‘I received a letter saying my disabled daughter is fit for work – she was dead’

Mum of disabled woman who took life after DWP mistakenly stopped benefits warns Ros Wynne-Jones that more vulnerable people will die if Labour continue with disability cuts

Joy Dove, the extraordinary mum who has won a seven-year battle to prove the Department for Work and Pensions was responsible for her daughter Jodey’s death, has a message for the Labour government.

“If Labour carry on with their disability cuts there will be more Jodeys,” warns the former cleaner, who took on the British state. “And I’ve always been Labour.

“They are saying they need to fill this black hole. But they can’t fill it with vulnerable people. It’s the same with the winter fuel allowance and the benefit cap. People need protecting.”

Joy has spent the last seven years determined to prove the link between the DWP’s treatment of her beloved daughter and her death by suicide. Mother-of-nine Jodey Whiting died in February 2017, two weeks after her benefits had been wrongly stopped, and despite being flagged as a vulnerable claimant with mental health problems.

A former shop assistant from Stockton-on-Tees, Jodey suffered from chronic pain relating to a curvature of the spine and was later diagnosed with a brain cyst. She took 23 tablets each day, including morphine, for the agonising pain which left her barely able to even crawl from her home – and also suffered with a type of personality disorder.

Injustice was compounded when the first inquest into Jodey’s death lasted 37 minutes and heard no evidence relating to the DWP decision. Joy feared that not only had the state contributed to her daughter’s death, but now no-one would ever admit it.

One mum’s brave battle for her daughter’s justice after she took her own life

On Monday, following a rare second inquest, the Senior Coroner at Teeside, Clare Bailey, vindicated Joy’s long fight, recording a conclusion of suicide which, she said, had been precipitated by the mistaken withdrawal of benefits by the DWP.

“I’ve been to Parliament, the Labour Party Conference, protesting outside the DWP, the High court, the Appeal Court, all over the country,” Joy, a great-grandmother to 16, also from Stockton, says. “It’s been a long struggle, but I’ve always known it were the DWP’s fault. And now I have it in black and white – the cause of death was the DWP. I’ve proved Jodey right.

“When they read it out, saying Jodey’s suicide was caused by the DWP removing her benefits, people shouted ‘yes’ in the court. I was in shock.

“I’ll never forget that when the letter arrived saying Jodey was fit for work. That day, she was at the undertakers.”

Merry Varney, a solicitor for Leigh Day, representing Jodey’s family, said the cause of death was the same for many other families: “The DWP.”

In all these years of campaigning, Joy has never stopped talking to Jodey, even sending her Christmas and birthday cards and going to her graveside to talk to her. “I still have all her photos up in a little shrine, and last night I gave her a little kiss with my finger,” she says. “I still have the ‘Justice4Jodey’ banner I took to the DWP on the settee.”

The last words Jodey said to her mum were, “I love you, I’m going to go to sleep, mam.”

Since the verdict, she has been lost in memories of her daughter. “I have this memory of standing at the kitchen door and Jodey was sat down and we were looking at each other,” she says. “She was looking at the letter from the DWP saying her benefits were stopped. I said, ‘that’s not right’. That’s how it all started.”

I first met Joy in 2018, a few months after she had found her daughter Jodey dead at her home in Stockton. The concierge of the block of flats let Joy in with two of her granddaughters after they become increasingly concerned about her.

“I’ll never forget going into that flat with the concierge holding my granddaughter back and her screaming ‘mum’s dead, mum’s dead’,” she says now.

Jodey was found surrounded by bits of paper that showed her mental state. One said, “I have had enough”, and another ended with the words “Debt, debt, debt.”

‘My daughter took her life – how dare David Cameron say he should’ve cut more?’

She had been worried not just about her own nine children but her six grandchildren. “It’s taken all these years to prove the DWP were wrong, and Jodey was right,” Joy says. “They never should have stopped her benefits. I know that if they hadn’t done that, she would have been alive. Her mental health was getting better. But that letter started a downward spiral until she couldn’t take any more.”

Joy had helped Jodey write to the DWP to explain the situation. “I’d even been to the job centre to have a word about getting her a social crisis loan, but they said her case had been terminated. When I told her that, her face fell.

“If only I could have won for her while she was alive, she would have just said, ‘thanks, mam’ and got on with her life. And now she’d say the same. I think she would still say ‘thanks, mam’.”

The Mirror has been campaigning for Justice for Jodey ever since, and in 2019, Joy spoke at our annual Real Britain panel at the Labour Conference in Brighton, reducing a 350-strong audience to tears. “I’d written three speeches and I didn’t know which one to give, but in the end, I just spoke straight from the heart,” she says.

Joy went to Brighton in the belief that getting the Conservatives out of government would end the future deaths of disabled people like Jodey. But now she is deeply worried by Labour’s plan to make their own cuts to the welfare bill.

Disabled mum’s heartbreaking last words before taking own life as DWP stop benefits

“There are so many people who have taken inspiration from Jodey’s story,” she says. “We need to keep fighting for them.

Joy always believed the DWP had stolen two members of her family. Jodey’s son Corey died from a drug overdose, aged 19, in May 2020, unable to cope with his grief. Since then, Joy’s life has been hit by a succession of further family tragedies.

“In January, my other daughter Donna thought she had pulled a muscle decorating,” she says. “She went to see a physio, but it didn’t seem to help. Then she had a routine blood test, and they sent an ambulance, saying she had seriously abnormal bloods.

“She had a kidney stone that had pierced her bowel. They put her in an induced coma and operated for seven hours, but she died of sepsis on January 26.

“They were chalk and cheese my daughters. Donna was a teacher, Jodey was a mum. But they both died young. Donna was 52. Jodey was 42.

“Last September, my grandson Lewis was murdered – the sentencing is June 19. So that is even more to go through. I don’t know how much more we can take. My blood pressure is sky high, and I’ve had to go on medication.”

Since we last met, she has even lost her best friend, Jeanette Scott, who came with her to Labour Conference, to emphysema.

On Monday, Coroner Bailey praised the “perseverance, resilience and dignity” of Jodey’s family.

“I’ve done it all for Jodey,” Joy says. “At the inquest, her dad said a lovely thing about her being like the Pied Piper – she loved kids and they would follow her about. When she died, she left me in charge – she said ‘please look after my babies’.”

Years ago, Joy told me about the promise she made to Jodey, the day after she died. “Don’t worry, love,” she told her. “We’ll show them up.”

This week, a former cleaner from Teeside and great-grandmother showed up some of the most powerful institutions in the land.

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