Two years on, most of government’s new disability networks remain silent
Five of the nine regional networks created by ministers to “amplify” the voices of disabled people have not held a single meeting, nearly two years after the government announced they were being set up.
The aim, the government said, was to “bring the views of disabled people and local disabled organisations across England closer to government”.
Today (8 October), it is exactly a year since Justin Tomlinson, the minister for disabled people, named the new chairs of the nine networks.
And it is more than six months since the government’s new Disability Unit announced that the networks had finally started work across England.
But by 24 September, as the country struggled with a pandemic crisis that has led to thousands of disabled people losing their lives – and with the government accused of repeatedly breaching the rights of millions of other disabled people – five of the networks have yet to have their first meeting.
Two of the four networks that have met – those for London and the north-east – only had their first meetings towards the end of last month, according to a freedom of information (foi) response to Disability News Service (DNS).
The Disability Unit has also been forced to admit in the foi response that it has not even seen the minutes of the few network meetings that have taken place.
The foi response is likely to put yet further pressure on Tomlinson, particularly because last month he appeared to mislead MPs on the women and equalities committee about the success of the networks.
He told them the networks were allowing “all voices, particularly of all sizes of disability organisations” to “share their real lived experience and help us improve our policies, our communications”, and that he found it “a very, very rewarding part of my role”.
At that point, only two of the nine networks – those in the north-west and in Yorkshire and Humber – had held any meetings.
Tomlinson and his new Disability Unit came under further criticism this week after it emerged that they had posted just one announcement on their website in the last six months.
This near-silence came at a time when disabled people and disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) were calling for national leadership, co-production with DPOs, clear information and timely guidance from the government during the pandemic.
The foi response from the Cabinet Office – the government department that hosts the Disability Unit – said that planning and arrangements for the regional meetings were “impacted” by the 2019 general election, and the move of the Office for Disability Issues (which was incorporated into the Disability Unit) from the Department for Work and Pensions to the Cabinet Office.
The foi response added: “Work to arrange the network meetings (one in each of the nine regions) was progressing in early 2020, but had to be halted due to the outbreak of the Corona Virus Pandemic.”
Tracey Lazard, chief executive of Inclusion London, told DNS: “It’s not a surprise to find that the regional stakeholder structure this government chose to pursue instead of meaningful engagement with DDPOs* is not working.
“These regional stakeholder networks are not DDPO networks, they are not resourced, they operate in a complete policy vacuum and they are simply not compliant with the UNCRPD**.
“It now transpires a year on that most haven’t even met yet.
“The government needs to stop this window-dressing approach and start to seriously and strategically engage with DDPOs.
“COVID has revealed just how deep and structural disabled people’s inequality goes and the government must in response set up engagement mechanisms with us that are genuinely up to the challenge of tackling the structural discrimination and inequality we experience.”
Vicky Foxcroft, Labour’s shadow minister for disabled people, said: “The government’s claim it regularly engages disabled people and disabled people’s organisations just doesn’t stack up.
“The government must do better when it comes to genuine engagement and involvement from disabled people on issues that affect them.
“Disabled people, the experts by experience, deserve to have their voice heard.”
And Fazilet Hadi, head of policy for Disability Rights UK, said: “In 2017 the UNCRPD committee criticised the UK government for its lack of engagement and coproduction with disabled people-led organisations.
“Now, after three years of almost total inaction, all that has happened is that four out of nine regional stakeholder networks have met and no minutes have been kept [by government] of their discussions.
“There is a major question regarding whether setting up unfunded networks with unpaid chairs demonstrates a genuine commitment by government to engage with disabled people.
“However, given that setting up regional networks was the government’s chosen engagement route, it does seem to have proved singularly ineffective.
“With the [government’s] national disability strategy being published next spring, there is a real urgency to create a dynamic and transparent engagement process with disabled people.
“Without this process, it is hard to see how the strategy will be credible.”
A Cabinet Office spokesperson refused to explain why the Disability Unit had been so quiet during the pandemic; why it had not asked to see the minutes from the few regional network meetings that had taken place; whether ministers believed that regular meetings of the networks would have been useful during the pandemic; whether Tomlinson agreed that his comments to the women and equalities committee had been misleading; and whether Tomlinson accepted responsibility for these failings.
The spokesperson said: “We have nothing further to add to the foi you have.”
*Deaf and disabled people’s organisations
**The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) makes it clear that, when developing laws and policies relating to disabled people, governments “must closely consult with and actively involve persons with disabilities, including children with disabilities, through their representative organizations”. It defines “representative organizations” as those that are “led, directed and governed by persons with disabilities”, a definition which the UN committee on the rights of persons with disabilities included in general comment number seven
8 October 2020
Watchdog’s report spotlights ‘shocking’ impact of pandemic on social care in Scotland
A “considerable proportion” of people in Scotland who receive social care support at home have had that support cut or removed completely during the pandemic, according to a new report by the country’s human rights watchdog.
This week’s report by the Scottish Human Rights Commission (SHRC) – which has been welcomed by disabled people’s organisations – warns that the impact of the cuts to people’s support has potentially led to breaches of both the European Convention on Human Rights and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD).
The commission said it was “deeply concerned” about the future, post-pandemic levels of support that will be available to those who have had their packages cut or withdrawn during the crisis.
But it also warned that the pandemic has “exacerbated pre-existing inadequacies” of the social care system in Scotland.
The report found that some disabled people have been left without the support they need to get up and go to bed, wash and use the toilet, eat and drink, and take medication.
One user-led organisation told the commission it had heard of many people left in “dire situations”, including “being forced to sleep in wheelchairs, unable to get out of bed, unable to wash and dress themselves… [and] having to move in with family”.
Among its recommendations, the commission called on the Scottish government and local authorities to pledge a return to pre-pandemic levels of support.
It also called on the Scottish government to assess how widespread the cuts have been.
And it repeated its call for UNCRPD to be incorporated into Scottish law, and for a future social care system that will be based on human rights.
The report concludes: “Short and longer term change is needed to address the significant human rights concerns we have identified, and to ensure the level of decline in the realisation of people’s rights that has taken place never happens again.”
Dr Pauline Nolan, head of leadership and civic participation for Inclusion Scotland, who contributed to the report, welcomed the document and said it was an “accurate report of what has been happening across Scotland”.
She said many disabled people had had their support “stopped almost overnight” and there had been “some real horror stories”.
A series of Inclusion Scotland surveys during the pandemic had shown that people’s mental and physical health had suffered because of the loss or reduction of support, she said.
One survey of 115 disabled people and carers in August showed four out of five (79 per cent) had lost some or all of their care package during the pandemic.
Nolan said: “It’s quite shocking.
“People are scared that, because they have been told they have to rely on so little and they are surviving – barely, in some cases – they are then going to be reassessed and told, ‘You’ve managed for the last few months so you can manage on this amount now.’”
She said it was vital that care packages were returned to their pre-pandemic levels, while Inclusion Scotland also supported the call for UNCRPD to be incorporated into Scottish law.
She said: “Social care has been in crisis in Scotland for a long time. It has collapsed in the face of the pandemic.
“We have been working with the Scottish government to reform it over the last two years.
“The pandemic has shone a light on how bad it is.”
She added: “Social care is one of the things that has left people feeling abandoned.”
Nolan said the only part of the system that seemed to have survived intact was the Scottish version of the Independent Living Fund.
Etienne d’Aboville, chief executive of Glasgow Centre for Inclusive Living, also welcomed the report.
He said: “We would echo the calls in the SHRC report for a more robust, rights-based approach founded on UNCRPD principles.”
He said it was important that disabled people had their care packages reinstated after the pandemic.
D’Aboville said: “Whether people’s services were simply cut, or whether they chose to rely on informal support for safety reasons, simply managing to get by during lockdown should not be taken as evidence that this is sustainable in the longer term.
“Our own experience as a support organisation suggests that those who have had more direct control over their budget, either via a direct payment, or through the ILF Scotland, may have fared slightly better than others.”
He added: “We look forward to a positive outcome from the policy work that is currently taking place on the reform of adult social care support in Scotland: it’s vital that this recognises that investing in social care support has economic benefits for disabled people, for unpaid carers, for employment, and for society as a whole, as well as advancing social justice.”
A Scottish government spokesperson said: “We recognise that the COVID-19 pandemic has been incredibly difficult for both those receiving and providing adult social care.
“It is critical that social care support is maintained as far as possible to ensure the safety, dignity and human rights of people who already receive support, and that of their unpaid carers.
“We’ve allocated £150 million for social care as part of our additional COVID funding this year to help the sector mitigate the financial implications of the pandemic.
“Unavoidable short term changes in people’s support have been necessary due to a reduction in workforce capacity as a result of workers self-isolating or being unwell, or many group-based supports running at reduced capacity due to physical distancing measures.
“In some instances, the support needs may also have changed and required review or amendment.
“The Scottish government has established an independent review of adult social care with a human-rights based approach to consider what changes are required to achieve the highest standards of support for the independence and wellbeing of people who use adult social care support.
“We remain committed to the reform of adult social care. Prior to the pandemic we began work on a reform programme with a wide range of partners including people who use social care support, COSLA [which represents Scottish local authorities], unpaid carers, the social care sector and others.
“This work will continue in parallel to the Independent Review of Adult Social Care [which was announced on 1 September and is due to report by January 2021].”
Cllr Stuart Currie, health and social care spokesperson for COSLA, welcomed the report.
He said: “When the pandemic hit, local government worked with partners in the third and independent sector to try to ensure that social care support continued to be provided for those who needed it most.
“However, some people were impacted because social care support could not be delivered in the same way or because that person no longer wanted that support.
“It is critical that where this has happened it is reviewed, and this work is underway in Health and Social Care Partnerships.
“COSLA agree that human rights should be enshrined in social care and this must be central to any reform or review of social care; this report sets out helpful recommendations to support this approach.”
8 October 2020
DWP admits Coffey and Duncan Smith both snubbed Disability Confident
Work and pensions secretary Therese Coffey has failed to sign up to her own much-criticised disability employment scheme, Disability Confident, her department has admitted.
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has also admitted that Sir Iain Duncan Smith, who launched the scheme in 2013, when he was work and pensions secretary, has never become a member.
A DWP freedom of information response also shows other current and former work and pensions ministers apparently scrabbling to sign up after Disability News Service (DNS) first began asking questions about whether they were members of the scheme in the first week of March this year.
Like all MPs, Coffey employs staff to assist with her parliamentary and constituency duties, which are separate to her role as secretary of state.
In an article she wrote last November, Coffey stressed the importance of Disability Confident, which she said “encourages employers to think differently about disability and to take action to improve how they attract, recruit, retain and develop disabled employees”.
But DWP has no record of either Coffey or Duncan Smith ever having signed up to the scheme.
DWP claims that, even though Coffey’s duties as an MP are separate to those she has as a minister, she is included in DWP’s own membership of the scheme and that DWP ministers are considered to be “signed up to the principles” of Disability Confident.
This is despite the fact that other DWP ministers, including current minister for disabled people Justin Tomlinson, employment minister Mims Davies and pensions minister Guy Opperman – along with scores of other cross-party MPs – had all signed up to the scheme before DNS began asking questions in March.
The freedom of information response also reveals that Duncan Smith has never signed up to the scheme, even though he helped launch it as work and pensions secretary in 2013 and, like other ministers, he employs staff to help with his duties as an MP.
In 2015, two years after the scheme’s launch, he praised employers who had signed up to Disability Confident and said its success was “clear to see”.
DNS has confirmed that neither Coffey nor Duncan Smith has ever been listed by DWP as a member of Disability Confident.
DWP claims it only holds records showing when current and former ministers “most recently registered for, or renewed their registration”.
Four current and former ministers have registration or renewal dates in March this year, days after DNS began asking questions on 3 March.
Will Quince, the minister for welfare delivery, signed up two days later, on 5 March.
Esther McVey, who claims to have created the Disability Confident scheme herself in 2013 – when she was minister for disabled people, under Duncan Smith – and has repeatedly called on employers to sign up, finally signed up herself on 10 March 2020.
Two other former ministers for disabled people, Mark Harper and Maria Miller, also signed up for the first time in March this year, Harper on 20 March and Miller seven days later.
None of the four were previously members of the scheme.
In its freedom of information response, DWP says: “As DWP is a Disability Confident Leader, all Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) Ministers are considered to be signed up to the principles of Disability Confident by virtue of being a current DWP Minister.
“Some also sign up individually in their capacity as Members of Parliament who employ staff.”
The discredited scheme aims to encourage employers to “think differently about disability and take action to improve how they recruit, retain and develop disabled people”.
Coffey had not responded to a request to comment by noon today (Thursday).
Duncan Smith sent a statement claiming that “as a founder member” he was “very proud” of the scheme and would “continue to support it in every way I can”.
But after DNS asked his spokesperson how he could have been a “founder member” when he had never joined the scheme, he failed to comment further.
David Gillon, a prominent disabled critic of Disability Confident since its launch in July 2013, said: “Given Disability Confident’s astoundingly lacklustre performance, it is sadly predictable that Therese Coffey still hasn’t signed up to Disability Confident in her role as an employer of constituency staff.
“And equally predictable that DWP would try and claim she is covered by their own registration.
“There is a basic principle of leadership: lead by example. And Coffey is giving a very telling example of how important she considers Disability Confident to be to DWP’s campaign to drive down the disability employment gap, and by implication how important she considers the employment gap itself.
“Not only can’t she be bothered to sign up to it, she can’t even be bothered to sign up to it when she knows journalists are watching to see what she does.”
He added: “DWP was deeply problematical even before the Tories came to power, but under IDS the rhetoric of disabled people as lazy fakers was enshrined as departmental policy and no secretary of state since him has seen fit to change that.
“It’s no surprise that IDS is another senior Tory who sees no reason to sign up to support his own party’s disability policy.”
Three years ago, DWP declared itself a gold-standard employer of disabled people under the scheme – securing the status of “Disability Confident Leader” – just days before being found guilty of “grave and systematic violations” of the UN disability convention.
Earlier this year, a BBC Panorama investigation revealed that DWP lost more disability discrimination cases at employment tribunal than any other employer in Britain in the three years since 2016.
Asked why he had only signed up to Disability Confident after DNS began asking questions in March this year, Quince declined to comment.
Harper, Miller and McVey had all failed to comment by noon today (Thursday).
8 October 2020
Ministers face Grenfell legal action after watering down evacuation safety measure
The family of a disabled woman who died in the Grenfell Tower fire are taking legal action to force the government to protect other residents who need assistance in evacuating from high-rise blocks of flats.
Last year, the Grenfell inquiry said the government must develop national guidelines for evacuating high-rise residential buildings.
It said this should include procedures for “evacuating persons who are unable to use the stairs in an emergency, or who may require assistance (such as disabled people, older people and young children)”.
The prime minister, Boris Johnson, told MPs last October that the government “plan to accept in principle all the recommendations that [the inquiry] makes for central Government”, adding that “where action is called for action will follow”.
But the family of Sakina Afrasehabi, a disabled woman who lived on the 18th floor of Grenfell and died in the fire, say that Johnson’s pledge has been broken.
They say the government’s own proposals have watered down the inquiry’s recommendation on evacuating disabled people from blocks of high-rise flats.
The inquiry recommended that every resident of a high-rise building whose ability to evacuate may be “compromised”, including “persons with reduced mobility or cognition”, should have their own personal emergency evacuation plan (PEEP) drawn up.
But the Home Office’s fire safety consultation (PDF), which ends on Monday, recommends that this proposal should only apply to those in high-rise buildings covered with the aluminium composite material (ACM) cladding used on Grenfell – and blamed by the inquiry for being the primary cause of the fire spreading – rather than all high-rise buildings.
This means that the government’s proposals would apply only to the three per cent of high-rise residential buildings that still use ACM cladding, and would ignore those disabled people needing assistance who live in the other 97 per cent of high-rise flats.
Solicitors Bhatt Murphy, who represent the family of Sakina Afrasehabi, argued this week that the government’s consultation process had been unlawful because it included “misleading and inadequate information”.
And it suggested that the government had relied on industry or sector advice on the “practical challenges” and costs of having to implement a system of PEEPs in all high-rise buildings.
Sakina Afrasehabi was housed on the 18th floor of Grenfell Tower even though Kensington and Chelsea council knew of her “very significant mobility issues”.
She and her sister, Fatima, both died in the fire which began in the early hours of 14 June 2017 in a block of flats owned by Kensington and Chelsea council and managed by the council’s Tenant Management Organisation.
In a statement to the Grenfell inquiry (PDF), Nazanin Aghlani said that her mother had needed a mobility aid to walk, and had a series of long-term health conditions including arthritis, diabetes, memory loss, hypertension, depression and asthma.
But despite her health conditions, she was forced by Kensington and Chelsea council to accept a tenancy on Grenfell’s 18th floor.
In the statement, Aghlani said her mother had been placed in the flat “knowing that there was no rescue plan in place for her. Her human right to escape was denied even before the fire.”
Her statement added: “When the fire happened at Grenfell Tower my mother could not escape because, even on a good day, she could not go down 18 floors, let alone in that fire.
“The Council failed in their duty of care. They failed to provide any provision for my mother that would allow her to escape in the event of a fire.
“She was forced to live in the flat, knowing she could not manage the stairs.
“I think that if she had been placed lower down in the Tower she would be alive today.”
Fazilet Hadi, head of policy for Disability Rights UK, said: “The prime minister needs to make good on his word from a year ago.
“Disabled people should never be collateral damage in disasters like this.
“The recommendations are common sense and lifesaving and must be prioritised as a government action.”
A Home Office spokesperson said: “We have received this pre-action letter and are considering our response.
“It would be inappropriate to comment further at this stage.”
8 October 2020
Disabled black lives matter, say campaigners, and so does grassroots funding
Black disabled people must speak out about the oppression they continue to face, and they need new funding that goes “direct to the grassroots”, campaigners said this week.
The Disabled Black Lives Matter event was held to celebrate Black History Month, and to draw attention to the centuries of social and structural injustices and discrimination that black disabled people have faced as a result of “intersecting systems of oppression”.
Black disabled people have also been left behind by the failure of local authorities to cope with the intersectional discrimination they face and the refusal of successive governments to provide them with funding, the meeting heard.
The failure to listen to black disabled people’s voices is a human rights issue, one leading black disabled campaigner told the event, which was funded by Greenwich council and hosted by Culture Access, a community interest company that focuses on access to alternative culture.
Julie Jaye Charles, founder of the disabled people’s organisation Equalities National Council and a government adviser, told the event that she had faced discrimination throughout her life as a disabled person, as a black person and as a woman.
In 2011, she secured figures from the Office for National Statistics, which showed how many BAME disabled people there were in each part of the country. It revealed that there were as many as 38,000 in one local authority.
But she said that many people providing services for local authorities were not trained to deal with this level and type of intersectionality, which had “left black disabled people behind”.
She said: “They have been left behind because the government has never resourced anything for us.”
Jaye Charles said she believed more research needed to be done on what it means to be a disabled person of colour, and there needed to be funding to allow black disabled people’s voices to be heard.
She said: “People are aware of what our needs are. We’ve been telling them for years.
“There’s been enough consultation, there’s been enough books written, we’ve gone on for years and years and years and I think the problem has definitely now become a human rights one.”
She spoke about her new social enterprise, Start Change, which will help promote change and allow black disabled people’s voices to be heard at a grassroots level.
She said: “It’s time now to pick up and say that black disabled people’s lives do matter.
“We are not alone. There are a lot of voices out there. There are a lot of views out there.
“I am so passionate about getting those views to come together and to start change once and for all.”
Viv Cameron, a retired barrister, said: “This can’t work top down. It must work from the grassroots up.”
She said funders must understand that their money is going “direct to the grassroots” so “they must have people from the grassroots on their boards”.
She said: “People from the grassroots need to speak out. You need not to be afraid. This is how voices get heard.
“You need to stand up for yourself, and that is extremely hard if you’re not a confident person.”
She also said it was vital to scrutinise the “money trail”, which can “disappear down an alleyway that never reaches a black person”.
She said: “My message in my local area is that funding must be fair.”
Yannick Nyah, a founding member and director of BME Volunteers, said it was important to “view people as people and view individuals as individuals”.
He called for a “complete culture change” and for action on the lack of representation of disabled black people on the boards of local organisations.
Maya Schersmith-Meikle spoke of her experiences studying digital film production at Ravensbourne University in south-east London.
Schersmith-Meikle, who has made a short film about the barriers facing young disabled women, told the meeting: “It’s OK to be different and we all matter, no matter what.
“Just listen to us, that’s all we want, for anyone to listen and understand where we are coming from, and that will make a difference.”
8 October 2020
Deaf activists on 200-mile trek to bring ‘Where’s the Interpreter?’ message to ‘callous’ PM
A Deaf activist is walking from Gloucester to Downing Street to draw attention to the government’s “callous and heartless” refusal to provide a British Sign Language (BSL) interpreter at its coronavirus TV briefings.
Lynn Stewart-Taylor, founder of the #WhereIsTheInterpreter campaign, and fellow Deaf activist Mark Hodgson, hope their walk will “shame” the government into finally providing interpreters.
They set off on Saturday from the offices of Gloucester Deaf Association and have already passed through Bristol and Bath, and will travel through Reading, Maidenhead and Richmond, before reaching Downing Street next Friday (16 October).
They are raising funds for a potential judicial review of the government’s refusal to provide an interpreter at the briefings, which they say has breached the Equality Act, the Human Rights Act and the UN disability convention.
By noon this morning (Thursday), they had raised more than £3,100.
The legal action, led by discrimination law experts Fry Law, could also look at the government’s failure to provide COVID-related advice in BSL on its website.
Stewart-Taylor, a consultant, writer and researcher from Bristol, told Disability News Service yesterday: “We have spent six months trying to negotiate with the government and being fobbed off.
“The risk to Deaf people’s health is too great to delay any longer.
“Only a callous and heartless government would push Deaf people to the point of having to sue them for their rights under the Equality Act of 2010.”
She said Deaf people in England were asking: “Why does this government continue to ignore our demands for equal access to information about COVID-19?”
She said the daily briefings during the early months of the pandemic had been “crucial in helping people understand what is happening, and thus minimising illness or death.
“For us Deaf people, when we sat down to watch the news, we were shocked to see that there was no interpreter provided (whether next to [the prime minister] or in-vision).
“Imagine, at the time of crisis, no access to information, seeing public panicking, seeing the news flashes on TV, newspapers, Deaf people were unable to access local services because it was closed – how does that make Deaf people feel?
“It is not only the lives of Deaf people. It is also our friends, our families, our employees, our colleagues – if we do not know how to adequately safeguard against the virus, we may be accelerating its spread unknowingly.”
She said Deaf people had been left scared, confused, excluded and panicked.
After high-profile complaints about this exclusion, she said, the government left it up to individual broadcasters to ensure access to BSL-interpreted versions of the briefings through an interpreter provided on the BBC News digital channel.
Stewart-Taylor said this was a flawed solution, partly because many people were not aware of this service, including older Deaf people without access to social media, those living isolated lives, or those living in residential homes or in other shared housing.
She said: “The duty to ensure that all information released by the prime minister’s office is accessible lies with the government, not media broadcasters.
“This is in breach of the Equality Act of 2010.”
She added: “Deaf people have been telling me that the government’s refusal sends a message to them to say, ‘We don’t care if you Deaf people live or die.’
“This is really impacting their mental health and wellbeing.
“Enough is enough, so that’s why I’m walking to London.”
A parallel legal action, also led by Fry Law, is seeking damages from the government for breaching the Equality Act by failing to provide an interpreter for nine separate daily briefings by prime minister Boris Johnson at the beginning of the pandemic crisis, between 3 and 19 March.
These nine briefings took place before the BBC provided an interpreter for COVID-19 briefings on its BBC News channel.
These first few televised briefings provided vital information to the public, including informing them that they should avoid pubs and restaurants, that schools were closing, and advising them how to protect themselves from the virus.
Nearly 300 Deaf people have signed up for this legal action, with protection from the costs they could face if they lose provided through a new insurance policy being pioneered by Fry Law.
The government is set to begin holding daily televised COVID-19 briefings again this month, but there has been no suggestion that it will offer an interpreter alongside ministers.
Deaf campaigners and allies highlight the contrast with other countries, including the devolved Welsh, Scottish and Northern Ireland governments, and Norway, France, Japan, Italy and New Zealand, which have all been able to provide BSL interpreters for their COVID briefings.
A government spokesperson said: “We are committed to supporting disabled people through every stage of this pandemic and have established BSL interpretation at the No 10 press conference via the BBC News channel and iPlayer, available on all TV packages as part of Freeview.
“The BBC has also made their video feed for the BSL interpreter available to all other broadcasters and for use on No 10 social channels.
“We continue to work across government to ensure that information and guidance is fully accessible.”
8 October 2020
Round-up: Osime Brown, shielding, foster carers… and DWP’s ‘wolf’ appointment
Campaigners are calling on the government to abandon its plan to deport a young autistic man to Jamaica, a country he has not visited since he was four.
The Home Office had planned to detain Osime Brown – who also has learning difficulties and a heart condition – in an immigration centre until his deportation, but it has now agreed to allow him to return home when he leaves prison this week.
The 21-year-old was due to be released straight into detention from prison after serving a sentence for a conviction under controversial joint enterprise laws – he was present at a street robbery but is believed to have asked the other teens carrying it out to stop.
A petition to halt his deportation to Jamaica, started by autistic activist Emma Dalmayne, has so far secured more than 120,000 signatures.
After a successful appeal against the original decision to deport him, there will now be a fresh tribunal hearing into his proposed deportation.
Solicitors Clare Hayes and Sarah Ricca, from Deighton Pierce Glynn, are collecting evidence for possible discrimination claims against prison, education and social services.
They said: “Osime’s case shines a light on institutional racism in many of its forms, and particularly concerning in Osime’s case, the intersection of racism with the discriminatory treatment of disabled, neurodivergent people and people with autism, especially in places of detention.”
The government must look at examples of good practice in other countries to help it produce a strategy that will protect those who need to shield from the pandemic during the expected second wave of COVID-19, according to a panel of disabled advisers.
The Greater Manchester Disabled People’s Panel also said that only a joined-up strategy targeted at eliminating as much transmission of the virus as possible would “reduce the inequality” that the pandemic has “exposed and exacerbated”.
In a statement on shielding, the panel said: “People of colour, women, people in poverty, disabled people, and many of us [sharing] intersecting identities, have all been disproportionately harmed by the current national strategy.
“A second wave with the same approach and apparently less support is unjust and terrifying for many.”
The panel is funded by Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham and aims to shape, challenge and influence policy affecting disabled people across Greater Manchester by advising and consulting with the Greater Manchester Combined Authority he chairs.
The panel pointed to the UK government’s failure to put in place support mechanisms in the early weeks of the crisis, which left many disabled people without basic resources such as food, medicine, personal assistants and carers.
The panel said that shielding may have been “more of a choice for disabled people” if the pandemic had been managed differently.
It pointed to a series of factors that had made communities less safe for disabled people, including inaccessible public health information, unclear rules, senior figures undermining public health messages, the initial delay in moving into lockdown, and then leaving lockdown too early, introducing the Eat Out to Help Out scheme, re-opening pubs, the failure to introduce airport testing, and “perhaps most importantly, the problematic test, track and trace system”.
New research suggests that many disabled people are prevented from fostering children because of “negative attitudes and unnecessary barriers”.
The report, Mutual Benefits: The Potential of Disabled People as Foster Carers, concludes that disabled people could help address the shortage of foster carers “if they are given the chance”.
It says that the education watchdog Ofsted fails to monitor the number of disabled foster carers, that barriers are put in the way of disabled people who want to become foster carers, and that agencies have been doing little to encourage them to apply.
It calls for a “proactive approach” from councils and foster agencies to encourage more disabled people to consider foster caring, and for “more inclusive practices” in the foster carer recruitment process.
The project was led by the University of Worcester and the disabled people’s organisation Shaping Our Lives, along with the Foster Care Co-operative.
Becki Meakin, general manager of Shaping Our Lives, said: “Professionals in many fields lack the confidence and knowledge to work effectively with disabled people.
“Disability equality training is essential to overcoming the exclusion disabled people experience when using services.”
Kamran Mallick, chief executive of Disability Rights UK (DR UK), added: “It’s disappointing that this research reveals the sector needs significant cultural change if disabled people are to be given genuine equality of opportunity in this field of work.”
The report is the latest piece of research to come out of the five-year, £5 million Disability Research on Independent Living and Learning (DRILL) research programme, which is led by disabled people and funded by the National Lottery Community Fund, and delivered by DR UK, Disability Action (in Northern Ireland), Inclusion Scotland and Disability Wales.
The Women’s Equality Party has added its voice to concerns – first reported by Disability News Service – that the mayor of London has set up a board of nearly 30 senior figures to oversee the recovery from coronavirus in the capital without including any members representing disabled people.
The party has told Sadiq Khan in a letter that the oversight with appointments to the London Recovery Board was “particularly shocking” because of the “grossly disproportionate” impact of the pandemic on disabled people, who “should never have been forgotten by their Mayor in this way”.
One of those signing the letter was Dr Hannah Barham-Brown, a disabled campaigner and deputy leader of the party.
She and her colleagues – party leader Mandu Reid and Greater London Authority candidate Dr Sarabajaya Kumar – told the mayor that women had also been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic response, so disabled women “face a combination of negative effects” and their voices “must be heard as we plan our collective recovery”.
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has confirmed the appointment of the “architect” of universal credit as the next chair of its “independent” committee of advisers on social security.
Dr Stephen Brien wrote Dynamic Benefits (PDF), the report that became the blueprint for universal credit, and he is still a board member at the Centre for Social Justice, the right-wing thinktank which published his report in 2009.
He worked closely on that report with Sir Iain Duncan Smith, who introduced universal credit as work and pensions secretary in 2013.
Last month, Mark Harrison, from the Scrap Universal Credit Alliance, said that appointing such a “tame cheerleader” to chair the social security advisory committee (SSAC) would help ministers avoid scrutiny and would be like “giving Mr Wolf the keys to the hen house”.
SSAC is supposed to be an independent body that provides impartial advice to DWP on social security matters and scrutinises secondary legislation related to the benefits system.
Although DWP confirmed the appointment this week, it said Brien had taken up his post on 14 September.
8 October 2020
News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com
