One in fourteen working-age Britons is out of work through long-term sickness, behind a door that demands they stay that way. This paper is about that door: the stories it makes people tell, what those stories do to a brain and a body, and what a different door would cost. Less than you think.
To receive help in Britain today, 2.8 million people must repeatedly describe themselves as broken: on forms, in assessments, at tribunals, indefinitely. Psychology is clear that we become the stories we practise. The system is paying its largest caseload to rehearse its own sickness, and then acting surprised when the caseload grows.
This paper proposes a different door: replace the incapacity assessment maze with a participation income. A secure floor, no test of brokenness attached, carrying an invitation of around five hours a week of contribution, defined as generously as life itself. Art counts. Care counts. A tended riverbank counts. Nobody audits the hours. Nobody in work can quit into it. And nobody, ever again, has to keep saying the words I am sick, I am broken, it hurts in order to eat.