Jan 242019
 

At last we have a belated annual round up setting out just a few of the things we supported and organised in 2018. DPAC was always set up so that if one person was ill or unable to take part in the day-to-day running of things it would still function but 2018 threw up more problems health and family wise for most of us than anyone could have envisaged. And although not all our problems are now solved we’re all still here and functioning – if a little slower than usual.

Once again we want to thank our many supporters and allies for their help in many ways from attending physical and on-line events, producing memes for our use, donating to help us remain completely independent and help others to attend protests and meetings and a myriad of other things. Thanks once again to Paula, Louise and Keith for helping with stalls at a variety of events these not only raise money for DPAC but also promote us as an organisation.

 

 

We’re very grateful to the disabled people who travelled so far to attend our Festival of Resistance during the summer and it was great to meet activists from around the world.

As usual last year we were involved supporting a wide range of events and protests organised by ourselves and others where the impact would have a direct and negative effect on disabled people. This included working with BASW and the Anti Austerity Action Group, RMT, Transport for All and ABC Commuters around transport issues especially driver only operated trains, Fuel Poverty Action Group, Winvisible, No More Deaths on Our Streets, Alliance for Counselling and Pyschtherapy,against IAPT therapies, Supporting NHS marches and anti-racists marches to name but a few.

Members of the steering group have continued to speak at a wide range of events on various topics throughout the year. We’re grateful to them for giving their time and energy to do so and are proud to have them represent us at such times. Paula in particular seems to have been very prolific last year speaking at about 10 major events.

We’ve continued our work with the media and tried to highlight the ongoing injustices and problems that disabled people face in the UK today.

We also had a voter registration drive for the mayoral and council elections because it is so important that disabled people do use their vote to seek change at all levels of the political spectrum.

 

Our initial planned Day of Action to Stop and Scrap Universal Credit had to be postponed due to the awful weather we had last March and was re-organised to take place in April when nationally we had a day out to parliament – again. You can watch the video at this link

https://dpac.uk.net/2018/04/video-dpac-protests-in-parliament-against-universal-credit-stopandscrapuniversalcredit/

We organised High Court vigils with Winvisible and Inclusion London for the Universal Credit case against the loss of Severe and Enhanced Disability Premiums in UC. Fortunately the case was won although of course the government tried and failed to wriggle out of paying disabled people more.

Most protests were supported by on-line actions and we also had an on-line protest against the Spring Budget. Sadly twitter has now stopped people using tweet lists and repeating others tweets en mass so we have been forced to change the way we can use it for protesting.

Some of our supporters from Bromley DPAC went to Calais in March where they were confronted by the harrowing living conditions for refugees

We once again took part in the Lush Summit in London where Paula did a workshop on Universal Credit and  Mary Ellen had her fantastic new art piece ‘UC – A Grave Condition’

We’ve produced several important papers last year as well as helping collect evidence for several consultation responses put together by Inclusion London.

Papers include – an alternative solution to the UK independent living crisis? Independent Living Support for the Future.

UBI: Solution or illusion? The implications of Universal Basic Income for disabled people in Britain. Our hard copy pamphlet on UBI will shortly be available to purchase at cost price of £1 although the report remains available on the website.

And as well as providing supporting evidence for UK consultations Ellen collated Consultation responses: – Latest report to UN Disability Committee launched in Parliament on 25 October (submitted by UK DDPOs) which included evidence of continuing attrocities disabled people had experienced and which we had collated for this report. The UK is not only the first country to be investigated by the UN Disability Committee it is also the only country to be annually monitored. If only the Tories felt any shame…..

And Submission to UN Extreme Poverty rapporteur (submitted from ROFA).

Paula was able to go to give evidence when the UN rapporteur met in East London and people from some of our local groups were able to attend local meetings with him especially Martin in Clacton.

In July the Department for International Development headed by ex- Minister for Disabled People, Penny Morduant, tried to pretend that the UK government cares about disabled people’s human rights and to pretend through hosting a Global Summit that they were good at this.

Naturally we felt the need to host our own events and held a Festival of Resistance to highlight the opposite truth and show those from foreign NGOs who attended what the abysmal reality is. It says much about the DfiD and their support for human rights that their co-hosts of this event were Kenya whose record on LGBT rights is so appalling.

https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/global-disability-summit-mordaunt-retreats-from-uks-global-leader-on-rights-claims/

https://dpac.uk.net/2018/07/festival-of-resistance-july-21st-24th/

Amongst our guests were Rose Achayo, Feliza ali Ramos and Alex Marcelo Vazqiez Bracamonte from Bolivia, Antonios Rellas from Greece, John Clarke from OCAP and of course John McDonnell and we were joined by Skype by Naiaty Yaacob from Malaysia.

https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/global-disability-summit-dpacs-protest-festival-highlights-government-hypocrisy/

https://dpac.uk.net/2018/07/global-disability-summit-rival-summit-hears-of-international-fight-against-oppression/

It is also worth remembering the disgraceful way in which Disability Rights UK (DRUK) betrayed the disabled people’s movement toadying up to government at this sham summit.

https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/global-disability-summit-disability-rights-uk-betrayed-movement-with-speech/

While work for this summit was the main piece of activism last year DPAC’s work to fight for disabled people’s human rights goes on daily both nationally and amongst our many active local groups.

We were delighted that also in July at Unite’s policy conference one of our supporters, Ellen Morrison, gave a rousing and compelling speech in her capacity as a Unite delegateto ask conference to support Stop and Scrap Universal Credit which was carried. We continue our work to get this position formally adopted by Labour instead of the whimpish Pause and Fix stance the party currently continues to hold.

 

Ellen’s superb and emotive speech can be viewed here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WPlGub1kJU

 

We’ve worked with Potent Whisper several times to support his rhyming guide to austerity and later last year on some video work with him that Paul and Keith helped with.

Conference season again saw us busy with meetings and speaking at events at the Labour Party Conference and lobbying Margaret Greenwood, who seems to be largely silent on the hostile environment disabled people face which is unacceptable and must change, followed by our bi-annual trip to the Tory Party Conference in Birmingham.

People from many of our local groups from around the country joined us there and it was particularly good to meet up with them all.

https://dpac.uk.net/2018/10/dpac-protest-at-the-tory-conference-pictures/

 

 

DPAC Protesters blocking Birmingham's tram routes

DPAC Protesters blocking Birmingham’s tram routes

 

 

 

 

We were also able to part sponsor an important disability art exhibition ‘I Protest’ in Norwich something a little out of the ordinary for us but which was a successful event and another way in which to spread information to the public.

I Protest art show https://www.facebook.com/IProtestNorwich/?modal=admin_todo_tour

 

Also last year we undertook a major piece of research into the postcode lottery of social care and charging funded by a grant from Network for Social Change and we have asked Barbara Keeley the Labour Party shadow minister for mental health and social care to provide a room in parliament for the launch of both this research and our work on the future of social care. So far she has not responded however we hope to have a reply shortly.

We’re still collating information on a few things mainly tell your story and on care charging and it would be helpful if anyone who hasn’t could fill in details on the website forms. This information is used for research, evidence, and media information so is vital to us all.

https://dpac.uk.net/2018/10/tell-your-story/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Posted by at 21:19
Dec 202018
 

The austerity programme was initiated in 2010 by the Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition government. It has brought in its wake the destruction of many social support systems for all of us but for disabled people it has meant a severe decrease in our ability to engage in life. The demise of the Independent Living Fund, reductions in social care, the unwillingness to consider medical evidence, the restriction on support … the list goes on. 

Whether you accept the concept of equality or not, the fact remains that our world is essentially constructed for bipedal creatures with a given capacity for sight, hearing and mobility. The world is eminently suited for all those who can climb stairs, read basic instructions, have a basic understanding of language and its usage and can perform a given set of functions on command. Fail in any of those and you are considered disabled. 

In relatively primitive societies when babies were born with the clear indication that they would never attain the full physical capacity they were exposed on hill sides and left to the elements. One society we know of was Sparta. Plutarch, aka Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus, gives us the Greek story that ancient Spartans threw their stunted and sickly babies off a cliff. Whether this story is true, or a myth, is at this moment immaterial. The fact is that the belief that this was true has fed into social movement such as the Hitler Youth. In the early 1920s, the Nazi party had established a youth movement to train them to become Stormtroopers.

The idealisation of perfect people with the full capacity of bipedal motion reading basic instructions, having a basic understanding of language and its usage and capable of performing a given set of functions on command was the underpinning of much of the Nazi Party ideology. They of course took it one step further still in that they also held that the Aryan was the only perfect exemplar of these perfect people. But that is by the by. What is relative to this article is that the Nazi ideology led to Aktion T4. Starting as a euthanasia program that eliminated disabled infants and children deemed unfit to live and expanding in time to cover disabled adults and the elderly. 

Aktion T4 was a direct result of a new bureaucracy with a mandate to kill anyone considered to have a “life unworthy of living”. The Nazis themselves referred to the victims of Aktion T4 as “burdensome lives” and “useless eaters”.Criteria for inclusion into the programme was not exclusively medical or genetic. People were assigned to the programme largely on ‘Economic Productivity’. 

Aktion T4 killed 70,000 people during its first two years of operation. Initially by starvation and lethal injection. Later, efficiency led to the development of asphyxiation by poison gas.  The program officially ended in 1941 amid a welter of protests from many quarters of German society. It however did go on more covertly. The total number of victims are estimated to have reached 200,000 plus.  Furthermore, it was the lessons the Nazis learned from Aktion T4 that helped them later on in their ‘final solution’.

We have all heard about the Yellow Star that Jews were required to wear under the Nazi Regime. This was but one of the classification symbols Nazis employed.  Notion that the star is but two triangles, one inverted on the other, was employed to classify people depending on their origin, their sexual orientation, their political affiliations, their religion and their overall productivity towards the Nazi war effort. Disabled people, those considered unfit for ‘economic productivity’ and eventually all others who were deemed ‘anti-social’ by the regime were accorded a Black Triangle. Which, incidently, is why the DPAC logo contains a black triangle at it’s centre.

Coming forward to the present day, prior to the Austerity programme, there were still many matters lacking for the ability of disabled people to fully engage in public life. But things were improving slowly, admittedly, but surely. We were gradually getting the notion of the Social Model of disability accepted. The notion was become accepted that people were disabled not by their impairment but rather by the society they were living in. All that went to the wall with the Austerity programme. We are currently facing the basic notion that impairment is a personal fault that society does not have to make room for, make concessions to or accept responsibility for. Unlike Aktion T4, the Austerity programme has not quite taken an active hand in killing disabled people. But disabled people are still dying as a result of austerity. 

Many disabled people do view the assault on their ability to engage in public life by the myriad of cuts, both in personal support and in social support, as akin to the intent of Aktion T4. I posit that this view is far from irrational. In fact, it is the only logical way to see the impact of the Austerity programme which is essentially a means of minimising Governmental responsibility for those it governs. 

Governments are there to set the stage on which we live our daily lives. If it makes it more difficult, or rather impossible for some of us the traverse that stage then government policy is wholly responsible for our inability to live full lives.

Austerity is responsible for killing each and every person who has found it impossible to live up to the expectations of economic activity as set by the governments that have initiated, and followed, the precepts of Austerity. Further, call a rose by any other name, and it still has thorns. Saying that Austerity is over has not meant that the impact of Austerity is no longer there. As long as disabled people are forced, through the actions and lack of action, by this or any other government, to live restricted lives, through lack of social support, we will, quite rightly, continue to see their actions, or lack thereof, in the same light as Aktion T4.

Miriam Binder

 Posted by at 21:09
Dec 202018
 

I am a longstanding DPAC supporter and now also Disability Officer for my local Labour Party (Berwick upon Tweed).  I would like to make contact with any other DPAC supporters in Northumberland to discuss campaigning against the Tories ‘hostile environment ‘ & how we can promote justice for all disabled people. Please contact me, Sarah, on sreqwerty@gmail.com

 

 Posted by at 21:00
Nov 262018
 

Actions against Universal Credit:
a hostile environment for women & children

Single mums challenge UC
working allowance disaster

Tues 27 & Wed 28 November 2018

High Court, Strand, London WC2A 2LL

Single mums are in court to challenge the government over the Universal Credit payment system which is inflexible and doesn’t reflect reality.  The rigid ‘assessment period’ causes wildly fluctuating benefit and debt. Part-time dinner lady Danielle Johnson from Keighley, West Yorkshire, is paid on the last working day of the month. But her monthly UC assessment periods are rigid – running from the last day of each month, meaning that if she is paid before the last day of the month, because payment falls on a weekend or non-banking day, she is assessed as having been paid twice that month, and not at all the next month (so she could be subject to the benefit cap). Claimants are unable to change their assessment period. Ms Johnson also argues that the system is discriminatory because it disproportionately affects mainly single mothers. Child Poverty Action Group and Leigh Day solicitors have joined together. See Leigh Day’s press release.  The UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights recently condemned UC as ‘misogynist’.

10.30am: Court case starts in Court 1.  Go into court to support the claimants.  Continues Wednesday, check court listing here

Read “Universal Credit: a hostile environment for women”, by Selma James, Solveig Francis

UC Unite call out 1 Dec 2018.JPG

UC parliament square wide photo.JPG

Saturday 1 December 2018

National day of action to STOP Universal Credit
Called by
Unite Community

London-wide 2pm: In the shadow of Grenfell Tower, meet at Ladbroke Grove tube, London W10 6HJ

UK-wide info, including England, North of Ireland, Scotland and Wales, see Unite website.

 Posted by at 17:43
Nov 152018
 

The CWU’s fight to save our nation’s cherished Post Office network, which has been recently launched by the union in response to the bombshell announcement that 74 Crown offices are to be franchised (privatised) to high-street retailer WH Smith – a move which will impact some 800 jobs and drastically cut services to communities.

CWU is fighting back, with a range of high-profile local and national campaign activities being planned over the next couple of months – particularly in the run-up to Christmas.

We’ve created dedicated campaign website – www.saveourpostoffice.co.uk – which has all the essential facts, aims and demands and also features a quick and easy ‘write to your MP’ guide.

From the main page of the site, simply click to find your own MP and then click again for a model letter to her or him – or write to the Government Minister responsible for the Post Office, Greg Clarke, urging him to stop the wrecking of our Post Office.

CWU general secretary Dave Ward says: “At a time when the government is claiming to be on the side of workers, it is an outrage that it is allowing well rewarded jobs to go from a public service, handing them straight to a second-rate employer like WHSmith – recently rated as the worst retailer on the high street who will undoubtedly provide a significantly inferior service.”

And he’s asking all CWU members to “please visit the campaign site, write to your MP and watch out for upcoming Save Our Post Office activities in your local area.”

Can you help? Here’s what you can do…

  1. Go towww.saveourpostoffice.co.uk
  2. Enter your address
  3. Your MP’s name will appear
  4. Write your message
  5. Share with colleagues, friends, family etc
  6. Thank you

Dave Ward says:

“Together, united, we can stop this attack and save this cherished Great British institution.”

December 1st protests are planned for Aberdeen, Crawley, Nottingham, Chester, Basingstoke, York, and Bristol – with further events in other localities being discussed and organised as well.

We need YOU – December 1st Day of Action

“Come and get involved in the big nationwide Campaign Day to Save Our Post Office,” is today’s message from our general secretary Dave Ward.

Since the launch event last Thursday, enthusiasm is growing around the country, with protests, petitioning and lobbying gathering pace – and Dave is urging reps to “please remember to take these petitions around your unit.

“We’ve got around 190,000 members of this union, so between now and the Big Day, let’s get as many of our own people signed up as we possibly can,” he urges.

“And while you’re asking people to sign, please flag up the nearest December 1st event to them and boost the attendance on the day.”

Saturday December 1st will see protests in cities and towns in every region of the UK, in our defiant response to Post Office bosses’ announcement of the ‘franchising’ of 74 Crown offices to retailer WH Smith, impacting on some 7-800 jobs – marking a change in their strategy from managed decline to terminal decline.

“And that’s what we’re facing unless we can force a change of direction,” says our general secretary, who is also pushing forward the union’s vision for a positive future for our post office network – as the real hubs of our communities.

 Posted by at 18:38
Nov 152018
 

Our first day of action for Disabled Equality in Education will see meetings and events in colleges and universities, as well as schools where SEND cuts are destroying integrated education and will culminate in a meeting in parliament where we will bring forward demands for change.

 

Parliamentary meeting Wednesday November 21st House of Commons, Committee Room 10  from 5.30pm – 7pm. Some tickets are available for this event and we want as many disabled people as possible to attend:

please email DPAC or elaneheffernan@btinternet.com for tickets

 

Briefing Document from ALLFIE can be read here https://www.allfie.org.uk/

Cambridge

Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) now has a Cambridgeshire and Essex branch! Come and join us for this protest about disability equality in work. We will be highlighting the government’s persecution of disabled people, reading the names of people who have died because of the horrific cuts and sanctions regime of the DWP, and agitating for real equality of access to work.

We are in solidarity with the UCU Day of Action for disability equality in education, for which events are taking place all day at the Cambridge University Students Union. If you’re going to one of the UCU events, come and join us at 2:30 in Market Square to take the message to the public.

Wednesday, 21 November 2018 from 14:30-16:30,

Market Square Cambridge

Cambridge.

https://www.facebook.com/events/304326216958523/?notif_t=plan_user_invited&notif_id=1542299943763655

Liverpool 

Support Wed 21st national UCU Day of action for disability equality in education at Liverpool University

Come and join us

12.00 Rally University Square (Brownlow Hill)

We will be leafleting:

10.45  502 Teaching Block  (Mount Pleasant next to Student Guild)

11.45 502 Teaching Block  (Mount Pleasant next to Student Guild)

The UCU is taking action  to challenge disability discrimination on campus and barriers faced by disabled people in education.

Our union branch recently passed a motion expressing concern about the disability discrimination on campus which is heavily impacting staff and students and demanding that the University complies with the Equality Act 2010 in relation to disability. The issues on campus were also reported in the media.
https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/union-backs-claims-of-widespread-discrimination-by-hostile-university/

Please come and show your support.

Please contact UCU equalities officer if you can help.  Kirsteen.paton@liv.ac.uk

https://www.ucu.org.uk/disabilityequality?utm_source=lyr-ucu-members&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=members&utm_term=all&utm_content=Day+of+action+for+disability+equality+in+education:+21+November+2018

 

There will be a disabled member of staff speaking, Kirsten (our UCU equalities officer at Liverpool) and a message of solidarity from DPAC would be great.

 

We are leafleting the 502 teaching block because access is none existent or very difficult.

 

 

 Posted by at 18:30
Nov 072018
 

Dear DPAC member

We would love to see you at our forthcoming Together! 2018 Disability History Month Festival events in East London, celebrating Disability Art, Culture and Human Rights. Everything is free and inclusive and everyone is welcome. This is the only national Disability Arts event led by a Disabled People’s Organisation. Further programme details are on our website at https://www.together2012.org.uk/activities-programme/together-2018-disability-history-month-festival/

Regards and all best wishes
 
Ju
 
Dr Ju Gosling FRSA
Artistic Director

Together! 2012 C.I.C.
Disability Arts, Culture and Human Rights
ju@together2012.org.uk / 07973 252751
www.together2012.org.uk
Facebook: together2012cic
Twitter: @ukdpctogether
Registered office: 90A Tudor Road, London E6 1DR.
Community Interest Company No 8443767.
Vat No 257 6833 66.


TOGETHER! 2018 FESTIVAL CALENDAR
Full venue details are at the end of the calendar

Friday 23 November 2018 7-9pm: World Premiere of ‘When You See Me’ & Festival Opening This new drama (pictured), commissioned by us from our associate company Act Up! Newham, and written and directed by Trevor Lloyd, is inspired by the Circus 250 anniversary. Stratford Circus 1.

Sunday 25 November 2018 1-2pm: Paracarnival Parade Fresh from winning the Judges Choice award at Hackney Carnival, Paracarnival comes to Newham with a procession of locally based Disabled artists and friends. Gallion’s Reach Shopping Park Beckton.

Saturday 1 December 2018 2-5pm: ‘VIBE: The Art of Transatlantic Inclusion’ A simultaneous symposium and exhibition about our two-year tactile sound project with Concordia University, Vibrafusion Lab Ontario and Disabled artists in Montréal. Vicarage Lane Community Centre Stratford.

Monday 3 December 2018 11am-1pm: Reading for Human Rights On International Day of Disabled People, join us to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the UN Declaration on Human Rights by reading from this and the UN Convention on the Rights of Disabled People at Beckton Globe Library. Easy Read, BSL and different languages texts available. The event will be live-streamed.

Friday 7 (6-8pm), Saturday 8 (12-8pm) & Sunday 9 December 2018 (12-8pm): Together! 2018 Disability Film Festival Our international film festival brings together films of all budgets and genres, by Disabled filmmakers or featuring a central Disabled character. Old Town Hall Stratford. We also offer a two-day workshop for emerging Disabled filmmakers on 6 & 7 December – email info@together2012.org.uk for further details.

Tuesday 11 December 2018 11am-2pm: Newham Disabled Reps Forum host a musical celebration of Disability History Month, including lunch and a raffle. Speakers include Disability History Month director Richard Rieser. Vicarage Lane Community Centre Stratford.

Friday 14 December 7-9pm: Together! Music Club and end-of-festival party Celebrate this year’s Disability History Month theme of music with an Open Mike night featuring Together! 2012 artists and friends, compered by Ju Gosling aka ju90. Vicarage Lane Community Centre Stratford.

Plus the Together! 2018 Open Exhibition, bringing together amateur, community, emerging and mid-career Disabled artists with a local connection. Vicarage Lane Community Centre Stratford. Dates tbc.

We aim to be as inclusive as possible of audience members as well as artists. All venues have step-free access and limited Blue Badge parking. Live audio-description is available on demand; productions are amplified with induction loops. BSL interpretation is provided for performances where speech is the main communication form. No need to book unless you wish to reserve seats (advised for groups of 5+). To reserve seats and find out more, email info@together2012.org.uk

FESTIVAL VENUES

For specific details, see Disabled Go.com 

Beckton Globe Library 1 Kingsford Way, London E6 5JQ. Nearest station (accessible): Beckton (DLR). 020 3373 0853. Bus routes include: 101, 173, 262, 300, 366, 376, 474.

Gallions Reach Shopping Park, 3 Armada Way, Beckton, London E6 7ER. Nearest station: Gallions Reach DLR (fully accessible). Bus routes include: 366, 262 & 101. Large free carpark. Click here for further details.

Old Town Hall, 29 The Broadway, Stratford, London E15 4BQ. 020 3373 7033 /07791 291 685. Nearest tube, overground and DLR stations: Stratford (fully accessible). Bus routes include 25, 69, 86, D8, 104, 108, 158, 238, 241, 257, 262, 276, 308, 425, 473, N8, N86, 010, A9, 741 & UL1. Blue Badge holders can prebook parking; others are advised to use the (old) Stratford shopping centre carpark.

Stratford Circus, Theatre Square, Stratford, London E15 1BX. 020 8279 1001. Nearest tube, overground and DLR stations: Stratford (fully accessible). Bus routes 257, 69  and 308 stop outside Stratford Circus in Great Eastern Road; 25, 86, 104, 108, 158, 238, 241, 262, 276, 425, 473, D8 alight at station. Very limited Blue Badge parking nearby; otherwise use the (old) Stratford shopping centre carpark.

Vicarage Lane Community Centre, Govier Close, E15 4HW. Nearest tube, overground and DLR stations: Stratford (fully accessible). Bus routes include: 101, 104, 300, 474. Street parking.

 Posted by at 16:20
Nov 042018
 

We’re looking into the possibility of setting up a DPAC choir to sing at various events. If you would be interested in joining this please email us at mail@dpac.uk.net

There would be no regular commitment needed although if possible people might want to attend one or more rehearsals. Please also let us know if you have a (polite) name for a DPAC choir.

 

 

DPAC Protesters blocking Birmingham's tram routes

DPAC Protesters blocking Birmingham’s tram routes

 

 Posted by at 21:01
Nov 042018
 

Monthly demonstration against Universal Credit outside DWP headquarters, Caxton House. Tothill Street. London. SW1H 9DA (near the Houses of Parliament)

Meet 12 PM – 1pm on the 1st Friday of each month including December and January.

Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group used to demonstrate regularly outside their local jobcentres. But they’ve closed both of the local jobcentres. It is now easier for many  to get to the DWPs National Headquarters in Westminster than to get to their nearest remaining jobcentres.

KUWG cordially invite other Londoners, and allies to come and join them.

To contact KUWG please message them via their facebook page https://www.facebook.com/kilburn.unemployed

 Posted by at 20:54
Oct 122018
 
Consultation – Share your views on TfL proposals to change 33 bus routes in London

TfL are reviewing bus services that serve the central London area and have made proposals to restructure and change the frequency of 33 routes and to introduce an additional service. This is said to be the biggest shake-up in more than 16 years of London’s bus network.
The new proposals would see the 48, 271 night service and RV1 routes axed. Elsewhere, they are planning to shorten 13 routes, and decrease frequency of a further eight routes. Some routes would see frequencies increased. One new route between Fulham Broadway and Oxford Circus will be introduced under the proposals.

Concerns
TfL’s own impact assessments on these changes show that they would disadvantage disabled people who might need to swop from one bus to another to get accross London. Where there is only one wheelchair space on each bus and prams often are allowed to use this space this could mean far longer journies for disabled people and having to wait at an interchange in cold or wet weather.

In particular Rv1 which they plan to axe completely is the only direct accessible route between London Bridge and Covent Garden.

59 and others not going to Kings Cross requires a change as the tube from Euston to Kings Cross is not accessible and vice versa of course.
205 not stopping at Marylebone which is one of the main rail stations and the only rail station to Oxford, Aylesbury. Banbury, Leamington, Warwick and Solihull.

In a city where only a third of the Underground is accessible, Disabled and older people rely heavily on bus services. Buses are the only mode of transport in London that is fully accessible (despite some regular issues). The plans, which are subject to a public consultation, would hugely affect Disabled and Older People served by the routes, especially the routes that are axed. Reducing the frequency would have a disproportionately negative impact on Disabled people, especially wheelchair and mobility scooter users who already have to fight for their right to access the wheelchair priority space – It is the only space that can host a wheelchair user, one at a time.

TfL’s proposals are based on the fact that passengers could use other nearby routes to complete their journey, when the routes have been shortened or restructured. But it completely ignores the fact that interchanges (such as Elephant and Castle) can be a real challenge for Disabled and Older People and especially for Visually Impaired or autistic people.
Take action – Respond to the consultation
TfA will respond to this consultation in order to share our concerns. We are looking for as much evidence and examples as possible. If you would like to contribute to our answer, please email us your feedback by Friday 2nd November: joshua@transportforall.org.uk.It is important that you share your own views on the proposed changed and especially the impact that it will have on your daily life. You can respond to the consultation yourself by sending your views by Friday 9th November 2018:

 Posted by at 13:30
Oct 102018
 

Day of Action on the 17th October for Safe Cladding and Insulation Now!  Schedule, updates, and victories

  • 0 am Solidarity demonstration outside UK Embassy, Brussels
  • 45 for 1.0 pm Demonstrate outside Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, 2 Marsham St, London SW1P 4DF, deliver Open Letter (have you signed?)
  • 0 pm event in House of Commons, Committee Room 18, hosted by Emma Dent Coad, MP tickets (free; please register to ensure a space).
  • 30 for 7 pm Southwark Group of Tenants Organisations public meeting, Crypt of St Peters Church, SE17 2HH tickets (free)

 

For months, after the horror of Grenfell, it seemed that residents of other tower blocks would be left indefinitely in buildings that could, any minute, go up in flames.

Since then, with steady pressure from Grenfell survivors, residents of the blocks, housing campaigners, Fuel Poverty Action, and social housing providers pressing central government, things have begun to change.

Thousands are still left in danger of fire and cold.

It is now essential to keep up the pressure and ensure that UK homes are safe, warm and that residents organisations are listened to — not ignored and increasingly de-resourced and disempowered.

Plans are well advanced for delivering our Open Letter to the MHCLG.  There is still a little time for organisations, MPs, councillors etc, to sign it – here.  

 

  • It will be delivered with a demonstration including residents – coming from as far away as Salford and Manchester, members of the Grenfell community, a speaker from Fire Brigades Union, representatives of pensioners and  disabled people – both more at risk from both fire and cold, housing organisations, and many others. To start the event, poet Potent Whisper will perform. Please try to arrive by 12.45 so we can start on time!  And  if you’re going on to the second event, you might want to bring a hot drink and a sandwich.
  • We will then walk to the House of Commons where we’ll have more time to compare experience and discuss ways forward.  It’s important to get MPs to this event — please be sure to urge yours to come – and to sign the Open Letter.  Please be sure to get a ticket in case space is tight. And if you’re coming from elsewhere, remember to allow at least 15 minutes to get through security.
  • Finally, we will move on to the public meeting called by Southwark Group of Tenants Organisations focusing on how residents’ organisations are being bypassed, starved of resources and disempowered, even as everyone acknowledges that residents’ voices are key to keeping buildings safe.

Support has been pouring in for this Day of Action and for the demands on the Open Letter.  Trade Unions are taking up the call, in particular the FBU, PCS, BFAWU, NEU, Unite Community, and many branches and officers of Unite and Unison.

A great addition to the Day of Action is a solidarity event outside the UK embassy in Brussels, organised by Right to Energy Coalition.  Their slogan: No more fire, no more cold: End Energy Poverty!  Avenue d’Auderghem 10, 040 Bruxelles, Belgium

Please do what you can in this last week to rally others, contact your MP, use social media.  Please see and promote the links below.

And please, if you are in London, join us on Sunday 14 October for the Silent Walk in memory of those who lost their lives at Grenfell Tower.   Let us know if you can come. https://www.fuelpovertyaction.org.uk/

 

What’s been won so far:

  • 11 months on from the fire, the government finally promised to fund recladding of social housing tower blocks, at an estimated £400 million.
  • As of 20 September 2018, out of of 364 high residential buildings 22 have now had this work completed, plus 2 private sector blocks. 99 social and 12 private blocks have had work started.
  • Many councils and housing associations have looked again at all sorts of safety issues and have acted to improve fire doors, lighting, windows, and more.
  • The government have announced a ban on combustible cladding (precision) for buildings from now on

 

Still to be won:

  • The rest of the 364 have not begun replacement, and many private blocks and student residences don’t even have works planned.
  • The ban is limited in its nature and is not retrospective.  Many landlords/freeholders of leasehold buildings may try to wriggle out of making their buildings safe.
  • In Salford residents of 9 tower blocks were told that government money was not available because theirs was a PFI scheme, despite the fact that they were social housing tenants.  Now Pendleton Together finally say they have found the money to begin the work, but residents worry: when will it happen? How cold will they be, before replacement of cladding in buildings with extremely expensive heating systems, and whatever the source of the money, will they end up paying for it?
  • In response to a question prompted by Fuel Poverty Action, some housing associations in London have undertaken to cover the costs of extra heating while cladding is stripped off (it can take months or years to replace it).
  • The government funding will not cover private tower blocks, schools, hospitals or workplaces, blocks under 18M high or forms of combustible cladding other than ACM.
  • Nor will it help those who had no insulation to begin with – eg in Camden’s Chalcots estate, many ground floor flats never had the cladding and insulation that was installed elsewhere.
  • Round the country, tenants and residents associations are being dissolved or disempowered, replaced with unelected, hand-picked “representatives”, deprived of resources and even denied use of communal rooms in their estates.

 

Hope to see you on October 17th!

 

Our mailing address is:

Fuel Poverty Action

Unit 5E Punderson Gardens

London, Greater LondonE2 9QG

United Kingdom

 

 Posted by at 18:38
Sep 202018
 

DWP’s secret benefit deaths reviews: Investigations into deaths doubles in two years

The number of secret reviews carried out by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) into deaths linked to benefit claims appears to have doubled in the last two years, according to figures the information watchdog has forced the government to release.

The figures relate to the number of internal process reviews (IPRs), investigations conducted by the department into deaths and other serious and complex cases that have been linked to DWP activity.

They show that, from April 2016 to June 2018, DWP panels carried out 50 IPRs, including 33 involving the death of a benefit claimant, or roughly 1.27 death-related IPRs a month.

DWP figures previously obtained by Disability News Service (DNS) show that, between October 2014 and January 2016, there were nine IPRs involving a death, or about 0.6 a month.

These figures are only approximate, because the information about IPRs (previously known as peer reviews) provided by DWP through freedom of information responses does not provide precise dates for when each of them took place.

But they do appear to show a clear and significant increase since early 2016 in the number of IPRs carried out following deaths linked by DWP to its own activity.

They also appear to show a return to the kind of frequency of reviews related to deaths of claimants that were seen between February 2012 and October 2014, when there were 49 such reviews at a rate of about 1.5 a month, at a time when research and repeated personal testimonies showed the coalition’s social security cuts and reforms were causing severe harm and distress to claimants.

The new figures also show that 19 of the deaths in the last two years involved a claimant viewed as “vulnerable”, while six of the IPRs (and four deaths) related to a claimant of the government’s new and much-criticised universal credit (see separate story).

John McArdle, co-founder of Black Triangle, said ministers “always get up at the despatch box and say they are continually improving the system. This proves that to be false.

“Universal credit should be scrapped, sanctions should be scrapped and the government should call off the dogs, because it is leading to people’s deaths.”

McArdle said that if there was a tragedy involving the deaths of 33 people in a train crash there would be an independent inquiry into what went wrong.

But because these deaths were happening in the social security system, he said, no such public inquiry would take place.

He added: “It just shows a callous disregard for the lives of the poorest and most vulnerable people in society.”

A DWP spokeswoman declined to say whether the figures showed that DWP’s treatment of vulnerable and other benefit claimants had not improved significantly since 2012 and had worsened in the last two years.

She also declined to say if DWP was concerned that there had already been four IPRs following the death of a universal credit claimant, even though only a small number of people are currently claiming UC.

But she said in a statement: “The government is committed to supporting the vulnerable and DWP staff are trained to identify and support people in hardship.

“They can apply special easements to people’s claims and signpost to appropriate local support services.

“IPRs do not seek to identify or apportion blame. They are used as a performance improvement tool that help the department to continually improve how it deals with some of the most complex and challenging cases.”

DWP only released the figures to DNS this week after the Information Commissioner’s Office had reminded the department of its duties under the Freedom of Information Act.

The information was requested on 21 June and should have been provided within 20 working days.

But it was only emailed this week, after ICO wrote to DWP following a complaint lodged by DNS about the department’s failure to respond to the request.

20 September 2018

 

 

DWP’s secret benefit deaths reviews: Universal credit death linked to claimant commitment ‘threats’ 

A secret Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) review into the death of a claimant of universal credit (UC) has criticised the “overtly threatening” nature of the conditions they had to accept when signing up to the new benefit system.

The conclusion by a panel of civil servants relates to just one of 33 deaths, all linked to DWP activity, that have been subject to what are called “internal process reviews” (IPRs) since April 2016.

Brief details of these 33 deaths, and another 17 IPRs carried out into other serious or complex cases involving DWP activity, have been released to Disability News Service by DWP following a freedom of information request.

The panel of reviewers who carried out the IPR into the death linked to universal credit said that it seemed “excessive” for DWP to include eight references to sanctions and how much money a claimant would lose if they breached their “claimant commitment”.

The panel added: “…a better balance could be struck in reminding a client of the consequences of not meeting their obligations and not appearing to be overtly threatening, especially to individuals who are vulnerable.”

DWP has so far refused to say if it altered the claimant commitment – which sets out what conditions a universal credit claimant needs to meet to continue receiving the benefit – as a result of the IPR.

Further details of the circumstances of the death have not been released, as DWP is only obliged to release the recommendations made following each IPR (formerly known as peer reviews), rather than anything that could identify the subject of the review.

Of the 50 IPRs carried out since April 2016, six involved a universal credit claimant, and in four of these cases the claimant had died.

It is also not yet clear whether DWP acted on any of the other recommendations in the IPRs, but the case is likely to raise fresh concerns about the impact of the introduction of universal claimant on disabled people, and others in vulnerable situations.

It will also alarm those who have spent years highlighting concerns about the ongoing impact on disabled people of eight years of benefit cuts and reforms under successive Conservative-led governments.

DWP rules state that the department must carry out an IPR when it is “made aware of the death of a client and it is suggested that it is linked to DWP activity”.

Of all the reviews, four appear to include recommendations for improvements only to local procedures, with another eight (including three IPRs relating to a universal credit claimant) making recommendations for changes to national policy or practice.

One review reminded DWP “customer compliance officers” of the existence of the “six point plan”, which tells staff how to respond if they learn that a benefit claimant suggests they intend to kill themselves or self-harm.

The recommendations that followed another IPR appear to suggest that a “vulnerable” claimant died after DWP failed to carry out a “safeguarding visit” to check on their welfare when they did not return a form explaining why they had missed a work capability assessment (WCA).

Another IPR appears to have investigated a similar death, involving a vulnerable claimant with a mental health condition who failed to turn up for a WCA. That claimant also died.

One case that appears to have led only to recommendations for improvements locally suggests further poor practice by DWP, with the IPR saying that “we should have considered whether [information redacted] was a vulnerable customer and if there were safeguarding issues”.

It adds that DWP’s customer service was “also poor” for apparently telling the vulnerable claimant something before he or she died, although because the end of the sentence has been redacted by DWP it is not clear what was said.

In another case – although this claimant did not die – DWP staff appear to have failed to pick up on references to “suicide” in the online journal that universal credit claimants must keep up-to-date.

One DWP manager told the Independent last October that many universal credit case managers were overwhelmed by their workload and often had dozens of “unseen journal messages they simply don’t have enough time to address”.

The manager also told the website that many colleagues “feel out of their depth with the quantity of claims they manage, resulting in a vast amount of crucial work never being completed until claimants contact us when their payments are inevitably paid incorrectly or not at all”.

In another IPR that followed a claimant’s death, the panel reminded the department that all staff involved in making decisions on benefit claims must be “reminded of the need to make timeous decisions” relating to benefit sanctions.

Marsha de Cordova, Labour’s shadow minister for disabled people, said: “The connections between the DWP’s actions and the deaths of social security claimants are extremely concerning.

“These figures reveal the devastating impact universal credit is having on disabled people.

“It is shocking that the government is continuing with its roll-out, in spite of this evidence.

“The government must now pause the roll-out and end the hostile environment they have created for disabled people.

“We urgently need an independent investigation into the connections outlined in the internal reviews, before more lives are ruined.”

A spokesperson for Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) said the information released by DWP “highlights failures at many levels”.

DPAC also criticised the IPR panel for suggesting that the key problem with the case involving the universal credit claimant whose death was linked to the “overtly threatening” claimant commitment was with the wording of the document.

The DPAC spokesperson said: “The panel does not address the issue. It is not the wording which needs to be reconsidered, but the fact that claimants deemed vulnerable can be bullied, threatened and intimidated by DWP to a point that their death became the subject of an internal review.

“The concerns about universal credit and its potential for severe harm have now been confirmed.”

The DPAC spokesperson added: “The internal process reviews give a glimpse into the living hell of claimants, where the reckless actions of benefits staff brought grievous harm, extreme distress and fatalities onto benefit claimants.

“And we are already seeing deaths of claimants under universal credit.

“If all the other warnings about universal credit were not enough, this should surely give the government an undeniable indication that they must stop their new hostile environment benefits system.

“To do anything else would mean that the government are knowingly about to bring yet more future deaths of benefit claimants.”

John McArdle, co-founder of Black Triangle, said: “You can see the guidelines regarding vulnerable people are not being followed consistently.

“With the introduction of universal credit, it shows people’s lives are being placed at risk.

“DWP are still playing Russian roulette with people’s lives.

“Universal credit must be stopped in its tracks and it must be scrapped.”

A DWP spokeswoman declined to say how many of the IPR recommendations have been acted on.

She also declined to say whether the universal credit “claimant commitment” recommendations had been acted on, and whether they had been a concern to ministers.

And she declined to say if DWP was concerned that there had been four IPRs following the death of universal credit claimants.

But she said in a statement: “The government is committed to supporting the vulnerable and DWP staff are trained to identify and support people in hardship.

“They can apply special easements to people’s claims and signpost to appropriate local support services.

“IPRs do not seek to identify or apportion blame. They are used as a performance improvement tool that help the department to continually improve how it deals with some of the most complex and challenging cases.”

The latest information about the IPRs was only released by DWP after the Information Commissioner’s Office reminded the department of its duties under the Freedom of Information Act.

The information was requested on 21 June and should have been provided within 20 working days.

But it was only emailed this week, after ICO wrote to DWP following a complaint lodged by DNS about the department’s failure to respond to the request.

20 September 2018

 

 

Ministers quietly drop plans for ‘parallel process’ on working-age social care

Ministers have quietly decided to include the support needs of working-age disabled people in their new social care green paper, scrapping the idea of having a separate “parallel programme of work” as they try to address the social care funding crisis.

The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) previously said it would focus only on older people’s social care in its much-delayed green paper.

The decision to include working-age people’s support needs is likely to be welcomed by most disabled people’s organisations, but DHSC is still facing questions over why it reversed its decision at such a late stage and why it has apparently failed to make any effort to co-produce its policy with disabled people and their user-led organisations.

There are also still concerns over whether the green paper will side-line the support needs of working-age disabled people when it is eventually published.

As recently as last month, a House of Commons Library briefing paper referred to the government’s “parallel process” of work on social care for working-age adults.

But a DHSC spokeswoman has now told DNS that the green paper will “cover care and support for adults of all ages (rather than there being a separate workstream)”.

When questioned further about this, she said: “We have always planned to consider issues relating to all adults receiving social care.

“This will now be taken forward through a single green paper.”

She declined to comment when asked why the government had made this decision, but said disabled people and their organisations – and other “interested parties” – would be able to feed in their views in a consultation on the green paper, when it is published.

The disabled crossbench peer Baroness [Jane] Campbell, who chairs the Independent Living Strategy Group, told Disability News Service (DNS): “It would have been nice to be informed of this decision to scrap the parallel process by my fellow parliamentarians in the House of Lords, especially as I had asked formally on two occasions for any progress on the ‘parallel process’.

“So much for close collaboration with disabled people on matters that concern them directly!”

But she welcomed the decision to integrate working-age people into the green paper, which she hoped would be on an equal basis with older people.

She said: “This way, disabled people will not be a tag on, or afterthought, but have full green paper status.

“This is how it should be and something I said most firmly at the first meeting of ‘stakeholders’ with the ministers for disabled people [Sarah Newton], social care [Caroline Dinenage] and local government [Rishi Sunak].”

Baroness Campbell said that this meeting, in February, was the “first and only time” she has been consulted on the government’s social care plans.

She was also highly critical of the plans to simply consult disabled people after the green paper has been published, partly because she has been “highly sceptical of any consultation this government has conducted on pretty much any issue recently”.

She added: “Whatever happened to the progress we made with governments over the last 20 years on co-production, mutuality and equal involvement from the prototype stage?

“Disabled people don’t want to be consulted about policies which will determine the way they live, we want partnerships. Remember: ‘nothing about us, without us!’”

The disabled Liberal Democrat peer Baroness [Celia] Thomas, who speaks for her party on disability in the Lords and is also a member of the Independent Living Strategy Group, said there was continuing “despair” over when the green paper would eventually be published.

She said the news that working-age disabled people would now be included in the green paper “could be good news [but] it could be bad news” as it could either mean a “breath of fresh air” or signify that working-age disabled people will be “an after-thought”.

She added: “Everyone is in the dark.”

The news of the government U-turn emerged following a freedom of information request submitted by DNS, which had asked which committees and working groups had been set up as part of the parallel process, and which organisations were represented on them.

The department said in its response that “no such committees or formal working groups including stakeholders have been set up” as part of its work on working-age social care.

But she said the government had “engaged informally with a number of stake-holders and the insights from this work will inform the social care green paper”.

A DHSC spokeswoman declined to say which organisations it had engaged with, but she said: “We are grateful for the input of stakeholders to the work we have done to date and there will be an opportunity for all interested parties to feed in views through the green paper consultation process.”

DNS reported in March how the government had failed to set up a single committee involving experts from outside the two departments examining the future of working-age social care – DHSC and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government – nearly four months after the parallel programme of work had been announced.

The previous month, ministers had faced criticism after organising a “round table” event on working-age social care without inviting any disabled people’s organisations to attend.

The green paper has always been described by ministers as a document that would lay out the government’s proposals for the future funding of older people’s social care, with a separate programme of work looking at the care needs of working-age disabled people.

But there have been repeated concerns that the government was failing to make any progress on this parallel process and failing to engage with disabled people and their user-led organisations.

The much-delayed green paper is set to be published this autumn.

20 September 2018

 

 

New job stats raise questions over ministers’ boasts on disability employment

New figures obtained by a disabled people’s organisation – after ministers refused to commission the work themselves – appear to show how the government relies on the growth in self-employment and part-time jobs to exaggerate its success in increasing disability employment.

Ministers such as work and pensions secretary Esther McVey have repeatedly boasted of how their policies have led to hundreds of thousands more disabled people in work over the last five years.

But those claims have been based on figures provided by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), which includes in its measure of “employment” people who are in part-time work, are self-employed, or are on government training and jobs programmes.

Ministers in the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) refused to commission work from ONS – which it told Disability News Service would cost just £125 (plus VAT) – that would show the full, detailed figures.

Now London’s pan-disability disabled people’s organisation Inclusion London has commissioned the work itself from ONS, at the same price of £125 plus VAT.

The new ONS figures*  obtained by Inclusion London show that nearly half of the increase in disability employment in the last four years has been due to disabled people becoming self-employed or taking part-time jobs.

Between 2013-14 and 2017-18, the number of full-time disabled employees rose by about 383,000, while the number of disabled people in part-time jobs, self-employment, government training programmes and employed as unpaid family workers increased by about 366,000.

During this period, the number of disabled people in self-employment increased by more than 22 per cent, when the number of non-disabled people who were self-employed rose by just nine per cent.

The increase in the number of disabled people in part-time self-employment increased even faster, by about 25 per cent.

There was, though, also a sharp increase of about 22.5 per cent in full-time disabled employees over the four years, although the number of part-time disabled employees rose even faster, by about 27.5 per cent.

Ellen Clifford, campaigns and policy manager for Inclusion London, pointed to the high number of disabled people who had become self-employed.

She said: “Research by the New Economics Foundation in 2017 found more than half of all self-employed people don’t make a decent living.

“This is even more of an issue for disabled people, whose outgoings tend to be much higher due to unavoidable impairment-related expenditure.

“Anecdotally we have heard about disabled people feeling pressured by their jobcentre to consider becoming self-employed.”

Clifford also highlighted the high proportion of disabled people who have taken part-time jobs.

She said: “This will include things like zero hours contracts which can again easily fail to provide the security, conditions and income levels that disabled people need.

“Studies have confirmed that unsuitable employment is worse for people’s health than no employment.”

She urged the government to “look at the types of jobs and work that disabled people are moving or potentially being pushed into and to address issues of quality instead of making the aim to get people off out-of-work benefits at any cost”.

Linda Burnip, co-founder of Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC), said DWP had yet again “botched” its analysis of statistics.

She said: “Disabled people are particularly over-represented amongst the self-employed and as most people are aware, self-employment is often a route to employment taken by those excluded from mainstream labour markets.

“The Association of Independent Professionals and the Self Employed (IPSE) have revealed that self-employed workers [can end up] £3,000 per annum worse off than those in employment with the roll-out of universal credit and are calling on the government, like DPAC, to stop this roll-out.

“They highlight too the instability of income that self-employment creates and the negative impact this has on the wellbeing of those working in this sector.”

A DWP spokeswoman declined to comment about the part-time work figures and whether the government agreed with calls to look at the types and quality of work disabled people are moving into.

But she said: “We welcome recent increases in the disability employment rate, with 600,000 more disabled people in work between 2013 and 2017.

“This analysis shows that employment and self-employment for disabled people both increased by around a fifth between 2013-14 and 2016-17.”

*It is not possible to compare today’s figures with 2009-10, before the Conservative-led coalition came to power, because of a change in in 2013 in how the survey data ONS uses to calculate its figures was collected

20 September 2018

 

 

Lib Dem conference: Universal credit migration is set for disaster, warns Lloyd

The impact of the “migration” of hundreds of thousands of disabled people onto universal credit from next year could prove disastrous because of the “hoops” the government will force claimants to leap through, according to a disabled MP.

Stephen Lloyd, work and pensions spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, said the migration process was set to be “a disaster” for those disabled people currently claiming employment and support allowance (ESA), including many people with learning difficulties and mental health conditions.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is set to start testing the process of moving hundreds of thousands of existing ESA claimants – its estimates suggest it will eventually need to “migrate” 750,000 – onto universal credit from January, and intends to “increase volumes” by July and complete the process in 2023.

ESA claimants will be among those receiving a letter telling them that their existing benefits are about to stop and that they will need to make a new claim for universal credit.

They will have to fill out an online application, and then make at least one and possibly two, or even three, visits to their local job centre in the space of just one month, to validate their claim.

If they fail to do this, said Lloyd – who was speaking to Disability News Service at his party’s annual conference in Brighton – they will get “kicked out” and be left with no benefits, as their ESA claim will have ended.

A DWP memo, produced in June, said the department would give claimants at least one month to make their claim, although there will be “flexibility for this period to be extended” to up to three months.

But Lloyd said: “What on earth is going to happen? You have got to do all this in a month, otherwise you’re going to be kicked off. That’s going to be catastrophic.

“We have got to stop this, it’s ridiculous. It’s not going to work.”

He has written to work and pensions secretary Esther McVey to seek clarification on what claimants will be asked to do.

Lloyd said: “I have to get the minister to understand you have to give them more time, otherwise there is going to be a car crash.”

His hope is that pressure on McVey through parliamentary questions and an early day motion will force her to back down and ease the conditions imposed on claimants before regulations are laid before parliament in October.

Concerns about the migration have also been raised by the mental health charity Mind, which said: “Many people experiencing mental health problems have told us they are extremely worried about what these proposals will mean for them.

“As people begin to move over to universal credit, we are concerned people will fall through the cracks, and see their benefits stopped entirely.

“It’s appalling to place all the responsibility on unwell people to reapply for a new benefit and risk losing their income in the process.

“The government should change their plans so that no-one faces having their benefits stopped before they move to universal credit.”

A DWP spokeswoman said: “We are working closely with stakeholders and other parties to design the best possible process for the migration of our customers to universal credit.

“Our focus will be on safeguarding claimants and ensuring a smooth transition with uninterrupted support.

“Based on early planning there is no evidence to indicate that claimants would need to come into the jobcentre so frequently and therefore we do not recognise this claim.

“We plan to have a comprehensive and well-supported preparation period for claimants which will include a variety of communication formats, including face-to-face, internet and postal notification, to ensure claimants are aware of the managed migration process.

“There is flexibility to extend that period if necessary; and a process to ensure that, before the existing benefits are stopped, our staff will check for evidence of complex needs or vulnerability or disability and act accordingly to support the claimant.

“Additionally, if a claimant misses their deadline to claim there are provisions in the draft regulations that will allow DWP to back-date their claim.”

Lloyd said he has already tried locally to ensure that the impact of universal credit and other welfare reforms would not be as serious as it has been in other constituencies.

He brought food banks, housing association representatives, Citizen’s Advice and his own staff together in advance of the rollout of universal credit in his Eastbourne constituency last October, which he said helped ensure there was much less of a spike in the use of food banks in the town than in other similar constituencies.

Lloyd also believes that he is the only MP in the country who allocates a member of staff to attend regular benefit appeal tribunals on behalf of constituents.

So far this year, the staff member has attended about 70 tribunals (with a success rate of about 70 per cent).

During Lloyd’s previous stint as an MP, between 2010 and 2015, the same member of staff attended about 150 tribunals in four years.

He said: “As far as I know, no other MP’s office in the country sends one of their staff [so] regularly to tribunals.

“I basically lose him for three-quarters of a day a week, but it is the right thing to do.”

Meanwhile, tributes have been paid to the co-chair of the Liberal Democrat Disability Association (LDDA), Robert Adamson, who died just days before the conference began.

Born in Doncaster, and a retired civil servant, he was a former parliamentary candidate for the party and also stood in European and local elections, and was a former chair of the party’s Yorkshire and Humber region.

Baroness [Sal] Brinton, the party’s president, told the conference: “Robert never let his very disabling condition get in the way of campaigning locally and nationally.”

And Gemma Roulston, previously LDDA co-chair and now the association’s chair, said: “He wanted to improve the lives of people with or without disabilities, and anyone who was impacted by disability.

“He was always there for you, and was a good person to go to for advice and support.

“Conference hasn’t felt the same without him. He made a difference to people.”

20 September 2018

 

 

TUC piles pressure on Labour with vote to scrap universal credit

Trade unions have voted at their annual congress to call on the Labour party to shift its stance on universal credit and promise to scrap the controversial benefit system.

The annual TUC Congress approved a motion last week that had already been passed by disabled trade unionists at May’s TUC Disabled Workers’ Conference.

The motion called on TUC’s general council to tell the next Labour government to “stop and scrap” universal credit and carry out “far-reaching social security reform that truly makes work pay” and protects those unable to work.

Labour’s policy is currently to simply “pause and fix” universal credit rather than scrapping it.

The motion said universal credit – which combines six benefits into one – was a “draconian” system that had left many people in “debt, eviction and hunger”.

It pointed out that workers could – for the first time – face “savage sanctions for not demonstrating that they are seeking to improve their paid income”, while “part-time workers could be forced to leave work that suits their disability or family life for a worse paid, full-time job”.

Dave Allan, chair of the national disabled members’ committee of Unite the Union, proposed the motion on behalf of the TUC disabled workers’ committee, and it was seconded by Mandy Hudson, of the National Education Union.

Allan told delegates that the disabled workers’ committee had worked tirelessly to warn of the impact of universal credit and its roll-out, which he said would “fall like a hammer blow upon seven million households – including one million low-paid workers”.

He said there had been an “utter lack of support” for disabled claimants, while the “cruel programme of sanctions” was “landing on claimants like a series of bureaucratic punishment beatings”.

Allan said the “misery” and “destruction” caused by universal credit was no accident.

He said: “This is the cold, calculated and systematic impoverishment of disabled people. This is malice by design.”

He added: “A pause of the roll-out will not do. We are not just calling on the government to simply ‘think again’.

“We are calling for the immediate, unconditional and total ban on universal credit.”

Allan told Disability News Service this week that the TUC vote had been unanimous and that the next step was to persuade the Labour party to commit to scrapping universal credit and include that pledge in its manifesto for the next general election.

TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady added: “All politicians need to look at the disastrous effects universal credit is having around the UK, at how hard disabled people have been hit and how it is pushing people into rent arrears and poverty, leaving them turning to food banks.

“The roll out of universal credit should be stopped, before it continues to inflict more damage.

“And a fundamental rethink is required of the social security system, and how it can deliver a fair and dignified system for everyone.”

A TUC spokesman stressed afterwards that O’Grady was calling for universal credit to be scrapped and not just to “stop and fix” the system.

He said: “The TUC policy is not stop and fix. Our congress endorsed a policy of stop and scrap.

“The immediate priority has to be to stop the rollout, as that is the immediate danger to disabled people.

“But the current universal credit is not fit for purpose and TUC staff will now pursue the direction set by congress by developing policy for a system to succeed it that better meets the needs of disabled people and others who rely on social security.”

20 September 2018

 

 

Lib Dem conference: Members vote for rights-based reform to mental health laws

Liberal Democrats have called for an end to “discriminatory” laws that allow people with mental health conditions or learning difficulties who have capacity to make their own decisions to be detained against their will.

Current mental health legislation means that a person assessed as needing urgent medical treatment and assessment because of a “mental disorder” can be detained in hospital against their will.

But party members argued that detaining people based on whether they have a “mental disorder” was discriminatory, a breach of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and discouraged people from being open about their mental health.

Party members voted at their annual conference in Brighton this week to demand sweeping reform of the law in England and Wales, despite substantial opposition.

They agreed that people with mental health conditions or learning difficulties should not be forced to have medical treatment unless they do not have the capacity to make a decision about whether they wish to have that treatment.

And they said that people should be able to make advance decisions – as defined in the Mental Capacity Act – to refuse detention or treatment.

They also fended off efforts from some party members to amend the motion so that individuals could be forced to be treated and detained, even if they had capacity, if their refusal would pose a serious risk of harm to themselves or others.

One delegate compared the current legislation to historic witchcraft and slavery laws, and the Spanish Inquisition.

He and others argued that people who have capacity to make their own decisions, but have a mental health condition or learning difficulty, should not face the possibility of being detained against their wishes in hospital.

Henry Jones, who has a degenerative neurological condition, described how he had been held against his will in hospital for six months.

He had spoken at the time of wanting to end his own life because of his condition, and as a result “two large men showed up at my home” and took him into detention in a locked mental health ward.

He told delegates: “Even with my condition I had capacity. They treated me like an animal, they did everything they could to break me.

“It achieved nothing except to make me never ever want to engage with mental health services.”

But, he said, it did “make me want to reform the law before passing on”.

He said that if he had been treated “like a human” by mental health professionals he could have “talked openly about what was happening in my brain… it would have saved me and others around me four years of hell”.

He added: “All I am asking for is for us to have the same basic human dignity that other people have.”

Another party member, Andrew Muir, told the conference how his wife had been sectioned in 2006 after she complained about treatment she had received at a Scottish hospital.

She was forced to take medication while in detention for 51 days – when there was no evidence of mental ill-health – and was physically abused by staff, and then forced to take drugs for another year when she was released on a community order.

He also said that the review of the Mental Health Act 1983 – being led by psychiatrist Professor Sir Simon Wessely – should instead be led by a human rights expert.

Liberal Democrat MSP Alex Cole-Hamilton also spoke in favour of the motion.

He said: “In Scotland – and I am sure south of the border – we are stripping people of their basic right to be heard.

“People in the grip of mental illness, that’s when their human rights matter most.”

A string of mental health professionals spoke against the motion, including one who accused it of “muddle” and being “full of misconceptions”, and another who said it was “unworkable and not sensible” and would remove protections that were available in the Mental Health Act.

But one psychiatrist, Mohsin Khan, who supported the motion, pointed out that similar laws to those suggested had been introduced in some US states and Northern Ireland.

He said the motion “merely brings mental health in line with what happens with physical health”, and would allow adults “who have consistent, long-term capacity to rationally decide to make decisions for their own body for the future”.

20 September 2018

 

 

Pair of projects set to improve countryside access

User-led organisations have played a key role in two major new projects that aim to improve access for disabled tourists and ramblers.

In Oxfordshire, Natural England has opened the National Land Access Centre (NLAC), which will provide training for landowners, farmers and rights of way officers on how to ensure that gates and other countryside obstructions are accessible to disabled people.

And in Lancashire, Blackpool-based disabled people’s organisation (DPO) Disability First is celebrating a government grant of nearly £1 million for a project that will improve access to the Fylde, Wyre and Blackpool coastline.

NLAC, based at Aston Rowant National Nature Reserve, will offer training courses that show how to use, maintain and install fences, barriers and stiles that meet a new British Standard, which was published in February.

Natural England, the government’s advisers on the natural environment, has worked closely on the plans with the user-led charity Disabled Ramblers, and project partners The British Horse Society, the specialist gate supplier Centrewire and the Pittecroft Trust.

John Cutherbertson, chair of Disabled Ramblers, told Disability News Service (DNS): “There is a huge swathe of the population who cannot clamber over stiles.

“What we found is the main thing that stops people accessing the countryside is the lack of understanding by those people who are putting these gates in.

“Some of them still think that the less able would prefer to stay at home and watch the telly.

“They don’t realise that people want to get out there and need to get out there for their mental health as well as their physical well-being.”

He said Disabled Ramblers was trying to educate these groups, such as farmers, landowners and rights of way officers, about the “least restrictive” way to enclose land, and ideally install gates that disabled people can open and close on their own, without needing someone with them.

He said he hoped that the selection of gates and barriers on show at the centre would grow and would be joined eventually by accessible versions of other equipment, such as bridges and boardwalks.

Disabled Ramblers has provided an off-road mobility scooter to the centre so people who take the courses can use the vehicle to see how difficult it can be to manoeuvre through such obstacles.

Cuthbertson said that Centrewire, which was founded by Tom Bindoff, a non-disabled member of Disabled Ramblers, had been keen to modify its products to make them more accessible.

Bindoff has even designed a “kissing gate” that can be opened by a scooter-user using a RADAR key, he said.

The disabled Tory peer Lord Blencathra, deputy chair of Natural England, said: “Improved access will help to connect more people with their natural environment, giving them a chance to enjoy our countryside, its open space and fascinating wildlife – all key aspects of the government’s 25 year environment plan.”

Meanwhile, funding of £985,000 has been awarded to a consortium led by Disability First through the government’s Coastal Communities Fund.

Alan Reid, chief executive of Disability First, said his organisation was “thrilled and very proud” to be awarded the funding in its 25th year as a charity.

He said he wanted the Fylde, Blackpool and Wyre coast to “strive to become a more truly inclusive resort”.

The Access Fylde Coast project is supported by Blackpool, Fylde and Wyre councils, Blackpool Transport, Marketing Lancashire, Lancaster University, the access information provider DisabledGo, Blackpool’s Coastal Community Team and the area’s local Volunteering Centre.

Reid said the project, which will last nearly two years, was “exciting and unique”.

He told DNS the scheme would improve access for both visitors and residents by offering free access audits and disability awareness training to local shops and businesses.

The project will also develop a culture and heritage mobile phone app, linked to existing apps offered by Blackpool Transport and DisabledGo, and which will include a British Sign Language interpretation service.

He said: “This will support people with a variety of disabilities with tram and bus access once they step off the train station in Blackpool and venues will have details of their particular disabled facilities and heritage information on the app.”

The project also plans to showcase professional disabled performers at Blackpool Opera House theatre and disabled artists in a local art gallery, and improve access at existing events including the Blackpool Illuminations switch-on and Lytham Festival.

He said there was also the possibility that a disabled performer could perform at, or even switch on, the illuminations next year.

On a visit to Lytham Saint Annes, coastal communities minister Jake Berry said: “It’s really exciting to see money from the Coastal Communities Fund help kick-start these shovel-ready projects, which have the potential to unlock the barriers to development and growth in our coastal communities.”

The Coastal Communities Fund was established to support coastal projects in the UK to deliver sustainable growth and jobs.

20 September 2018

 

 

Lib Dem conference: Party anger over DPAC’s ‘don’t vote Lib Dem’ call

Two leading disabled Liberal Democrats have criticised anti-cuts activists over their public call for disabled people not to vote for their party.

Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) published a high-profile message on social media this week during the party’s annual conference in Brighton, warning that disabled people “won’t forget” and “won’t forgive” its junior role in the coalition government between 2010 and 2015.

But David Buxton, the co-founder of the Liberal Democrat Disability Association, who has worked on campaigns with DPAC, said he would no longer support its work because of the message.

The party’s work and pensions spokesman, Stephen Lloyd, was also critical of DPAC.

But DPAC, which is not aligned with any political party, has defended its position.

It said it held the Liberal Democrats “jointly responsible” for coalition cuts and reforms such as the closure of the Independent Living Fund, damaging policies on the work capability assessment (WCA), the bedroom tax and the introduction of personal independence payment and universal credit.

It also pointed to the coalition’s “hostile environment benefits regime” and the “avoidable deaths and suicides of benefit claimants during the coalition years”.

DPAC added: “Our message to the Liberal Democrats is – you don’t get to walk away from your actions in those years – disabled people will remember.”

But Buxton said he was “very disappointed” by the DPAC message because he had been “very supportive of their work which has been excellent and has been important in stopping further cuts.

“Their job is to stop the cuts and we have been very supportive of that.”

He told Disability News Service at the party’s annual conference in Brighton that the coalition years had been “a very difficult time” and the Liberal Democrats had “tried to stop further cuts and were successful in stopping those cuts, but there were areas where the books had to be balanced”.

He asked why DPAC was not criticising Labour in a similar way.

He said Labour’s last government had rejected pleas from Deaf people for a British Sign Language act and had also been responsible for cutting disability services during its 13 years of office, while many Labour-run councils were now cutting services even though some, like Hammersmith and Fulham, had managed to protect disabled people from cuts.

He said: “Should Deaf people say they never forgive the Labour party? Thankfully, Labour have now changed their mind [on the need for a BSL act].”

He added: “Political parties can change. We have changed as a party. We are no longer in coalition government.

“There has been a change in leadership and we do recognise that we have to find ways of creating new policy that would be fairer and we will demand better for disabled people.”

Lloyd said DPAC’s message was “very disappointing” and ignored the fact that Labour brought in the WCA and awarded the contract to carry out the assessments to the much-criticised contractor Atos.

He said he was “proud” of what his party had achieved in coalition when facing “very challenging issues” with the economy, although there had been “some decisions in DWP that were wrong” and “others that were right”.

But Bob Ellard, a member of DPAC’s national steering group, said: “We are not party political and we will criticise any party as we see fit.

“We will be publicly criticising Labour over their ‘pause and fix’ policy for universal credit during their conference and we’ve been very vocal in criticising Labour in the past.

“We’ve also criticised the Green party over their policy on assisted suicide.

“And we have been very critical of the actions of Labour councils.

“The Lib Dems have Vince Cable as leader, who was a cabinet minister in the coalition, and many of their MPs were MPs in the coalition and voted for Tory welfare reform.

“Just as the tweet says, ‘They don’t get to walk away from that.’”

20 September 2018

 

 

Lib Dem conference: Lloyd backtracks on support for Duncan Smith

A Liberal Democrat MP who has supported Tory former work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith has admitted he gave him “more benefit of the doubt” than he should have done during the five years of the coalition government.

Stephen Lloyd, who served on the Commons work and pensions committee while Liberal Democrat ministers were serving in the coalition government between 2010 and 2015, has previously defended Duncan Smith.

And during this week’s annual party conference in Brighton, he told a fringe meeting that Duncan Smith had had some good ideas about the importance of employment in addressing disadvantage but had been undermined by right-wing papers like the Daily Mail publishing stories about benefit “scroungers”.

When asked later about this statement by Disability News Service (DNS), Lloyd said he had challenged Duncan Smith in parliament on his inappropriate language.

But he insisted that DNS was only “half right” in suggesting that Duncan Smith was responsible for whipping up hostility in tabloid papers like the Mail.

DNS then repeated comments Duncan Smith had told The Sun in late 2010 in which he said he had been “appalled” at how easy it has been in the past for people to claim incapacity benefit and cheat the system and said that Sun readers were right to be “upset and angry” when they saw neighbours who do not work.

Duncan Smith also told the Sun that Britain had “managed to create a block of people” who “do not add anything to the greatness of this country” and had “become conditioned to be users of services, not providers of money.

“This is a huge part of the reason we have this massive deficit.

“We don’t want to talk about scroungers in the future, we want to talk about British people being renowned the world over for working hard.”

Lloyd said again that he had challenged Duncan Smith over the language he had used.

But he said he now acknowledged that in his own zeal to see more people in work, he could have overlooked the harm caused by Duncan Smith and his supporters.

He said: “I think I did and I acknowledge that. In recognising that Iain Duncan Smith got the importance of jobs I can see that in coalition there were times when I would have given him more benefit of the doubt than I should have done.”

20 September 2018

 

News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com

 

 Posted by at 20:41
Sep 062018
 

 https://www.daleymichelle.co.uk/the-white-mans-burden-global-disability-summit-personal-reflection/

The White Man’s Burden – Global Disability Summit personal reflection

The title of this blog is intentional and aims to be provocative. I have borrowed the title from William Easterly’s book, “The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good”​. This is very true of the Global Disability Summit hosted in London.​

This blog is based on my personal experience and observations of the Global Disability Summit and doesn’t reflect anyone else’s opinion.

The continued road to discrimination and exploitation

I can say, without a doubt, that the Global Disability Summit was the ideal platform for our UK Government to embarrass and shame those present ‘developing countries’ for their failings with regard to Disabled People (as depicted in the image above) and their purposeful denial of their own wrongs in relation to Disabled People in the UK. We must remember that colonialism and imperialism do not die. The United Kingdom continues to be revered around the world as a country that is the voice of equality. At the Summit, there was an unequivocal message that the UK Government has an effect on other countries in terms of being a leader in disability equality and has paved the way for innovation. It’s no surprise the Summit was hosted on the site of the Global Disability Innovation Hub.

The UK Government needs you
The UK Government co-hosted “its first ever Global Disability Summit with the International Disability Alliance and the Government of Kenya”.

However, history has taught us about the slippery behaviour of the UK Government. Through the art of sophistication, control and dominance, the UK Government has a way of masking their horrible history, failings and exploitation. With this knowledge, it led me to ask the question as to who is receiving any benefit from this Summit? What was the purpose of the Global Disability Summit and hosting such an elaborate event? The Summit was held in the London Borough of Newham; an area with huge poverty and inequality. The Evening Standard has reported that the London Borough of Newham is one of London’s ten worst areas in terms of homelessness. Therefore, I felt it was key for me to show some of the delegates the true reality of the life of people living in the area. They were in total horror when they were more informed about the large number of people sleeping on London’s streets. One of the delegates commented, “this is so unexpected, not a place of inequality and I did not think people slept on the streets. The stories of these people are not often reported in our home countries.”

The idyllic picture was the reason that had attracted my parents to leave Jamaica for a home in the UK. Then, the UK was portrayed as the, “mother land and paved with gold; a country filled with opportunities”. This was an attractive factor that drew many people to the UK after the Second World War.

However, the truth was, the UK needed people from the colonial countries post-Second World War (1948 – 1957) in order to help address the labour shortage. The Caribbean was one of the countries that the UK received huge help from, particularly with regard to building the NHS.

Thus, it does not come as any surprise that with Brexit fast approaching, the UK Government is desperate to create global opportunities with their colonial countries. The recent news coverage reports that Theresa May, PM, is looking to secure trade deals with Africa after Brexit. Moreover, the “UK seeks to tap into the Kenyan markets as the Brexit deadline approaches” with this country also being the co-host country of the Summit.

However, I’m deeply saddened that the UK Government has ignored the findings of the UN Disability committee. The Disability Committee reported that the UK Government is causing a “human catastrophe” in relation to Disabled People and that they can no longer call themselves leaders of disability provision. As I write this blog, we have Disabled People taking up hospital beds, as in the case of Lakhvinder Kaur because she was evicted from a care home while in intensive care and made homeless.

We are seeing history repeating itself, with the UK masking its failings in order to attract help from other countries, create opportunities, secure their own dominance and obtain power at the expense of others.

The Aliens Act
Colonialism reinforces inequality so it will come as no surprise when I tell you that I’m frequently asked questions about where I come from or where I was born. Not satisfied when I reply in the UK, people normally continue with the question; and your parents? I could discuss this issue further but I will not because it is not the intention of this blog. Anyway, I was repeatedly asked at the Global Disability Summit the same questions about where I am from. It became painfully annoying and frustrating. I believe I was asked this question as the images portrayed of UK Disabled Leaders are mostly White Disabled Men and few Women. What this revealed to me is the level of inequality experienced by Black Disabled Women in the UK and reinforced that our presence in the UK is not recognised or embraced.

This experience drew me to the Aliens Act  (now known as the Immigration Act) which was introduced in the UK to control its borders, immigration and to view non-UK citizens as a threat. A threat is exactly how I was viewed at the Summit. I was totally taken back when I was asked for Identification (ID) at the registration desk. I became vexed instantly. All sorts of thoughts were rushing through my head as I knew assumptions were being made based on my skin colour and the assumption that I was a non-UK citizen. I remained calm and controlled by anger. I asked why ID was needed and why this information was not conveyed during the registration process. My blood was at boiling point because I knew this request was borne out of racism and I knew this system was set up to keep checks on the black oversea delegates to ensure they were at the event and returned to their home countries. So did I provide ID? No, because I knew it was not necessary. And, why were immigration control practices being applied at the Summit, particularly when delegates would have already completed the necessary checks to enter the UK?

Once I gained entrance. I rolled into the event but my frustration continued to rise, as well as my disappointment with the obvious signs of racial inequality within the job roles and the way Disabled People from Asian and African countries were being depicted as inferior. It did not matter that this event was being co-hosted with the Kenyan Government; it was clear who the power-holders were. White privilege and power has the ability to discredit the worth of Black People, segregate and create enormous damage in the way Black People are perceived. My feeling of uncomfortableness was painful as the reality is that the privilege of the power-holders has depicted our Black Disabled Sisters and Brothers as helpless and as the the White Man’s burden.

In fact, this is far from the truth since through my networking, I have learnt that many of the African countries present at the event have more Disabled People in their Government than the UK Government does.

A Change Is Gonna Come

The Global Disability Summit showed no respect for Disabled People globally and no appreciation for our shared experienced. The Summit was used as an attempt to mask “UK failure to uphold disabled people’s rights

The words of Marvin Gaye, “A change is going to come”, expressed the very essence of the International Disabled People movement’s demand for solidarity and unity. This is exactly what Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) did through hosting the rival International Deaf and Disabled People’s Solidarity Summit, which was a great event where Disabled People from around the globe came together to share our experiences. It did not waste resources and require an elaborate setting to bring people together. It was a perfect example to show why we need solidarity for our struggle and the liberation of Disabled People globally.

DPAC also hosted a “festival of resistance” outside the Summit in order to criticise the hypocrisy of co-hosting the Summit. Myself and Nadia Hadad, from the European Network on Independent Living, were prevented from re-entering the summit by security as we had DPAC leaflets (see image below), which were perceived as promoting negative messages about the UK Government. It was through our sister, Sojourner Truth, that I learnt about underground activism. Through her teaching, I managed to slip pass security with the leaflets and shared them with many of the delegates. I also got many Disabled People to leave the Summit and join in the festival, which was a proud moment for me.

Another huge applause must go to Alliance for Inclusive Education, Campaigns and Policy Coordinator, Simone Aspis for publicly calling out the UK Government for their failings with regard to Disabled People.

What’s going on?
When Marvin Gaye sung, “what’s going on”, it couldn’t be more of a poignant question to conclude this blog with.

Angela Davis’ quote perfectly articulates the point of this blog, although her reference relates to America. She says that, “as a black woman, my politics and political affiliation are bound up with and flow from participation in my people’s struggle for liberation, and with the fight of oppressed people all over the world against American imperialism”.

So when we discuss the question of the advantages and disadvantages of the Global Disability Summit, we need to decide if we want to support colonialism and imperialism or not. The other questions we need to ask are; did the Summit promote solidarity and unity between Disabled People globally or did it promote disability liberation or oppression?

Peace and one love

 

 Posted by at 14:34
Aug 262018
 

 

 

DWP breaks law over secret reports on universal credit deaths

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is refusing to release evidence that would show how many secret reports it has compiled into the deaths of claimants of its new universal credit, in a fresh breach of freedom of information laws.

DWP compiles an internal process review every time a “suicide is associated with DWP activity”, as well as in some other cases involving the deaths of disabled or “vulnerable” benefit claimants.

The last batch of reviews released by DWP were published in heavily redacted form two years ago.

But Disability News Service (DNS) is keen to secure evidence of how many reviews have been carried out since then relating to the introduction of the much-criticised universal credit benefit system.

Repeated concerns have been raised about the introduction of universal credit and its impact on claimants in vulnerable situations.

Disabled activists have warned that universal credit is “rotten to the core” and have warned of “soaring” rates of sanctions and foodbank use in areas where it has been introduced.

In June, a report by the National Audit Office said DWP was failing to support “vulnerable” claimants and was unable to monitor how they were being treated under universal credit.

In July, employment minister Alok Sharma was asked by MPs on the Commons work and pensions committee why the benefits of hundreds of sick and disabled universal credit claimants were apparently being sanctioned, even though they should not have had to meet any of the strict conditions imposed by the system.

In the same month, further concerns were raised by the committee about disabled people with high support needs who claim universal credit and face the possibility of strict conditions – such as being forced to carry out hours of job searches every week – as they wait for a work capability assessment.

And MPs on the public accounts committee heard, also in July, how claimants were facing “considerable hardship and considerable deterioration in their mental health” because of universal credit.

As a result of earlier concerns about universal credit, DNS submitted a freedom of information request to DWP on 21 June, asking how many internal process reviews had been carried out since April 2016; how many involved a claimant who had died; and how many involved a claimant of universal credit.

The request also asked for DWP to release the recommendations made by each review.

But DWP’s freedom of information team has failed to respond to the request, and to a follow-up email on 7 August asking why it had not replied, even though it is legally obliged to respond within 20 working days under the Freedom of Information Act.

A legal case taken by DNS secured the publication of redacted versions of DWP’s secret reports – then known as peer reviews – for the first time in 2016, thanks to the pro bono legal work of barrister Elizabeth Kelsey, from Monckton Chambers.

The information rights tribunal ruled in 2016 that DWP should release recommendations from all the peer reviews it held, although not any information directly related to the people who died.

A further batch of redacted reviews into another nine benefit-related deaths was released by DWP later in 2016, following pressure from the Information Commissioner’s Office, but it is believed that no further reports have been released since then.

Last week, DNS revealed how DWP had refused to release other secret reports connected with its welfare reforms, this time those written by disabled people who had been recruited as “community partners” to work with its jobcentres.

When asked why DWP’s freedom of information team had refused to respond to the internal process review request, a DWP spokeswoman said: “As explained last week, any issues relating to FOI requests can be dealt with by writing to freedom-of-information-request@dwp.gsi.gov.uk.

“If you are unhappy with the handling of an FOI request please contact the Information Commissioner’s Office.”

DNS will be lodging a complaint with the information commissioner about DWP’s failure to release the internal process reviews.

23 August 2018

 

 

Minister snubs DPOs – and ‘breaches UN convention’ – by refusing meeting

The minister for disabled people is refusing to meet a coalition of disabled people’s organisations, in an apparent breach of the UN disability convention.

The coalition wrote to Sarah Newton yesterday (Wednesday) to express its “deep disappointment and concern” about her refusal to meet them to discuss the UK’s failure to implement the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).

The letter, signed by 14 prominent disabled leaders, asks Newton: “How can the government improve the lives of disabled people if it is not engaging directly with disabled people?”

The UN committee on the rights of persons with disabilities told the UK government last September in its “concluding observations” that it needed to make more than 80 improvements to the ways its laws and policies affect disabled people’s human rights.

In its review of the UK’s implementation of CRPD, the committee raised concerns and made recommendations on all but three of the 33 treaty articles the UK could have breached.

Newton’s letter refusing a meeting was sent on 10 July, two weeks before international development secretary Penny Mordaunt told an international disability rights conference in London: “When disabled people are included, great things happen.”

Mordaunt and her civil servants spent much of the Global Disability Summit last month telling other countries and organisations to sign up to a new Charter for Change.

The charter calls on those signing it to “hold ourselves and others to account for the promises we have made here today” and to “strive for real change” through implementation of CRPD.

CRPD says (in article four) that governments must, in implementing the convention, “closely consult with and actively involve persons with disabilities… through their representative organizations”.

It also says (article 33) that “civil society, in particular persons with disabilities and their representative organizations, shall be involved and participate fully” in monitoring the implementation of the convention in each country.

Newton’s letter appears to breach both article four and article 33 as the coalition has been seeking a ministerial meeting since February.

Tracey Lazard, chief executive of Inclusion London, one of the coalition’s members, says in yesterday’s letter: “We are extremely disappointed that as minister for disabled people you are not able to find the time to meet with the only UK wide coalition of disabled people’s organisations set up to monitor and engage with the UK government on CRPD issues.”

Other members of the UK CRPD Monitoring Coalition of Disabled People’s Organisations include Disability Wales, The Alliance for Inclusive Education, Disabled People Against Cuts, Sisters of Frida, Inclusion Scotland and the Mental Health Resistance Network, several of which are members of the Reclaiming Our Futures Alliance.

In her two-paragraph letter to the coalition, Newton says she will not be able to meet with them “due to ongoing diary commitments” but “would be pleased to have my officials do so on my behalf”.

It is not the first time that Newton’s commitment to disability rights has been questioned.

Last December, she refused to explain why she had apparently failed to attend or organise any events – or even post a message of support on social media – on the UN’s International Day of Persons with Disabilities (IDPD).

The coalition’s letter also reminds Newton that she previously stated that she strongly welcomed a meeting to discuss how the government was implementing CRPD.

In February, the coalition wrote to the prime minister, Theresa May, to question the lack of progress since the UN committee produced its “damning” report and to ask for a meeting to discuss their concerns.

In her response, sent on 25 April, Newton said: “I strongly welcome your proposal of a meeting to discuss how Government is implementing the concluding observations of the Committee for the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and planning to work with organisations led by disabled people.

“This closely fits with work I have been leading with the Office for Disability Issues within government.”

DWP had not been able to comment by 1.30pm today (Thursday), after being approached yesterday afternoon.

23 August 2018

 

 

Leonard Cheshire facing care regulator questions after third Greathouse death

A disability charity is facing questions from the care regulator after a third former resident of a care home died within a month of its sudden closure.

Last week, Disability News Service (DNS) reported concerns from disabled campaigners, relatives and former staff at Greathouse, near Chippenham, after it emerged that two of its former residents had died soon after being forced to leave the home, which closed on 27 July.

But it has now emerged that a third former resident – who was believed to have been terminally-ill – has also died after being moved to a nearby care home.

Another former service-user, a disabled woman who used the home’s respite service and was said to have been deeply upset at not being able to visit Greathouse, is also believed to have died since the closure, while as many as five or six former residents have had to be admitted for hospital treatment.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has now told DNS that it has asked Leonard Cheshire for information about the deaths.

Debbie Ivanova, CQC’s deputy chief inspector of adult social care, said yesterday (Wednesday): “Any death is a matter of concern – and all providers are obliged to notify us whenever a person has died in their care.

“Exactly how we follow up this information will vary according to the circumstances in each case.

“We are aware of the concerns in this case and we have asked [Leonard Cheshire] to provide us with further information – and we will decide what action we take once we are aware of the full circumstances.”

Last week, Anne Keat, whose son Richard was a resident at Greathouse and has now been moved to another home nearby, said she and other relatives were convinced that the deaths and other serious health problems were connected to the closure.

Although it is impossible to prove that the deaths and health problems were caused by the sudden closure of Greathouse and residents being forced to move to new homes, some research has suggested a link between involuntary relocation from residential homes and a negative impact on residents’ health.

Earlier this month, Leonard Cheshire was also criticised over its decision to sell 17 residential homes to other care providers and was accused of making “a complete mockery” of its supposed commitment to service-user involvement.

Three former Greathouse residents are believed to have moved to Leonard Cheshire homes that are among the 17 listed for sale next year and so are likely to go through a further period of uncertainty and upheaval.

Leonard Cheshire faced allegations of “insensitive and abusive” behaviour in May over the way managers from head office told disabled residents of Greathouse that they were about to close the home.

About 20 residents were given just three months’ notice of the charity’s plans to close Greathouse, with Leonard Cheshire blaming staffing problems, a drop in the demand for places and the cost of repairs.

Leonard Cheshire refused to say yesterday (Wednesday) if it was taking any responsibility for the deaths or if it would be investigating what had happened, claiming it would be “inappropriate” to do so.

In response to the death of the third former resident, a spokeswoman said: “We were sorry to hear this news and our thoughts are with [his] family.

“Any unexpected death is always reported and investigated by the relevant regulatory authorities so it is inappropriate to comment further at this point.

“In line with best practice, detailed support and care plans were in place for the former residents of Greathouse prior to their move.

“This included health checks and the transfer of records around complex conditions to the new providers.”

Wiltshire County Council said today (Thursday) that it would be contacting all the local authorities that had funded residents at Greathouse, after it learned of the deaths.

A council spokesman said: “There were 21 people who were residents/received support at Greathouse (of which we fund eight) so we are also making contact with all of the other funding authorities to speak to them about the situation.

“We already have regular direct contact with the people we fund and are not aware of any issues related to their ongoing care.”

He had said earlier, in a statement: “We are very sorry to hear that some former residents of Greathouse have passed away since the home closed, and our thoughts are with the families affected.

“We currently fund the care and support needs of eight people who were previously receiving care services at Greathouse [four residents and four who received respite and day services] and their needs are now being met by other providers.

“Although the closure notice period is out of our control, we always ask for as much notice as possible when homes have to close but this depends on the individual circumstances.

“As soon as we were made aware of the closure, we put processes in place to work with partners to ensure a smooth transition of residents to a new care provision of their choice.

“Our safeguarding team work to protect vulnerable people’s right to live in safety, free from abuse or neglect.

“We are in regular contact with the residents whose care we fund and we have not been made aware of any safeguarding issues related to them.

“We are happy to speak to anyone who has any concerns about the ongoing care of the former residents at Greathouse.”

A CQC spokeswoman said earlier this week that it was “unable to influence a provider’s decision to close a service” and that its priority was to ensure “consistently safe, effective, responsive and high quality care is given to people who use services and we will always take action when we consider it necessary to do so”.

She said CQC had been contacted “by some relatives and people who used the service raising concerns about the closure and the way and manner it was being handled.

“In response to these concerns we maintained regular contact with the provider, [Leonard Cheshire], and received regular updates from them notifying us of how and when people were moved to alternative accommodation.

“Our understanding is that the provider also worked with the various local authorities involved to ensure that suitable alternative accommodation was found and in addition provided support to people and their relatives, including discussing options and facilitating visits to their new homes prior to moving in.”

23 August 2018

 

 

Deaf campaigner takes court action over BSL jury ban

A Deaf campaigner has launched a legal action aimed at stopping the government discriminating against users of British Sign Language by preventing them from serving on juries.

David Buxton, chief executive of the London-based disabled people’s organisation Action on Disability, is seeking a judicial review of the government’s failure to allow him to sit on a jury.

He was called up for jury service at Kingston Crown Court earlier this year, but when he told the Jury Central Summoning Bureau he was Deaf, he was informed that he was not required.

A crown court judge later deferred a decision on whether he would be allowed to serve as a juror.

In his claim for judicial review – which is being funded by the Equality and Human Rights Commission – Buxton is arguing that justice secretary David Gauke is discriminating against him and breaching the Equality Act’s public sector equality duty, and the Human Rights Act, by not allowing him to serve on a jury with the assistance of an interpreter.

The Ministry of Justice said this week that allowing a non-juror into the jury room during its deliberations breaches common law.

But Buxton’s call is backed by the UN committee on the rights of persons with disabilities, which said last September that the UK government should enable BSL-users “to fully and equally participate as jurors in court proceedings”, under article 13 (access to justice) of the UN disability convention.

The committee, in its concluding observations on the government’s implementation of the convention, said it was concerned that “regulations exclude persons with hearing impairments from participation in jury proceedings, and that personal assistants/interpreters are not deemed to constitute procedural accommodation”.

The refusal to allow BSL-users to take part as jurors is a long-standing source of frustration for many Deaf campaigners.

Jeff McWhinney, at the time the chief executive of the British Deaf Association (BDA), was told by a crown court judge in 1999 that he could not let him serve as a juror because the law prevented him bringing an interpreter – a “13th person” – into the jury room.

The Labour government said it was considering a change in the law at the time, but successive governments have failed to take steps to do so in the last 19 years.

BDA said it had persuaded the Ministry of Justice to look at this and other issues affecting d/Deaf people across prisons, courts and juries, but that the government had yet to take any “meaningful action”.

Now Buxton, himself a former BDA chief executive, has launched another legal bid to force a change in the law.

He spoke out this week as the high court rejected his separate judicial review claim that the government had discriminated against him and other BSL-users by imposing an Access to Work cap that affects those with the highest support needs (see separate story).

Buxton said that ruling showed that the Equality Act “does not sufficiently protect Deaf people using BSL despite ministers and MPs repeatedly saying that it does.

“This judicial review judgment shows how hard it is to protect our rights as Deaf people using BSL as our first or preferred language.

“The government supports the economies of cost over our basic human rights, therefore we have to campaign for the Equality Act to be strengthened, especially as there is no legal status for BSL in this current act.”

He said that one reasonable adjustment that would solve the problem of the “13th person in the jury room” would be for the court to provide an interpreter in another room while he watched a video relay screen in the jury room.

The failure to allow BSL-users to serve on juries is further evidence, Buxton believes, that the Equality Act 2010 does not provide sufficient protection to Deaf people who use BSL, “despite ministers and MPs repeatedly saying that it does”.

A BDA spokeswoman said: “The current UK practice of denying Deaf people the right to sit on a jury is an overt form of institutional discrimination and failure to accord Deaf people their rights as full citizens.

“Justice should not only be received but also dispensed by all sections of the community including Deaf people.”

Louise Whitfield, Buxton’s solicitor, from legal firm Deighton Pierce Glynn, said the jury case would “further test the government to show its commitment to the spirit of the Equality Act or to continue simply ignoring the fact that it is possible for Deaf people to serve as jurors in this modern, inclusive and accessible society without any direct or indirect discrimination”.

A Ministry of Justice spokeswoman said: “It would be inappropriate to comment while legal proceedings are ongoing.”

23 August 2018

 

 

Deaf boss forced to appeal for charity support after Access to Work court defeat

A Deaf chief executive is having to appeal to charity to fund the support he needs to do his job, after the high court decided that a cap the government imposed on Access to Work (AtW) payments did not breach the Equality Act.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) set an annual cap of £42,500 on AtW payments in 2015, but later increased it to £57,200 (twice the annual salary) after David Buxton launched a high court challenge, funded by the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

Buxton argued that the higher cap on AtW payments – which fund workplace adjustments for disabled people such as support workers and travel costs – still had a disproportionate impact on the job and career prospects of Deaf users of British Sign Language (BSL) and other disabled people with high support needs.

He said this placed them at a disadvantage when trying to get into jobs and develop their careers.

Now Mr Justice Kerr has ruled that the higher cap did not breach the government’s public sector equality duty and was not “indirectly discriminatory”.

He said the cap was not introduced as a cost-cutting measure but “as an intended cost-neutral measure, changing the distribution of available funding but not its overall level”.

And he concluded that the higher cap “strikes a balance” between funding more low-level cost awards and the needs of existing high-cost recipients, who must “forego some of the available funds to provide the money to spend on achieving the government’s aims”.

But Buxton, chief executive of the London-based disabled people’s organisation Action on Disability, said this week that the court’s ruling means he will now have to seek support from charitable trusts or donors to pay for the BSL interpreters he needs to do his job.

Buxton, whose first language is BSL, believes that Deaf people are being “punished” by the government for their high support needs through the “ideologically driven” cap, which was “directly discriminatory towards d/Deaf people”.

The cap means he currently only receives enough support to pay for one BSL interpreter for four days a week.

He said that this forces him to spend large parts of the week re-arranging his schedule to ensure there is an interpreter in the office when he needs one.

He also has to pay for a second interpreter to cover meetings that will last more than an hour, to allow the first interpreter to have the necessary breaks.

Evening meetings are an even greater stretch on his AtW support budget as they are more expensive.

This means he is frequently left with enough interpreter support for just three days a week, or sometimes just two.

And he can never predict when he will receive unexpected phone calls, or if staff will need to see him urgently at short notice.

He said: “This cap has caused me a lot of stress and isolation. Some days I don’t have any funds to pay for interpreters, mainly because I booked co-workers on other days, [and because] evening meetings cost more.

“I had to organise my AtW support nearly every day, planning ahead, making sure that I have enough cover. This is overbearing and unnecessarily creates hours of extra work.”

He added: “DWP did not assess or meet me at all. They simply decided to give me funding at the level of the cap, expecting me to sort myself out by getting less support every day.”

Buxton said he had worked “so hard for many years” to reach his current position, which he achieved because of his skills and experience, not because he was Deaf or a BSL-user.

He said: “The cap has real and lasting effects on my ability to do my job.

“This is not about greed, it is not about having every whim catered to – it is about ensuring that of the many things that I have to think about in my role, that communication and language access are not among them.”

And he questioned whether such a cap would be appropriate for a minister who used BSL as their first language.

He is also concerned that ministers have refused to say how much revenue is returned to the Treasury for every £1 spent on Access to Work, through taxes paid by recipients and their support workers and interpreters and the benefits that ATW-recipients do not need to claim if they are in work.

Previous research has suggested a return of as much as £1.48 for every pound spent on AtW.

A DWP spokeswoman refused to respond to concerns that the cap meant that disabled people – particularly BSL-users – with high support needs would never be able to achieve full equality.

She also refused to say if DWP accepted that the cap was imposing a limit on how far the careers of some Deaf professionals could go, and whether the minister for disabled people would expect a Deaf minister to cope with less than full-time communications support.

She also refused to say if DWP had calculated the financial return to the Treasury for every £1 invested in Access to Work.

But she said in a statement: “We welcome the high court’s judgment.

“We’ve set out a commitment to see one million more disabled people in work by 2027, and Access to Work forms an important part of our plans.

“When making changes to Access to Work we work closely with stakeholders from the deaf community, including the UK Council on Deafness as well as deaf individuals.

“We’ve decided to increase the limit on the amount people can claim under Access to Work by £15,000 to up to £57,200 a year, and last year 25,000 people had their request approved by Access to Work, an increase of eight per cent from 2015-16.

“The award limit was introduced to enable the programme to continue to help as many people as possible, and we’re taking steps to make more people aware of the scheme by working with employers, charities and health professionals.”

But Louise Whitfield, Buxton’s solicitor, from legal firm Deighton Pierce Glynn, said: “Despite the very real gains of the massively increased cap, it is extremely disappointing that the government failed to recognise the significant adverse impact on Deaf people of preventing them from working in roles that need high levels of support.

“We will never see equality for Deaf and disabled people if this remains the government’s position.”

And the Stop Changes To Access To Work campaign praised Buxton for taking the case and said the ruling “highlights the fragility of our rights protections whereby government can decide to implement measures that discriminate and curtail the equalities of Deaf and disabled people so long as they prove they have considered the impacts and cite funding constraints.

“It also fails to give any weight to our concerns about the impact of the glass ceiling that the cap sets for Deaf BSL-users and wider social impacts on inequality.”

The campaign said the judgment showed there was “far more to do in the fight for the rights of Deaf and disabled people to work on an equal basis with others in line with article 27 [on work and employment] of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities”.

23 August 2018

 

 

Minister condemned for ‘woeful’ response to residential special school review

Inclusive education campaigners have condemned the government’s “woeful” response to a review of the experiences of disabled children and young people in residential special schools.

The Alliance for Inclusive Education (ALLFIE) said the government had again failed to take action that would “turn the tide against increased segregated education” and improve inclusive education in mainstream schools.

Dame Christine Lenehan, director of the Council for Disabled Children, who co-chaired the independent review, said last November that she had found the quality of support in residential special schools “extremely variable”, while there was “far too little focus” on educational outcomes.

Far too often, she said, the disabled children and young people who ended up in residential special schools had been failed by the system.

And she called for a system which enabled disabled children to attend schools in their local communities.

Dame Christine’s review, which was commissioned by the government, concluded that “experiences and outcomes for these children and young people are too often not as good as they should be”.

About 6,000 disabled children and young people are educated in about 330 residential special schools and colleges, in the state, non-maintained and independent sectors, costing about £500 million a year, with each placement costing between £35,000 and £350,000 a year.

In his response to the review, education secretary Damian Hinds said in a letter to Dame Christine this week that he recognised there had been “a steady movement of children with special educational needs out of mainstream schools and into specialist provision, alternative provision and home education”, with increasing rates of school exclusions.

He said it was “right that the presumption in law is for mainstream education” but that he was also “clear that specialist provision can be the right choice for many of those with more complex needs”.

He said he wanted to “equip and incentivise” mainstream schools “to do better” for disabled children and young people, and said the government had begun a review of the national minimum standards for residential special schools.

Hinds also pointed out that the government had put in place a contract with the Whole School SEND Consortium – worth £3.4 million over two years – to “embed SEND [special educational needs and disabilities] within approaches to school improvement in order to equip the workforce to deliver high quality teaching across all types of SEN”.

But ALLFIE said it was “very disappointed by the government’s lack of action to eradicate residential and day special schools and continued failure to turn the tide against increased segregated education, resulting in too little being done to improve inclusive education practice”.

It pointed to the comments of the UN’s committee on the rights of persons with disabilities last September – in its “concluding observations” on the UK’s progress in implementing the disability convention – in which it said it was concerned about “the persistence of a dual education system that segregates children with disabilities in special schools”.

The committee called for “a coherent and adequately financed strategy… on increasing and improving inclusive education”.

The UN has separately made it clear that inclusive education means that all disabled children and young people are educated in mainstream settings and that the right for disabled students not to be discriminated against “includes the right not to be segregated” into special schools.

ALLFIE said the contract awarded to the Whole School SEND Consortium was a “distraction” from the findings in Dame Christine’s report that £500 million was spent supporting just 6,000 disabled young people in residential special schools every year – an average of about £80,000 per pupil – while mainstream schools were facing “substantial cuts” to their budgets.

It said that the suggestion by Hinds that parents “actively make a choice” of specialist provision was not based on evidence, with Dame Christine finding that “many of the children and young people currently in residential special schools and colleges could be educated in their local communities if better support was available”.

An ALLFIE spokeswoman added: “We know of families who have been offered residential special school placement in lieu of no suitable provision being made available in their local mainstream schools. It’s not a choice.”

23 August 2018

 

News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com

 

 Posted by at 18:32
Aug 262018
 

If you are a member of Disability Labour you should have had notification of their forthcoming AGM. If you haven’t please let us or Disability Equality Act Labour know.

Members raise concerns over Disability Labour’s ‘consistent failure’

Disabled Labour activists have gone public with their concerns about the “consistent failure” of the organisation set up to build links between the party and the disability movement.

They are set to call for major changes to Disability Labour at its agm next month, including the replacement of two key executives.

Disability Labour is an independent society, affiliated to Labour, and is supposed to work with the party to make its services and meetings accessible, while also campaigning to address disabling barriers in wider society and for full civil rights for disabled people.

But many frustrated members in the Disability Equality Act Labour (DEAL) campaign group say it has repeatedly failed in all its objectives.

Among DEAL’s concerns are Disability Labour’s lack of accountability to its members, its failure to manage its membership list, that its ruling executive meets only four times a year, and its failure to carry out any proper programme of work.

DEAL, which was set up to address Disability Labour’s failings, says its executive promises every year to improve but has repeatedly failed to fulfil that pledge, while there has been “virtually no communication” with members this year.

Among a string of motions it hopes will be passed at the agm are expressions of no confidence in the chair, Dave Allan, and the secretary, Louise Reecejones, who it wants removed from their positions.

Since its launch, DEAL has published a campaigning document that called on the party to improve access for disabled members, and a subsequent handbook aimed at helping the party comply with its duties under the Equality Act.

Sophie Talbot, one of DEAL’s founders, said the group had “begged and pleaded” with Disability Labour to take action.

She said: “The last thing anyone wanted was this horrible conflict. But after years of bending over backwards to try and get the Disability Labour executive to communicate with members and be fit for purpose, this seemed like the only thing we could do.”

Now DEAL has published a series of new web pages with a set of demands they hope will “fix the ailing organisation”.

As part of a 12-point plan, it wants to see free membership for all disabled party members; for Disability Labour to be “a strong campaigning voice”; for it to adopt the DEAL handbook; and for Disability Labour to support and endorse disabled members standing for public office and party positions.

Talbot added: “We set up as a group because of the consistent failure of Disability Labour to work on behalf of its members.

“We were sick and tired of the total lack of communication with members, and what looks like a small group of executive members using Disability Labour to further their own political careers.

“At the 2018 AGM we’ll be there to tell them it’s time to hand over to people that will do the job they’ve never lived up to.”

Emily Brothers, a member of the executive, said she also had concerns about the performance of the chair and secretary and was frustrated at Disability Labour’s failings.

But she was also critical of the “groundswell of negativity” coming from online groups like DEAL, despite some positive work, such as the new handbook.

She said: “There is too much introspection on the internal workings and machinations of things like constitutions [of Disability Labour] as opposed to being positive and looking at issues around policy, and frankly how we can put the Tories on the back foot on issues affecting disabled people.

“There are many things which are not working. We do need change, but we need to work incrementally towards that.

“I think it is quite sad that we are putting so much energy into conflict between disabled people inside the Labour party as opposed to utilising that for our common good to challenge the Tories on welfare rights, employment policy, and the implications of Brexit for disabled people.”

Brothers said there was no need for the string of motions being put forward for the Disability Labour agm by DEAL, while she said the no confidence motions could be better dealt with by voting in new officials in the annual elections to the executive.

She said recommendations made by a democracy review – likely to be approved next month by Labour’s national executive committee – would set up a new disabled members’ section that would sit within the party’s national structure.

This would mean a new role for Disability Labour and potentially a discussion as to whether it would continue to exist in the long-term.

Another member of the executive, Kirsten Hearn, said she was “very frustrated” with how Disability Labour had performed and was “embarrassed” that she had not done more herself to try to reform the organisation.

But she also questioned whether motions of no confidence were the way to change Disability Labour.

She said: “I don’t think the agm should take up time with motions criticising anybody’s leadership, [instead it should] elect a new set of people to get on with things.

“I don’t see the point of punishing or humiliating people for their poor leadership. We should just move on.

“I strongly encourage every single member of Disability Labour to try and be at the meeting.

“What we need to do now is to vote in people with a progressive programme of change and action for disabled people.”

She said Disability Labour needed to support disabled people to stand as candidates for political office and for leadership positions in the party and ensure inclusivity in the party.

And she said it needed to push to ensure “that we are an inclusive party and our policy agenda truly reflects the issues and concerns of disabled people in the areas of struggle we have in our lives, including employment, benefits, health, exclusion, hate crime…”

Neither Allan nor Reecejones had responded to a request to comment by noon today (Thursday).

A spokesman for Marsha de Cordova, co-vice-chair of Disability Labour and the party’s shadow minister for disabled people, said she was on leave this week and so was unable to comment, although she made several comments on other issues on Twitter.

23 August 2018

 from Disability News Service

 

 Posted by at 18:29
Aug 262018
 

 DWP facing court over claimant’s universal credit ‘fit for work injustice’

A disabled man who was unfairly found “fit for work”, and then saw his benefits slashed by almost £180 per month after he was forced onto the government’s new universal credit benefit system, is seeking justice in the high court.

It is the latest in a series of legal cases that have been taken on behalf of disabled benefit claimants against DWP, as a result of a series of welfare reforms introduced under successive Conservative and Conservative-led governments.

The man, known as IM for legal reasons, had been claiming employment and support allowance (ESA), but after undergoing a work capability assessment he was told in March last year that he was no longer eligible for ESA.

His jobcentre advised him to claim universal credit instead, which he did, but he also successfully appealed against the decision to find him fit for work.

Although the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) now accepts that he was unfairly found fit for work and that he has limited capability for work-related activity – the equivalent of being in the ESA support group – he has been treated as a new universal credit claimant.

As a new claimant, he is not entitled to the severe disability premium (SDP) he previously received as a top-up to ESA.

If draft regulations become law, he may be entitled to the partial compensation of £80 a month agreed by work and pensions secretary Esther McVey for those who lost entitlement to SDP when they were forced to move onto universal credit.*

IM’s judicial review case has been taken by the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG), which has described DWP’s policy as “irrational” and discriminatory.

It has secured permission for a judicial review of the failure to provide IM with transitional protection after his move to universal credit, or, alternatively, the refusal to allow him to return to ESA.

CPAG is taking a similar legal action on behalf of TD, a single mother with a disabled child, which will be heard by the high court alongside IM’s case.

TD gave up her job to become a full-time carer but had her income support terminated when her child’s disability living allowance (DLA) was about to end and before it could be renewed.

She was also told by the jobcentre to claim universal credit, which she did.

Despite DWP eventually admitting that there had been a mistake, TD is now receiving almost £140 a month less under universal credit than she did when receiving income support.

The two cases are expected to be heard together in the high court early next year.

Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) welcomed the judicial review and warned that if it was not successful, many other disabled people would be affected in a similar way.

DPAC said DWP was clearly engaged in “another cost-saving exercise”.

A DPAC spokesperson said: “Financially, the incentive for DWP is to find as many claimants as possible fit for work.

“Even if the decision is overturned, DWP is saving money by transferring claimants to universal credit.

“This is clearly just more evidence that universal credit is beyond being fixed.

“People already living on poverty-level social security payments are simply and randomly being thrown even further into destitution.”

Claire Glasman, from the campaigning organisation WinVisible – which supports disabled women – said: “Families are being devastated by abolition of income support, which is some recognition of caring work.

“We are contacted by stressed out mothers at their wits’ end when their children’s DLA and their carer benefits are threatened by the brutal personal independence payment [which is replacing working-age DLA]and universal credit system.”

A DWP spokeswoman said: “We are not able to comment on an ongoing legal case.”

23 August 2018 From Disability News Service

 

 Posted by at 18:20
Aug 182018
 

Norwich Art Show Announced

Vince Laws & DPAC (Disabled People Against Cuts) have teamed up to ensure there is a Norfolk Disability Pride Art Show. The show falls under 3 headings:

1) ‘I Protest!’ 

Protest Art by Vince Laws & DPAC Artists

including the DEAD PEOPLE DON’T CLAIM banner

and the DWP DEATHS MAKE ME SICK shrouds.

Supported by Disabled People Against Cuts

dpac.uk.net

2) A Very Queer Nazi Faust – Props, Photos, Poetry & More!

Highlighting the plight of disabled people under the current Tory government.

(Following the live art performance at Norwich Arts Centre on Weds 12 Sept at 8pm, tickets £6.66.)

Commissioned and supported by Unlimited, celebrating the work of disabled artists with funding from the Spirit of 2012. Supported by Norwich Arts Centre. Supported by Norfolk County Council.

avqnf.co.uk

3) Norfolk Disability Pride Art Show supported by DPAC

At St Margaret’s Church of Art,

St Benedict’s Street, Norwich, NR2 4AQ

Sunday 16 – Saturday 29 September 2018.

Accepting and hanging work Sunday 16 Sept 11am-5pm.

LAUNCH PARTY Sunday 16 Sept 5-10pm, (after the Norfolk Disability Pride event at the Forum earlier the same day, 11am-4pm.)

Performance evening Saturday 22 Sept, details TBC.

A Very Queer Nazi Faust end of show Party open to everyone on Friday 28 Sept from 5-10pm.

Take down Saturday 29 Sept. All work must be collected by 5pm.

Call to Artists

You don’t have to show protest art.

Work needs to be relevant to Norfolk Disability Pride, but you don’t have to be disabled to take part.

Work can be for sale or display only. Donate what you can afford to take part, all money goes to DPAC.

To enter work contact vincelaws@gmail.com

Volunteers Welcome

Help Vince hang work on Sunday 16 Sept 11am-5pm.

Help host the Launch Party on Sunday 16 Sept 5-10pm.

Help welcome visitors 17-29 Sept, open daily 10am-5pm. (Early shift 10am-1.30pm. Later shift 1.30-5pm)

Entry to the art show is FREE throughout, however donations to DPAC welcome. I hope to pay them back the venue hire & costs.

What: ‘I Protest!’ Art Show, with A Very Queer Nazi Faust props and photos, and Norfolk Disability Pride Art Show.

Where: St Margaret’s Church of Art, St Benedict’s Street, Norwich, NR2 4AQ.

When: Sunday 16 to Saturday 29 September 2018.

When: Launch Party: on Sunday 16 Sept from 5-10pm, then open daily 10am-5pm.

Why: Part of Norfolk Disability Pride 2018. Fighting for disabled peoples’ human rights.

Who: Vince Laws, DPAC, Art of Norwich, Unlimited, Spirit of 2012, Norwich Arts Centre, Norfolk County Council.

Contact: vincelaws@gmail.com

Norfolk Disability Pride contact: penny.parker@equallives.org.uk

Tickets for A Very Queer Nazi Faust: https://norwichartscentre.co.uk/events/vince-laws-queer-nazi-faust/?spektrix_bounce=true

Poster shows 3 images:

Top photo by Ruski: Shows Tory MP for Norwich North, Chloe Smith, speaking on the steps of Norwich City Hall at Norwich LGBT+ Pride, while Vince Laws stands silently beside her holding a sign which reads ’Tories Guilty of grave and systematic abuse of disabled people – United Nations’.

Middle photo by Vince Laws shows part of A Very Queer Nazi Faust sign, and 2 of The Naked Abseilers.

Bottom photo by Vince Laws shows an oil painting of some sunflowers.

 Posted by at 20:39
Aug 152018
 

TUESDAY 11 SEPTEMBER 6-8pm
House of Commons, Westminster, room tbc   All welcome

DO NO HARM

A seminar to gather evidence of the significant harm caused to children by separating them from their mothers and families, and which families are targeted for child removal and forced adoption.

Hosted by Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell MP

Organised by Legal Action for Women

Speakers so far:

Andy Bilson, Emeritus Professor of Social Work, University of Central Lancashire – new research into rising levels of investigation of families by social services and of children taken ‘into care’

Victoria Childs, Psychotherapy and Counsellors Union – the (lifelong) impact of separation from birth families

Emma Lewell-Buck MP, Shadow Minister for Children & Families

Lisa Longstaff, Women Against Rape – separation can be worse than witnessing domestic violence: a New York court ruling

Anne Neale, Legal Action for Women, Suffer the Little Children & their Mothers – updated findings from the past year’s self-help case work

SHODA RACKAL, Breastfeeding Peer Supporter – protecting the bond between mother and child

Jean Robinson, Association for Improvement in the Maternity Services – the threat of having children taken stops mothers accessing services

A mother who kept her child, a mother who got her child back, and a grandmother whose grandchild was forcibly adopted.

Contact: law@allwomencount.net   020 7482 2496

 Posted by at 15:57
Aug 092018
 

DWP figures provide fresh evidence to explain PIP claim rejections

New figures show that Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) civil servants are questioning only a tiny proportion of the benefit assessment reports written by discredited government contractors Atos and Capita.

Campaigners have been trying for months to secure evidence that would explain why such a high proportion of personal independence payment (PIP) claims that are taken to appeal are successful.

Figures from social security tribunals show the proportion of claimants who won their PIP appeals rose by seven percentage points in a year, from 64 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2016-17 to 71 per cent in the same period of 2017-18.

The new figures, secured by Disability News Service (DNS) through a freedom of information request, may help to explain why so many appeals are successful.

Some researchers have suggested that DWP decision-makers are accepting too many PIP assessment reports prepared by Atos and Capita without subjecting them to proper scrutiny, despite increasing evidence of incompetence and dishonesty by the Atos and Capita healthcare professionals who write them.

DNS has previously spoken to a DWP civil servant working on the PIP “frontline”, who has said that DWP case managers have strict targets for the number of PIP claims they need to process every day and are quizzed by their superiors if they miss their weekly targets.

He has said they are “instructed to act on the assessor’s report, given that they are the medical experts”.

The new figures, provided by DWP following the DNS freedom of information request, appear to confirm concerns that DWP decision-makers are letting many substandard and misleading reports slip through the net.

DNS had asked DWP how many of its decisions on PIP eligibility were made without any attempt to seek further advice or clarification from Atos and Capita, discuss or resolve problems with them, or even return the report to be completely rewritten.

DWP initially said it would be too expensive to produce such figures, but DNS then asked it to test a random sample of 100 assessment reports from Capita and 100 from Atos.

This week, DWP produced those figures, which show that of a random sample of 100 Capita reports, 94 PIP decisions were made without any further contact at all with the company.

And of 100 Atos reports, 97 decisions were made without any further contact with the company once DWP had received the assessment report.

Campaigner John Slater, whose freedom of information work has previously produced crucial data about the DWP’s disability benefit assessment contracts, said the latest figures raised serious concerns about the actions of DWP decision-makers.

Figures he secured from DWP earlier this year showed that an audit of more than 4,000 Capita assessment reports – between April and December 2016 – found about 7.5 per cent were so poor as to be deemed “unacceptable”.

In all, 33 per cent of the audited Capita reports were found to be of an unacceptable standard, to need changes, or demonstrated that the assessor had failed to carry out their role properly.

But this week’s DWP response suggests that its decision-makers are making further checks on just six per cent of Capita assessment reports.

Slater said: “The DWP figures do not reflect the audit management information data it disclosed for 2016.

“Even when you take into account the age of the 2016 data, I would have thought that the number for Capita PIP reports might have been closer to 80 out of the 100 reports sampled.

“This suggests that decision-makers are not looking at the reports critically and are assuming they are accurate.

“I can’t offer anything specific on the Atos data as the DWP still hasn’t disclosed the audit data and the information commissioner is still pursuing the case.

“However, 97 out of 100 still seems unrealistically high.”

Disabled People Against Cuts researcher Anita Bellows, who has also carried out crucial work examining the assessment contracts, also raised serious concerns about DWP decision-makers apparently rubber-stamping more than 95 per cent of all Atos and Capita assessment reports.

She said: “Considering the number of successful appeals against a PIP decision, it is obvious the DWP has not addressed the issue of assessors’ reports and dishonesty.”

She said the figures on successful appeals showed that “very simple errors or untruths” are not picked up by DWP’s decision-makers when making the initial decisions, and then again at the “mandatory reconsideration” internal review stage.

Bellows said: “The figure of 71 per cent of successful PIP appeals is just incredible.

“It means that the DWP made a wrong decision in 71 per cent of cases, not only once but twice.

“There is no better illustration that the system is not working for claimants.”

A DWP spokeswoman refused to answer questions about the new figures, including whether they suggested that one of the reasons for the high rate of successful PIP appeals was that the department’s decision-makers do not have enough time to check assessment reports with Atos and Capita and are not encouraged to do so.

But she said in a statement: “We’re committed to ensuring that people get accurate high-quality assessments and the right decision, first time round.

“A relatively small number of all PIP decisions are overturned at appeal – four per cent.

“Our assessment providers have developed an audit programme with us which we also monitor.

“In addition, the department itself audits a robust random sample of all cases, applying a rigorous set of quality measures to assure that the standards expected by the department are being delivered across the full network.

“Where healthcare professionals fall below the required high standards and do not improve, processes are in place to revoke their approval to carry out assessments.”

The new figures follow years of mounting anger about the way PIP has been designed and run, since it was launched five years ago as a replacement for working-age disability living allowance.

They also follow a lengthy DNS investigation which found claims of widespread dishonesty by PIP assessors – from both Atos and Capita – with hundreds of claimants saying that their PIP assessment reports contained clear lies.

9 August 2018

 

 

DWP refuses to pay £125 to discover number of disabled people in full-time jobs

Ministers are refusing to commission work that would cost just £125 and would show how many disabled people are in full-time paid employment, and how that number has changed under successive Tory-led governments.

Ministers, including the current work and pensions secretary Esther McVey, have repeatedly boasted of how their policies have led to an increase of hundreds of thousands of disabled people in work, including a rise of nearly 600,000 between April 2013 and June 2017.

But those claims are based on figures provided by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), which includes in its measure of “employment” people who are in part-time work, are self-employed, and those in government-supported training and employment programmes.

This means there are no published government figures that show how many disabled people are in full-time paid employment, and how that number has risen or fallen under successive governments since 2010.

To try to find those statistics, Disability News Service (DNS) submitted a freedom of information request to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), asking for figures for each of the last 10 years for how many disabled people were in full-time, paid jobs.

DWP replied that “this information is not held by the department” and suggested that DNS approach ONS instead.

ONS also said that it did not have that information but explained that it would probably take its experts less than half a day to produce them from existing sets of data, and that it would charge £125 (plus VAT) to do so.

When passed this response and asked why Sarah Newton, the minister for disabled people, had so far shown no interest in producing these figures – and whether she would now commission the necessary work from ONS – a DWP spokeswoman declined to answer.

Instead, she sent a lengthy statement which explained the role of ONS and praised its independence.

In the statement, she said the ONS definition of employment was “in line with internationally agreed principles of what constitutes employment, and which allow comparisons of the UK with other countries”.

She added: “This definition of employment includes not just people employed in full-time employee jobs; but reflects other forms of work that exist in our economy, including part-time employment; self-employment; and people on government training schemes and employment programmes.”

Asked again if Newton could explain why she appeared to have no interest in asking for these figures to be produced, when they would show how many disabled people were in full-time paid employment, the DWP spokeswoman refused to add to her statement, and said: “That’s our response to your query.”

9 August 2018

 

 

Legal action threat over wheelchair service’s ‘bullying, delays and poor service’

Wheelchair-users in Kent are threatening to take legal action over growing concerns about delays, poor service and even bullying and harassment by the company running the NHS wheelchair services contract in the county.

Four disability groups – Kent’s Physical Disability Forum (PDF), the Kent charity Freedom for Wheels, Kent’s Wheelchair Users Group (WUG) and the Centre for Independent Living Kent (CILK) – have written an open letter to the area’s eight clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) raising “grave concerns” about the performance of Millbrook Healthcare.

The letter, which is also supported by some members of the Medway Physical Disability Partnership Board, has been copied to every one of Kent’s MPs.

The groups say in their letter that they “no longer have any confidence in Millbrook to provide the wheelchair service across Kent” and do not believe that Thanet CCG – which negotiated the wheelchair services contract on behalf of the eight CCGs in Kent and Medway – is “a fit and proper organisation to oversee that contract”.

Thanet CCG was one of four east Kent CCGs placed into special measures this week by NHS England, partly because of “issues with the quality of services they commission”.

Millbrook has this week strongly denied allegations of bullying, harassment and unsafe behaviour by its staff, while Thanet CCG has denied seeing any evidence of harassment and bullying.

Professor Mike Oliver, the disabled academic who first defined the “social model of disability” and a long-standing WUG member, is playing a key role in the campaign to expose the failings in the wheelchair services contract.

He has been a user of wheelchair services in the county for more than 50 years, and he believes the service – which currently provides manual and powered wheelchairs to almost 20,000 adults and children – is worse now than it has ever been throughout that time.

The four groups have been unable to secure detailed figures on delays, waiting-lists and other aspects of Millbrook’s performance, but Oliver said the anecdotal reports they had received from disabled people were deeply concerning.

In one case, a man who repeatedly asked for proper foot-plates to be fitted to his wheelchair now faces the possibility of having his foot amputated because of a pressure sore he believes was caused by the unsuitable wheelchair.

A disabled child was reportedly told by a member of Millbrook staff that if he did not sit still he would have his wheelchair taken away, while another wheelchair-user had their arms and legs forced into position in a wheelchair.

Another case saw a woman take delivery of a wheelchair from Millbrook, only to find it was filthy, with the cushion smelling of urine.

Oliver gave evidence to Kent County Council’s health overview and scrutiny committee last month about the concerns and told them: “The service now is the worst it has ever been.”

And he said the four groups were unanimous in believing the contract had to be removed from Millbrook.

He said there had been “harassment, bullying” and examples of “possible assaults, of threatening behaviour of children, and we know there is at least one serious incident being investigated by the police”.

He added: “The situation in our view has reached a critical stage.”

In a report to the committee, Thanet CCG admitted that the number of children on the waiting-list had risen from 210 to 443, and the number of adults from 1,046 to 1,971, since Millbrook took on the contract.

Of these, 251 children and 999 adults had been waiting for more than the 18-week target, while 62 children and 272 adults had been on the waiting-list inherited from the previous provider and so had been waiting longer than a year.

The report said the CCGs were treating the situation “very seriously” and that the delays in resolving the issues were “very regrettable”.

Thanet CCG also said it was in discussions about providing further funding for Millbrook because the caseload it inherited when it took over “included both a backlog of long waiters and a much higher complexity case-mix” than had been expected, and that Millbrook was drawing up an improvement plan.

But Oliver told the meeting that he and his fellow campaigners did not accept the CCG report and had told Thanet CCG that providing Millbrook with more funding would be a mistake.

Despite his comments, Thanet CCG is currently seeking approval from the other CCGs to provide extra funding to Millbrook to clear the backlog.

The Millbrook contract is already worth £5.1 million a year, which includes the costs of staff, wheelchairs and spare parts.

The committee was also shown a report listing concerns raised by PDF, which included a string of complaints about delays, poor service and Millbrook incompetence.

Oliver and fellow campaigners have been raising concerns about the service since a meeting last November, more than six months after Millbrook took on the contract in April 2017.

But Oliver told Disability News Service (DNS) that Millbrook “pooh-poohed our concerns”, blamed backlogs inherited from the previous contractor and promised “immediate improvements” by the beginning of 2018, which it failed to deliver.

He himself has been waiting for a replacement arm-rest for his wheelchair since January.

The four groups are now considering seeking legal advice for a possible court action against Thanet CCG.

Oliver said he believed that the state of wheelchair services was worsening across the country and was in a “very bleak” state.

Millbrook Healthcare told DNS this week that it had “not been presented with any evidence that suggest service users and their families are being harassed, bullied or threatened by our staff” and that there had been “no incidents or safeguarding concerns involving our staff reported to us, or our partners in the CCGs”.

A Millbrook spokeswoman said: “In a response to Professor Oliver, we and the CCGs have requested that if there is specific evidence to support these claims, then these need to be provided so that we can conduct a full investigation and take the necessary actions.”

She said Millbrook staff had drawn up their own “impact statement”, in which they claimed that the “blanket slur has caused anxiety and offence” and that they had themselves “suffered verbal abuse whilst carrying out their roles”, which often left them “feeling distressed and vulnerable”.

She said: “Our teams pride themselves on their continuing professionalism, consideration and standard of care to service users.”

She said that all loaned wheelchairs were “subject to our full infection control and decontamination process” and were thoroughly refurbished – according to the manufacturers’ guidelines – and inspected before being handed over to service-users.

She said that poor quality data handed over by the previous provider of wheelchair services meant the level of backlogs was unclear at the start of the contract, and it had “taken time to build an accurate picture of the service”.

The Millbrook spokeswoman said: “We appreciate that some service users have had to wait longer than anticipated for their wheelchairs, for which we again apologise, but now we know the extent of the issue, we can assure service users that the CCGs and ourselves are putting all our efforts into improving the situation and moving service users through the service as quickly as possible.”

She claimed that Millbrook was meeting the 18-week target for all children referred to the service to receive their wheelchairs, even though current average waiting-times for children referred to the service were still 17.1 weeks for urgent referrals for a powerchair, and 15.7 weeks for a manual wheelchair.

For adults, the average waiting-times for urgent referrals were 17.3 weeks for powerchairs and 11.7 weeks for manual wheelchairs.

Millbrook had not clarified by noon today (Thursday) how it could be meeting those targets if average waiting-times were so close to 18 weeks, or confirmed that it accepted the waiting-list figures provided to the council by Thanet CCG.

A spokeswoman for Thanet CCG said the CCGs had written to Professor Oliver, urging the forum to share evidence for its claims “so we can investigate them urgently and thoroughly”.

She said: “Checks that we have carried out to date have not uncovered evidence of harassment, bullying or threats by Millbrook Healthcare staff.

“There have not been any serious incidents or safeguarding alerts raised against Millbrook Healthcare.”

But she added: “We are very sorry that the service people have been receiving has fallen short of what we would hope to provide.

“The recent quality visit conducted by NHS Thanet CCG found that Millbrook Healthcare had a process in place to triage and prioritise patients with the highest need on the waiting list, minimising the risk of patients coming to harm.

“Whilst this provides the CCG with assurance that patient safety is being managed, it is clear that pressure on the service due to a growing caseload is severely affecting patient experience and we repeat our apology for this.”

She said Thanet CCG did not accept that it was not an appropriate organisation to lead on the contract.

She said the CCG had concluded that terminating the contract would “lead to an increased risk around retention of the existing provider’s skilled and competent staff”, with Millbrook already losing nearly a quarter (23 per cent) of its employees between June 2017 and June 2018.

She said this was partly “due to pressures on the service associated with the inherited backlog and patient complaints” and that “clinical staff with specialist expertise in wheelchair assessment are not easy to replace”.

She said Thanet CCG had therefore concluded it was “in the best interest of patients to work with the current provider to resolve contract challenges rather than to re-procure which may increase risk to patients”.

She said that providing Millbrook with extra funding to address the “issues associated with the inherited caseload” would enable the company to “deliver an ongoing and sustainable service for patients”.

But Cllr Sue Chandler, chair of the county council’s health overview and scrutiny committee, said in a statement: “The committee expressed grave concerns about the wheelchair services contract and its management by NHS Thanet CCG and I have written to all Kent CCGs to express these concerns.

“The committee has also requested a written response from Thanet CCG, within two weeks, as to whether it is considering terminating Millbrook Healthcare’s contract and the reasons for that choice; and to provide an action plan detailing how the issues will be resolved in the interim.

“The committee will be considering this issue in September, either at an additional or existing meeting of the committee.”

9 August 2018

 

 

Train company faces calls to rip up scooter policy after latest ‘shameful’ episode

A rail company is facing calls to change its “reprehensible and unsupportable” attitude to disabled passengers, after one of its guards threatened to throw a woman off a train because she was using a mobility scooter.

Sara Harvey was on the way to a wedding with her husband Liam and had boarded a Northern Rail service to Bolton in her scooter – with the assistance of station staff – when a guard told her she would have to leave the train because the company did not allow any scooters on its services.

The company’s policy is that it does not allow mobility scooters on its trains – in contrast with many other companies, which do allow some scooters – unless they are “folded down before you board, and carried on like luggage”.

Harvey, who is autistic and has a physical impairment, and campaigns as Agony Autie, filmed the altercation with the guard and live-streamed it on Facebook.

She told the guard that she had booked assistance, and had already travelled by train from Chester to Manchester Oxford Road, and had been clear when buying her ticket that she uses a scooter.

She has previously travelled problem-free with her scooter with Arriva Trains Wales and Virgin.

She was eventually allowed to continue with her journey, after support from fellow passengers, some of whom threatened to leave the train with her if she was thrown off.

Harvey told Disability News Service today (Thursday) that the Northern executives responsible for drawing up the company’s scooter policy had “done nothing but cause harm and pain” and that it “emboldens their staff to be hostile”.

She said: “I was told by the guard to ‘get off, get off, get off, you’ve broken the rules. This train goes nowhere with you on it.’ I was treated like a criminal.”

She is now set to meet Northern to discuss what happened but says she has not been told yet how to make a formal complaint and fears that she is “being manipulated” by the company.

She said Northern was only paying attention to the issue now because of the media coverage of the incident.

She said: “It happens all the time on their trains. The difference is that this went viral and hit the mainstream media.

“They put people in distress every day. With this, the difference is the public could see my distress. If my distress wasn’t filmed, they wouldn’t care.

“I told them: you have treated me like the scum of the earth because I am differently abled to you.

“I want to make sure it never happens again. These people don’t care about the customers.”

Harvey said Northern needed to “inject a good deal of common sense” into their policies and practices as well as “empathy and compassion training”.

She said: “At the moment they see us as slow, we take up too much of their time.

“They see it as we make their jobs difficult, but these are our lives and every time they see us as slow and every time they think we make their jobs difficult, they need to be taught that those feelings are ableist.

“People need to be self-aware that you can’t hate on someone who is differently abled from you because they are slower or you see them as a burden.

“I want staff attitudes completely changing and all the way to the top. If platform staff are getting this training, the CEO is getting this training because the CEO and the policy-makers don’t have a clue either.”

Harvey said she had a “full-blown meltdown” the day after the incident, once she had returned home.

She said: “I beat myself in the head about 20 times. It was all because of Northern Rail. They have made me ill.”

The incident, which caused widespread anger and frustration among disabled campaigners, came only weeks after comedian Tanyalee Davis was reduced to tears after being publicly “shamed” by a train guard with another company who forced her to move her mobility scooter to make way for a mother with a baby buggy.

Accessible transport campaigner Doug Paulley has been calling on the regulator, the Office of Road and Rail (ORR), to act on Northern’s blanket ban on mobility scooters for more than seven months.

Northern launched a pilot scheme last September, allowing some scooters to use services on a limited part of its network.

Paulley said ORR had raised the issue of the Northern ban on scooters in a June 2017 letter approving the company’s Disabled People’s Protection Policy (DPPP).

The letter noted the pilot scheme but warned that ORR remained “concerned that your policy for travel on the rest of your network remains more restrictive than that of other operators”.

Paulley – a member of the Northern/TransPennine/Hull Trains combined inclusivity forum of disabled lobbyists, although not speaking on their behalf – said there had been no sign of Northern extending this pilot scheme.

He said: “I think Northern’s attitude is reprehensible and unsupportable.”

He said the company used the same trains as other companies which had “less restrictive scooter policies” and added: “They are out of step with the industry and the regulator.

“It’s shameful and yet another example of how Northern are failing passengers – and in respect of this policy, disabled people in particular.”

Northern had failed to answer questions about its scooter policy by noon today but issued the following statement: “We are truly sorry to the customer for her unacceptable experience travelling with Northern and the distress it caused.

“We are currently investigating the incident and have spoken directly with the customer and organising to meet in person to discuss her experience and see how we can learn and improve and help staff to be more autistic and disabled aware.”

An ORR spokesman said it was encouraging Northern to extend its pilot scheme across its network.

He said: “ORR is committed to improving accessibility of the rail network and to promoting the rights of passengers requiring assistance and the services available to them, and we were sorry to hear about the experience of Ms Harvey on her train journey last week.”

He said that some train companies face “challenges” with carrying scooters, such as the size of carriages and the width of platforms, and “foremost consideration must be the safety of both the passenger and staff assisting them”.

But he added: “We have been in regular contact with Northern about its scooter pilot and scooter card scheme since we approved its DPPP last year.

“Although the geographical area of the pilot is limited, we understand that it has enabled some passengers to now travel on their network who previously were unable to do so.

“Northern is continuing to work to enable passengers with mobility scooters to travel as much as possible on their network, within the constraints mentioned above.

“We are encouraging Northern to continue to expand this approach as far as it is safely and operationally possible.”

He said ORR was also reviewing its guidance on writing DPPPs and would consult on proposals to update it later this year, including whether there should be any changes to requirements on carrying mobility scooters and other mobility aids.

He added: “We are also focused on improving staff training, including staff awareness and understanding of differing disabilities as customer service and staff attitude can play a significant part in how comfortable and confident passengers with disabilities feel when making their train journey.”

The Department for Transport (DfT) declined to say what action it was taking to address the uncertainty and distress caused to scooter-users by the range of policies operated by different rail companies.

But a DfT spokeswoman said in a statement: “It is vital that all passengers, including disabled passengers, can feel confident when using public transport.

“This is why the department has published an Inclusive Transport Strategy that will make the entire network more accessible by 2030.

“It is right that the operator has apologised for the way this passenger was treated.

“We expect all train companies to do everything possible to provide the same access and make travel easy for disabled people.”

9 August 2018

 

 

UN’s ‘human catastrophe’ rights expert to deliver high-profile UK lecture

The UN expert who told the government that its cuts to disabled people’s support had caused a “human catastrophe” is to visit the UK this autumn to deliver a high-profile lecture on disability rights.

Theresia Degener, the professor of law and disability studies who chairs the UN committee on the rights of persons with disabilities, will deliver the first Caroline Gooding Memorial Lecture at the University of Leeds in October.

Last August, Degener told the UK government’s delegation – during a public examination of its progress on implementing the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) – that its cuts to social security and other support for disabled people had caused “a human catastrophe” which was “totally neglecting the vulnerable situation people with disabilities find themselves in”.

She later gave an interview with the BBC – which was not broadcast – in which she warned that the portrayal of disabled people by the UK government and media as “parasites” who live on benefits could put them at risk of violence, and even “killings and euthanasia”.

The annual lecture was set up as a memorial to the equality consultant and author Caroline Gooding, who played a leading role in securing improvements to disability rights legislation as a member of the Disability Rights Taskforce.

Gooding was later director of legislative change at the Disability Rights Commission throughout its eight years. She died in July 2014.

The lecture will be hosted by the university’s renowned Centre for Disability Studies (CDS) and its Centre for Law and Social Justice, and will take place on 3 October.

Professor Anna Lawson, director of CDS and co-ordinator of the university’s Disability Law Hub, said she and fellow organisers were “delighted” that Degener was able to accept the invitation to deliver the lecture.

She said: “She is a disabled woman who, like Caroline, has made it her life’s work to push for disability equality and inclusion using the law.

“As chair of the CRPD committee, she occupies what is one of the most influential positions in disability rights globally.

“The fact that her committee has recently reviewed and made recommendations to the UK on its implementation of the CRPD makes the timing particularly good.

“Theresia also knew and admired Caroline and her work.”

She said the lecture would not be focused specifically on the UK but would be “relevant to all countries that have ratified the CRPD, including the UK”.

Lawson said there would be questions and discussion after the lecture, while there are hopes that the event will be live-streamed.

Degener will lecture on “inclusive equality”, a concept introduced by the UN committee through a “general comment” in March and which it hopes can be used to help implement CRPD.

Inclusive equality, the general comment says, argues for redistribution to address socioeconomic disadvantage, and attempts to combat “stigma, stereotyping, prejudice and violence” and recognize the “dignity of human beings and their intersectionality”.

It also recognises the importance of including different social groups in society, but also the need to “make space for difference as a matter of human dignity”.

In the general comment on article five of the convention – on equality and non-discrimination – the committee warns that countries are still approaching disability through charity and medical models, which fail to fully acknowledge disabled people’s rights.

It also warns that the laws and policies of many countries “perpetuate the exclusion and isolation of and discrimination and violence” against disabled people, and that they are often “imperfect and incomplete or ineffective” or “reflect an inadequate understanding of the human rights model of disability”.

In the BBC interview, Degener explained that, compared to other countries with “less economic power” and less advanced equality and discrimination legislation, the UK’s austerity policy was “less human rights oriented”, so that “UK appears to be a strong country when it comes to equal rights but a very, very weak country with relation to economic, social and culture rights”.

She also said the UK’s record on disability rights was “going backwards in a pace and to an amount that it worries us a lot” and that the evidence in front of the committee was “overwhelming”.

The general comment also says that disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) must “play a central role in the development of legal and policy reforms”, including the response to the prejudice faced by disabled people seen as being “a burden on society”.

The committee’s concluding observations, which followed its public examination of the UK’s progress in implementing the convention last August, called on the government to do more to include DPOs in planning and implementing polices affecting disabled people.

Degener was not available this week to comment on her plans for the lecture.

9 August 2018

 

 

MPs win praise for online abuse proposals

MPs have won praise after calling on the government to ensure disabled people finally secure equality in the protection they are offered by hate crime laws.

Members of the Commons petitions committee said in a new report that it was not right that it was a crime to incite hatred on the grounds of religion or race, but not disability.

The petitions committee was publishing draft recommendations following an inquiry into the online abuse of disabled people, and said it hoped its work would be “a wakeup call” to the government.

It has now launched a consultation on its recommendations before it publishes its final report – the first time a Commons committee has taken such a step – so that disabled people and their allies can respond to its draft proposals.

Among those recommendations is for the government to introduce a new law that would make it a crime to incite hatred against disabled people, a long-standing demand of disability hate crime campaigners.

Anne Novis, a leading disability hate crime campaigner and chair of Inclusion London, said: “I am thrilled to see the recommendation from this inquiry, which include most of the recommendations we submitted in writing and I gave verbally at the inquiry meeting, and other Deaf and disabled people gave via a testimonies session which Inclusion London helped to organise.”

She said the government had repeatedly failed to listen or respond to “repeated evidence and requests for equity in law on hate crime”.

Novis welcomed the recommendation that disability should be included within hate crime incitement laws, and that there would be “a full and inclusive consultation” on the committee’s draft proposals.

She added: “I hope we will see an appropriate and timely response from this government that does not ignore us, or defer responding, as it has done re disability hate crime for many years.”

In its report, the committee attacked the government’s “shocking” failure to consult disabled people in drawing up its online safety strategy, and warned social media companies that they had been “neglecting the needs of their disabled users for far too long”.

Helen Jones, the Labour MP who chairs the committee, said: “It is deeply disappointing that social companies don’t engage fully with their disabled users.

“With their vast financial resources, there’s no excuse for their failure to make their platforms as safe for disabled people as they are for other users.”

She said the inquiry showed that social media was “rife with vile, degrading and dehumanising comments” about disabled people.

The committee called for mandatory teaching in schools on disability hate crime, and for the government to develop an action plan to address the exploitation of people with learning difficulties, both online and offline.

The committee said: “In our inquiry, we have come across some examples of good practice in attempting to meet the needs of disabled people and their families.

“More often, though, we found that disabled people were not being consulted or even considered.

“This was particularly apparent in the very disappointing evidence we received from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and heard from social media companies.

“We do not intend to make the mistake of ignoring disabled people here.”

The inquiry was launched in response to a petition set up by former model Katie Price, which was signed by more than 220,000 people and followed years of disablist and racist abuse targeted at her teenage son, Harvey.

The committee rejected Price’s call for a register of offenders, similar to the sex offenders register, but said the government should look at other ways of making it easier for employers to find out if someone has been convicted of online abuse.

Jones said: “We’ve listened to disabled people to come up with our recommendations to tackle online abuse of disabled people and we will spend the summer listening to them again.

“By launching this consultation, we want to make it clear that the voices of disabled people must be heard.”

She added: “It should be normal practice for select committees to consult on their recommendations, so I’m pleased that the petitions committee is taking this step.”

9 August 2018

 

 

MPs launch inquiry into care discrimination faced by LGBT service-users

Disabled activists have given a guarded welcome to the launch of a new inquiry by MPs into the discrimination faced in accessing health and social care services by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) communities.

The Commons women and equalities committee, which has launched the inquiry, said that the results of a government survey, published last month, showed the discrimination faced by many LGBT people in accessing healthcare.

It said the survey showed that almost a quarter (23 per cent) of respondents who had been in a care home said that being open about their LGBT status had had a negative effect on their care.

The committee said its inquiry would “consider whether provision is adequate, whether discrimination is still occurring, and what more needs to be done to improve access to health and social care”.

The LGBTQI+ disabled people’s organisation Regard welcomed the decision to launch the inquiry but raised concerns that its focus appeared to be on access to healthcare rather than social care.

Dr Ju Gosling, co-chair of Regard, said the committee also appeared to be confused about the distinction between healthcare and social care.

She said: “While the evidence is clear that LGBTQI+ people face discrimination in health care, it also shows it is more extreme in social care.

“LGBTQI+ people are also much more dependent on social care than other disabled and older people, due to the reduced availability of support from family and friends.”

Gosling also raised concerns that the committee appeared to have excluded non-binary and intersex people from its new inquiry, “when we know they face specific barriers in accessing health care”.

She said Regard would submit evidence to the committee’s inquiry.

Last October, ground-breaking research co-produced by Regard found that more than a third of LGBTQI+ disabled people have experienced discrimination or received poor treatment from their personal assistants because of their sexual or gender identity.

Almost a third said they felt they had been discriminated against by their local authority on the grounds of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

And more than 90 per cent said their needs as an LGBTQI+ disabled person were either not considered or were only given some consideration, when they were assessed or reviewed by their council.

Among the questions the committee is asking are: in which areas of healthcare do LGBT people experience worse outcomes than the general population? How effectively do health and social care providers take the needs of LGBT people into account? And what does the evidence show about levels of discrimination against LGBT people in accessing health and social care?

Maria Miller, the committee’s chair, said in a statement to launch the inquiry: “Evidence suggests that the healthcare needs of LGBT people are not currently being met effectively, some report that they still face discrimination in health and social care, and there are inequalities in outcomes between LGBT groups and the wider population.

“We welcome the government’s recently announced action plan and its commitment to ensuring that LGBT people’s needs are at the heart of the NHS.

“This is therefore a crucial time for us to look at how services can best be provided and improved for LGBT patients.

“We want to hear from organisations, individuals, researchers and service providers about what can be done to make health and social services more effective for LGBT people.”

The deadline for written evidence to the inquiry is 5 October 2018.

9 August 2018

 

News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com

 

 Posted by at 20:32
Aug 092018
 

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/social-care-funding-uk-government-local-councils-proposals-local-government-association-lga-a8470361.html

https://www.local.gov.uk/about/news/lga-launches-own-green-paper-adult-social-care-reaches-breaking-point

 

Have your say on the future of adult social care – respond to the Local Government Association’s (LGA’s) survey.

The consultation, which is the largest ever launched by the LGA, will last for eight weeks and will shape the LGA’s demands ahead of the Budget, due in the autumn.

Izzi Seccombe, chair of the LGA’s Community Wellbeing Board, said: “People have a right to live the life they want to lead and high quality adult social care and support plays an essential role in this. It is also vital to society. It strengthens communities, reduces pressures on the NHS, supports around 1.5 million jobs and contributes as much as £46bn to the UK economy.

“But work to find a long-term funding solution for adult social care and support has been kicked into the long grass by successive governments for the past two decades and has brought these services to breaking point.

“It has created a deeply uncertain and worrying future outlook for people who use adult social care services now and the growing number of people who will need them in the future.”

The LGA has produced their own ‘green paper’ and would like your views on it. Things you might want to consider are -:

  • should care be free at the point of delivery,
  • should it be funded through taxation,
  • should it be delivered by local government or should alternatives be considered,
  • should the postcode lottery be ended and a national system of social care be put in place working in a similar way to which the ILF did.

You may not want to answer all of the questions in this consultation or feel they are all relevant to you but please answer those that you can and ask others to as well. Do also give examples of how the current system is failing to meet your needs either due to charging policies, refusal to provide help with specific tasks or unmet needs you have.

To complete the consultation, please read the LGA’s green paper and then submit your views via the online form, which is available at:

https://futureofadultsocialcare.co.uk/the-green-paper/have-your-say/

 Posted by at 20:10
Aug 092018
 

Sano Physiotherapy markets itself as a professional service offering sports massage and rehabilitation but has a murky side business renting out its rooms to controversial disability assessor ATOS. 

 

ATOS has recently changed the name of its benefits assessment arm to ‘Independent Assessment Services’ with the words “delivered by ATOS” written in tiny letters underneath. You will not see ATOS branded in big letters across any of Sano Physiotherapy commercial premises despite renting spaces to the much discredited benefits assessor in Pudsey and Castleford.

 

You will find a picture of Tory MP, Stuart Andrew shaking hands with Matthew Taylor, clinical lead for Sano Physiotherapy LTD outside the companies new premises in Pudsey. Stuart often promotes himself as a community champion in Pudsey with photoshoots like these whilst voting for welfare cuts and benefit changes in parliament that affect his constituents.

 

The Independent newspaper recently put in a freedom of information request which found the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) paid Independent Assessment Services and Capita nearly £255m last year to perform Personal Independent Payment assessments. How much has Sano Physiotherapy LTD made from this windfall whilst local residents are having to use foodbanks?

 

Sano Physiotherapy LTD is facilitating controversial disability assessments which potential private customers need to be made aware about so they can choose a more ethical physiotherapist firm that doesn’t have a murky side-line in profiteering from the suffering of benefit claimants.

Please let us know of any other firms involved in aiding Atos or Capita with details of who and where they are. You can email us at amil@dpac.uk.net

 

 

 

 Posted by at 19:11
Jul 212018
 

 

Our Festival of  Resistance highlighting the hypocricy of the UK and Kenyan governments hosting a Global Disability Summit kicks off in ernest today/Saturday as our overseas activists arrive in the UK to join in with our fun.

On Sunday we are holding our own global summit which is very over subscribed with guest speakers including -:

Rose Achayo from the National Union of Women with Disabilities of Uganda (who will be talking about the particular barriers disabled women in Uganda face, the work of her organisation including its work with disabled refugees)

John Clarke from Ontario Coalition against Poverty (who shares DPAC’s concerns over universal basic income as a proposed solution to the future of social security)

Antonios Rellas from a disabled campaign group called Zero Tolerance in Greece (who campaigns against institutionalisation of disabled people and recently testified against Golden Dawn). https://dpac.uk.net/2016/09/greeces-shocking-secretthe-work-of-zero-tolerance/

Bolivian campaigners who were involved in this: https://www.theguardian. com/news/2017/may/05/the- fight-disability-rights- protestors-in-bolivia-on-the- barricades

And successfully forced their government to introduce disability payments for people. Although not yet at a high enough rate to enable an adequate standard of living.

We will be live streaming this conference using our facebook page https://www.facebook.com/disabledpeopleagainstcuts/

And tweeting with the hashtag #Disability&Resistance

Unlike the summit arranged by DfID we will not be having anyone from any large corporations hyping expensive equipment which is beyond the reach of many disabled people to fund.

On Monday and Tuesday follow us on twitter @dis_ppl_protest and please use  hashtags #NowIsTheTime and #disability summit

Tweet to any or all of the following saying why the UK government is unfit to host a disability summit.

@DFID_UK

@IDA_Forum_CRPD  gate keepers for who was allowed to come to the summit, to be kind possibly due to ignorance of the UK violation of disabled people’s rights.

Speakers at Tuesday’s summit event

@SophMorgan a disabled model

@Lenin  Lenin Moreno (president of Ecuador)

@gabimichetti  (vice president of Argentina)

More to follow shortly re-tweets.

And remember watch out for any surprise events happening in the very near future after all no-one ever knows quite where and when DPAC will pop up unexpectedly.

 Posted by at 12:55
Jul 202018
 

To:

Lenin Moreno, President of Ecuador

Gabriela Michetti, Vice President of Argentina

Sophie Morgan

20 July 2018

We are writing this open letter to you on behalf of Deaf and Disabled people across the UK concerning your involvement in the global disability summit being co-hosted by the UK government in London on 23 and 24 July.

We are strongly in favour of international support that improves the lives of Deaf and Disabled people across the world and welcome co-operation between States that lead to stronger human rights laws and protections. We particularly support the building of international solidarity and links directly between Deaf and Disabled People, our organisations and campaigns.

However, we have the following concerns regarding the July summit:

  • The role of the UK government in co-hosting the event. Following an unprecedented investigation carried out by the UN disability committee under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UN CRPD), the UK was found responsible for grave and systematic violations of Disabled people’s rights due to welfare reform. The findings of their investigation, published in November 2016, were and continue to be entirely dismissed by the UK government. In August 2017 the UK government was routinely examined under the UN CRPD and again the UN disability committee expressed their deep concerns regarding the UK government’s failure to understand the Convention, the impact of their policies and failure to recognise them. Again the UK government said they disagreed with the findings of the Committee. The involvement of the UK government in co-hosting the summit therefore undermines any aims of the summit linked to strengthening Deaf and Disabled people’s rights under the UN CRPD. Instead it provides a platform for them to showcase to other States how it is possible to get away with ignoring those rights when it comes to your own citizens.

 

  • The UK government’s use of its international work to cynically deflect from criticisms of their disability record in the UK. On a number of occasions when government ministers have been criticised for implementing policies with an adverse impact on Deaf and Disabled people, they have cited the poorer conditions of Disabled people in other countries. This represents a misunderstanding of the UN CRPD which is about the progressive realisation of rights. The UN disability committee have such concern about the situation in the UK because it represents a serious and dramatic retrogression of rights, described by the Chair as a ‘human catastrophe’. In deflecting attention from their record in the UK, the Government clearly intend to more easily continue their punitive policies targeted at Disabled people and the poorest members of society. There is now overwhelming evidence, evidence which the UN disability committee considered, that prove the brutal impacts of these policies. It would be a betrayal to all those suffering under them not to raise concerns about attempts such as use of the global summit to divert attention and opposition to those policies.

 

  • The suitability of the Government of Kenya as co-hosts given their abuse of the rights of LGBTQI+ people, many of whom develop lifelong impairments as a result. LGBTQI+ people in Kenya are routinely banished from their families, denied work and accommodation, imprisoned and persecuted. They face severe barriers to forming and maintaining relationships and to living as a couple, the ‘Right to Family Life’ that every human is promised. This results in widespread damage to their mental and physical health, creating impairments where none previously existed. This is reflected in the high level of asylum applications to the UK from LGBTQI+ asylum seekers from African countries. Despite their experiences, the majority are then refused asylum in the UK and forcibly returned home, where many disappear or are murdered. Just this April, President Kenyatta said that LGBT rights are “not acceptable” and not “an issue of human rights”. The Kenyan Government has also claimed this is a non-issue for Kenyans, and no doubt would argue that it has nothing to do with the Summit. However, if you are Kenyan or Ugandan and are lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer or intersex, it is an issue that completely dominates and dictates your life. For many Disabled people from Kenya, it is the reason they developed an impairment in the first place. Under the UN CRPD, the Kenyan government also has an obligation to protect the rights of disabled people who are LGBTQI+.

We appreciate that you may not have had this information when you agreed to involvement in the summit and would be happy to meet to discuss our concerns. Please do not hesitate to contact us with any questions or for further information.

 

Yours sincerely,

Disabled People Against Cuts

Sisters of Frida

Alliance for Inclusive Education

Inclusion London

Mental Health Resistance Network

Reclaiming Our Futures Alliance

Recovery in the Bin

 

 

 Posted by at 20:12
Jul 192018
 

 

A minister has been asked why the benefits of hundreds of sick and disabled claimants are apparently being sanctioned, even though they should not have to meet any of the strict conditions imposed by the government’s new universal credit system.

Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) figures show that more than 1,100 claimants of universal credit were being sanctioned in February this year (1,108), even though they had been moved into the “working enough” or “no work-related requirement” group.

They have usually been moved into these groups because they have been found not “fit for work” or are not expected to look for jobs.

The figures also show a striking increase in the number of claimants in these two groups who were being sanctioned from January 2017 (649) to February 2017 (1,109).

The concerns have been raised by the Commons work and pensions committee, after it was sent the figures by employment minister Alok Sharma.

In a letter to Sharma, the committee’s chair, Frank Field, says: “What is the point of applying sanctions to people who cannot work and are not expected to look for jobs?

“The DWP have yet to make the case that benefit sanctions work to get people into employment and it’s difficult to see how they can have that affect for people who are ‘working enough’ or cannot work.

“Benefit sanctions are the only major welfare reform this decade to have never been evaluated, and the picture DWP paints of the policy doesn’t match the troubling stories we’ve heard.”

The committee also raised concerns with Sharma that DWP’s figures “consistently understate” the number of benefit claimants being sanctioned, particularly those on the out-of-work disability benefit employment and support allowance (ESA), where there is a high rate of successful appeals.

In Field’s letter, he says that DWP removes a sanction decision from its statistics if it is overturned at an appeal.

This had been pointed out by Dr David Webster, a leading researcher on unemployment and sanctions at the University of Glasgow, when he gave evidence in May to the committee’s inquiry into the benefit sanctions regime.

Webster had told the committee that the only reason DWP had not abandoned ESA sanctions when the National Audit Office reported in November 2016 that their use led to a fall in the time claimants spent in work was because of “embarrassment”.

Field asks Sharma in his letter to publish pre-appeal sanction figures so that “the true picture can be understood”.

In one month, in December 2016, the pre-appeal figures would have been 57 per cent higher (1,173) than the figures published by DWP (749).

By January 2018, the pre-appeal figures were still 30 per cent higher (544 rather than 420).

Asked to respond to the points raised by Field in his letter to Sharma, a DWP spokeswoman declined to explain why disabled people were apparently being sanctioned when there were no conditions attached to their universal credit.

She did not dispute the universal credit sanction figures but said that “where someone’s situation changes and they have different conditionality, we can adjust an ongoing sanction amount”.

And she claimed that “only a small proportion of sanction decisions are appealed and in the cases where they are overturned, the claimant’s payments are backdated”.

19 July 2018

 

 

McVey’s U-turn means DWP will pay at least £100 million more to disabled claimants

Disabled people will be paid more than £100 million extra in backdated benefits owed by the government, after a U-turn by work and pensions secretary Esther McVey on the eve of a court hearing.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) had previously only agreed to offer a partial backpayment to an estimated 70,000 disabled people who for years did not receive the correct level of out-of-work disability benefits.

The underpayments were caused by the botched migration of former claimants of incapacity benefit and other benefits to the new employment and support allowance (ESA) from 2011 onwards.

The department failed to realise that many of the claimants were entitled to income-related ESA – and therefore to associated disability premiums – rather than just the contributory form of ESA.

Although DWP had previously agreed to pay back as much as £340 million to those affected – with average payments likely to be about £5,000 – it had said it would only backdate arrears to 21 October 2014, the point at which the upper tribunal ruled that DWP should have assessed claimants for both income-related and contribution-based ESA when deciding their entitlement.

DWP had been refusing to pay back another £100 million to £150 million in arrears that dated from before 21 October 2014.

But yesterday (Wednesday), McVey announced that claimants would receive arrears backdated to the date they moved onto ESA, with some claimants now likely to receive up to £10,000 more in arrears.

It is just one in a series of major errors by DWP senior civil servants relating to disability benefits, with the department now believed to be carrying out six separate trawls through the records of disabled people unfairly deprived of benefits.

In a written statement to MPs, McVey said that individuals contacted about their backpayments could expect to receive the “appropriate payment” within 12 weeks after the “relevant information” has been gathered.

Those who have already received arrears payments from 21 October 2014 will have their cases looked at again, with additional arrears paid dating back to the date they were moved onto ESA.

The announcement came as DWP was about to face a court hearing in a judicial review case taken by the Child Poverty Action Group on behalf of a claimant who was underpaid from 2012.

Meg Hillier, chair of the Commons public accounts committee, welcomed McVey’s announcement, which came hours after a report by her committee had attacked DWP’s “culture of indifference”, which saw it take six years to start to address its ESA error.

She said: “I was appalled by the department’s apparent indifference to correcting its mistakes.

“Today’s statement, coming so soon after publication of our report, indicates DWP finally intends to treat this problem with the seriousness it deserves.”

Hillier had said earlier, in publishing her committee’s report, that DWP “simply didn’t listen to what claimants, experts, support organisations and its own staff were saying.

“Its sluggishness in correcting underpayments, years after it accepted responsibility for the error, points to weaknesses at the highest levels of management.

“Indifference has no place in the delivery of vital public services. It must be rooted out wherever it is found.”

19 July 2018 by John Pring, Disability News Service

 

 

 Posted by at 21:19
Jul 192018
 

A regulator has been told there are “issues of concern” about the way it deals with complaints against health and care professionals, including those who write dishonest benefit assessment reports.

The Professional Standards Authority (PSA) agreed in January to look at concerns about the way regulators deal with complaints about nurses, physiotherapists and paramedics who carry out personal independence payment (PIP) assessments for the outsourcing giants Capita and Atos.

It agreed to act after being contacted last year by disabled activist Mark Lucas, who has twice appealed successfully against the results of what he believes were dishonest PIP assessments.

Hundreds of disabled people have come forward over the last 18 months to tell Disability News Service (DNS) how assessors working for Atos and Capita wrote dishonest PIP assessment reports on behalf of the Department for Work and Pensions.

Many also raised concerns about the apparent refusal of the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) and the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) to take their complaints about these assessments seriously.

Only this week, Lucas received an email from HCPC, explaining that it would not take any further action over his complaint about an occupational therapist who had assessed him for PIP.

He believes the assessor deliberately downplayed the seriousness and frequency of his seizures, but HCPC told him it did not believe this had happened and even if it had, “it would be considered a minor error, which would not be capable of amounting to an allegation of impaired fitness to practice”.

Lucas has twice been found ineligible for PIP following assessments, but on both occasions was later awarded eligibility for the PIP standard daily living rate after appealing to a tribunal.

Frustrated at HCPC’s failure to take another complaint about a PIP assessor seriously, he contacted PSA – which reviews the work of the regulators of health and care professionals – last year.

PSA incorporated Lucas’s concerns into its annual review of HCPC, which found this month that the regulator was meeting only four of the 10 required standards for the way it deals with complaints against healthcare professionals, including those who carry out PIP assessments.

Last year, before Lucas contacted the regulator, PSA had reviewed 100 complaints made to HCPC, including a small number relating to PIP assessments.

David Martin, PSA’s concerns and appointments officer, said the 2017-18 review “concluded that there were issues of concern about the HCPC’s process across all of its activity”, in relation to fitness to practise.

These concerns include the way it deals with the initial stages of the fitness to practise process, and how it determines if there is a “case to answer” against a health and care professional.

Among PSA’s concerns are that HCPC makes it too difficult for complaints about a healthcare professional to be accepted into the fitness to practise process, while other cases are closed at the initial stage instead of being referred to an investigating committee panel.

Martin said HCPC had confirmed that PIP assessment work “should be considered in the same way as any other professional activity of its registrants” and that its procedures “require it to fully consider the concerns it receives about PIP assessors”.

He said: “The HCPC was clear that it considers registrants, acting as PIP assessors, are exercising their professional judgement.

“It therefore considers that allegations of misconduct or lack of competence when carrying out PIP assessments could constitute a fitness to practise concern to be investigated in accordance with its usual process.”

He said HCPC was now “undertaking an action plan” to address the concerns PSA has raised about its fitness to practise processes, and that PSA would probably review further HCPC cases in detail over the next couple of years.

A similar annual review by PSA of NMC is due to be published later this year.

An HCPC spokesman said: “The PSA audited a sample of 100 of our cases as part of their review of our yearly performance review in 2016-17.

“While a small number of these cases related to PIP, the audit was not specifically looking at HCPC’s handling of PIP cases.

“HCPC registrants who are employed in assessor roles are recruited because of their skills and experience as registered health professionals. Therefore, their work and conduct needs to comply with our standards.

“If in the course of conducting a PIP assessment a concern is raised regarding a registrant’s fitness to practise, ie lack of competence or misconduct, then this will be investigated following the same robust and thorough processes and applying the same tests as concerns raised in relation to any other area of a registrant’s practice.

“We have also provided input into the PSA’s review into how regulators approach fitness to practise concerns in relation to PIP assessments and have confirmed our view that the PIP assessment process requires the registrant to employ their professional competencies.

“This year we continued to meet the majority of the PSA’s Standards for Good Regulation.

“Although we did not meet all the standards relating to fitness to practise, the PSA has acknowledged our on-going work to improve our performance in this area and stated that we have made ‘significant progress during this review period’.

“We continue our programme of improvement work to address the issues that were previously identified.”

But Lucas was heavily critical of PSA’s efforts to address his concerns.

He said PSA was “a joke” and a “toothless quango”.

He said: “I am not happy with the way PSA have treated me and it is behaviour that I have been subjected to on many occasions over the last few years.”

Lucas said that complaints processes are “designed to abuse” disabled people because they first “promise the earth”, then “forget” the complaint, and finally “communicate the result from the complaint in a letter with preapproved techniques of neutralisation and consolatory phrases like ‘we realise you will be disappointed’”.

He said: “This experience of the last few years has given me anxiety over making complaints.

“I have spent much time and written many letters, but it is all for nothing because organisations like the PSA are just for show.”

19 July 2018 by John Pring Disability News Service

 

 Posted by at 21:15