Closed petition Provide an online instant-messaging alternative to phone and post with the DWP.

Closed on 25 August 2016

If you can't use the phone due to hearing issues, anxiety, or processing speed, your only alternative with the DWP is postal communication. Most of us who need to do that have had their paperwork get lost.

Give us a way to communicate with the DWP in real time and save our conversation easily.

If you can't use the phone but have a support worker, you still need to give consent over the phone when your support worker calls them. Then there is no record of the call or what happened.

The only alternative is post, which is slow and prone to lost paperwork, requires a trip to the post office to pay for signed-for delivery for even minor communication.

Setting up a textphone system is complicated and sometimes expensive. Not everyone is able, especially if they don't have benefits yet.