Atos’ childcare contract: The most lucrative ‘work experience’ ever?

Mike Sivier's blog

When I heard that the contract to provide the government’s new childcare subsidy scheme had been awarded to Atos, I had a heretical thought.

“Perhaps they’ll be quite good at it,” I speculated.

Thanks in no small part to blogs like Vox Political, Atos is now infamous as the company that cocked up the assessment of claims for incapacity and disability benefits. It is possible that tens of thousands of people have died as a result.

It can be no surprise, then, that the announcement of this latest contract has had people up in arms.

But consider this: The Atos work capability assessment was pilloried because it was a tick-box system that required people to provide simple “yes” or “no” answers to quite complicated questions about their physical and mental health. Start explaining how your condition varies and your assessor would invariably have some kind of mental breakdown…

View original post 338 more words