food or to heat their homes because their benefits have been wrongly stopped. The ‘system’ is failing us. We do not need to be punished and made to pay for the mistakes of the bankers and the government. It is not fair and it is not right.

I am asking you as a human being who thinks and feels the same way do, and wants so desperately to have a normal life, not to believe the government's 'Scrounger' rhetoric. I'm not denying that there are people who 'swing the lead', but being portrayed this way by the media at seemingly every turn is destroying my self esteem.

I've worked hard to accept who I am, and accept my limitations. Now, I'm told on an almost daily basis, that I'm a burden on society because I am unable to contribute to our broken economy.

Don't they realise that I am broken too? Being me breaks my heart some days. I say I've accepted things, I try and be strong. In reality, even though I try, I'm not sure I ever really will. I already feel worthless to an extent because I can't work, because I can't have a baby,  because I can't do so many things  I wonder what my purpose is? Lately those feelings have been compounded by a heartless government and a heavily biased, ill informed media smear campaign against all those who claim benefits - justified or not.

The government has claimed that up to seventy five percent of disability benefit claimants are ‘faking’. In reality, the figure is much less – only one in every two hundred claimants are fraudsters.

Please open your eyes and think for yourself. Question what you are being told by this government, before more vulnerable and desperate people are frightened enough to take their own lives. This must not be allowed to continue.   

#helenswriting

NB: (2014-Edit) - Weekly deaths have risen an average of 73 - according to later stats).