Hunt’s Autumn Statement ‘crumbs’ will ‘not be enough to prevent harm and deaths’
An Autumn Statement that has provided “distracting crumbs” of funding will not be enough to address the impact of 12 years of austerity that has stripped away support from disabled people, campaigners and activists warned this week.
The response from disabled people’s organisations and leading activists to Jeremy Hunt’s first significant financial event as chancellor was mostly one of relief that it did not entrench austerity and its impacts even further, following a decade of cuts.
But there was also concern at many of the funding announcements, questions over decisions the government failed to take, and warnings that countless disabled people were now facing destitution.
Much of the focus was on the measures taken on social security, most importantly the decision to uprate working-age and disability benefits – and pensions – by 10.1 per cent.
Inclusion London said there had been “intense lobbying” from disabled people’s organisations on the need for such an uplift, because of soaring inflation, and the increase was needed now, not next April.
An Inclusion London spokesperson said: “It is worrying that we had to campaign on this, when so many people on a low income are clearly struggling and will be increasingly struggling over the winter months.”
And she said there was a need for a “broader review of the adequacy of benefits rates” so they can be increased to a level that enables an “adequate standard of living”.
Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People (GMCDP) said the increase in benefits was “welcome but not enough and not happening soon enough”.
Becki Meakin, involvement manager at Shaping Our Lives, said the increase “disguises the fact that existing welfare benefits fall far short of providing people with an above poverty income”, and was not taking effect until April, so would leave people “in a desperate financial situation as we enter the coldest and hardest time of the year”.
Bristol Reclaiming Independent Living (BRIL) also said the uplift was “not enough”, as inflation was even higher than 10.1 per cent.
It also said that financial support was needed now, not in April, including for disabled people with higher energy costs due to their use of independent living aids such as powered wheelchairs, beds and toilets.
George Baker, general secretary of The Disability Union, said the uplift was “surprising and welcome, but is still the bare minimum”.
He said: “The benefits system needs a major rethink to address the worsening economic situation.”
Hunt also announced new funding for adult social care, with up to £2.8 billion extra in 2023-2024 in England and £4.7 billion in 2024-2025.
Hunt said this would “allow the social care system to deliver an estimated 200,000 more care packages over the next two years”.
He also confirmed a decision to delay for another two years the so-called Dilnot reforms – widely seen as regressive and unfair – that would have introduced a lifetime cap of £86,000 on how much anyone pays for care in England.
GMCDP said the new social care funding was “far below the amount needed and as such is merely accepting social care will continue to collapse due to delay of political reform… and underfunding”.
Inclusion London said the extra funding was welcome, but the government needed to increase the social care minimum income guarantee, so that “people who pay for care out of their benefits are not left choosing between vital care, heating or eating”.
Under current rules, it said, all increases in benefits for those paying their council for support could go towards their care charges and leave them no better off.
Kathy Bole, chair of Disability Labour, was another to welcome the extra funding but warn it was not enough, and so would “do little to lift people up to the level they require” and would “not benefit those who already have or will have their care package cut”.
George Baker, from The Disability Union, added: “Social care desperately needs extra funding but this will not address the core issue, which is that the care sector is currently not functioning under existing demand.”
He said that 200,000 new care packages “will not address even the existing backlog”.
Hunt also announced that the managed migration of those on income-related employment and support allowance to universal credit – due to start this autumn – would be delayed until April 2028, a move seen by the Treasury as a cost-saving measure.
GMCDP said the delay was “welcome” but that the “fundamental problems” around the migration process were “not being addressed”.
BRIL said the move showed the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) was “in disarray”.
ESA claimants will still be able to make a claim if they believe they will be better off under universal credit (UC), and those ESA claimants whose circumstances change will still be forced onto UC, missing out on the so-called transitional protection they would have received under managed migration.
Inclusion London said ESA was a “vital lifeline” for many disabled people and the delay “gives a clear opportunity to review how universal credit is or isn’t working for disabled people”.
The Disability Union added: “Any delay to the changeover of ESA is always welcome, as it allows us more time to pressurise the government to change course on this entirely.”
Hunt also announced a pause in the continuing migration of working-age claimants of disability living allowance onto personal independence payment (PIP), which has been continuing since October 2013.
GMCDP said the pause was “welcome” but failed to address PIP’s “shortcomings”.
A GMCDP spokesperson said: “We need a new co-designed disability benefit, administered by a new government department, as the Department for Work and Pensions is institutionally disablist.”
Kathy Bole, from Disability Labour, welcomed the pause, and said: “The system for PIP is flawed and it has been since its inception.
“We urge the government to fix PIP and hire and train more staff to engage with individual disabled people.”
BRIL said: “The fact that they have to pause it means they are not able to get on with their own programme.
“Either they do not have enough staff, or it is not well managed.”
The Disability Union’s George Baker said the move was “unsurprising, considering the disaster that is PIP.
“Reading between the lines, it becomes increasingly clear that the government recognise their flagship benefit reforms simply do not work.
“They are, as usual, kicking the can down the road.”
Hunt also announced a further £900 cost-of-living payment to those on means-tested benefits during 2023-24, a significant increase on this year’s £650.
But there will be just another £150 cost-of-living payment for those on non-means-tested disability benefits such as personal independence payment – the same as this year’s payment.
Inclusion London said this was “welcome” but “not enough”, while Disability Labour said it would be “too little, too late for many” and was not enough “to truly help those in the greatest need” and “those who currently teeter on the edge of financial ruin”.
GMCDP also said the payment was too low and would “leave many disabled people experiencing proportionately greater degrees of poverty”.
The Disability Union said: “Inflation is leaving many disabled people destitute. This is a paltry sum compared to what’s needed.
“Disabled people, in fact all citizens, need to be guaranteed food, shelter and heating to avoid a poverty crisis.”
BRIL said: “This shows us that we are only a sixth of the value of people on means-tested benefits.
“It is cruel because it is often established that disabled people need higher heat levels in their homes due to not being able to exercise or have no assistance or support to exercise.
“Many disabled people are also living in lower-quality insulated buildings.”
Kamran Mallick, chief executive of Disability Rights (DR UK), said the payment “doesn’t touch the sides” of what is needed, due to years in which there has been a lack of “meaningful increases”.
Pensioners will receive a £300 cost-of-living payment, also the same as this year’s.
Another decision announced by Hunt last Thursday was that social housing rents – nearly one in five households in England are in the social rented sector – will only be allowed to increase by a maximum of seven per cent in 2023-24.
DR UK’s Mikey Erhardt said that “no other group of people is as reliant on the social housing sector as disabled people”, and the government should have frozen social housing rents and service charges, and taken action to address “inaccessible homes, huge rates of disrepair, hazardous homes and poor behaviour from landlords”.
He said the government’s actions would instead “fuel the flames of this crisis, pushing more and more disabled people into rent arrears as their costs become too much to handle”.
GMCDP said there needed to be a freeze on rents across all housing sectors, an increasing in local housing allowance rates, and new private sector rent controls.
BRIL also questioned why there needed to be any increase in social housing rents.
Inclusion London criticised the failure to address rising rents in the private sector and in mortgage payments, both of which will have a significant impact on disabled people.
Disability Labour said the social housing rent cap was “welcome” but still too high, and added: “We call for a cap on rents to prevent profiteering, the abolition of section 21 [no fault] evictions and a tangible financial investment in building accessible social housing which is in a habitable condition.”
Kamran Mallick, from DR UK, said it was not clear whether the government’s public spending announcements, including increases for education and social care, “will do anything other than leaving us running to stand still”.
He said disabled people were “still only being thrown peanuts”.
He said: “Fuel costs are set to continue to skyrocket, essential education and care services for disabled children and adults have already been cut to the bone, pushing local authorities to the brink of bankruptcy.
“While the government hasn’t completely put the knife into disabled people, it is still twirling it between its fingers.”
A GMCDP spokesperson said: “Overall the government is removing £55 billion from the economy and intensifying austerity, at a time when more money circulating in the lower income sections of the economy is needed.
“Austerity is simply going to cause more harm and more deaths. The measures announced are distracting crumbs to obscure from this fact.”
Inclusion London said: “Time and time again, disabled people are treated as acceptable collateral damage.
“While the Autumn Statement turns away from the harshest austerity measures, we know that more must be done to prevent further avoidable deaths.”
Professor Peter Beresford, co-chair of Shaping Our Lives, said the reforms “around the edges” of the “defective” social security and social care systems were “really about kicking both benefits and social care reform into the long grass yet again” and do “nothing to reform the disablism of the DWP or to address its long-term failure to involve disabled people and listen to their proposals and experience”.
Ellen Morrison, Labour’s disabled members’ representative on its national executive committee, said that any mitigation was useful in such a serious crisis.
But she said: “Ultimately, though, the situation has become so dire for disabled people that fragmented, unpredictable supplements cannot meaningfully help.
“Extra funding and cost-of-living payments might limit the worst of what we’re facing, but we’re 12 years into a programme of austerity that has stripped away the services we rely on to such an extreme that housing support, the NHS, social care and schemes like Access to Work are barely working.
“Only with a complete overhaul to the social security system and the approach to funding vital services, could disabled people begin to see the level of support we truly need.
“Anything short of that will lead to more of the same: state-led discrimination that continues to violate our human rights.
“Disabled people deserve better than waiting for dribs and drabs.
“Many disabled people are in work or ineligible for means-tested benefits.
“One-off £150 payments for PIP claimants will do little in the climate of rising heating, food and fuel costs that we’re disproportionately impacted by.”
And she said the delays to the universal credit migration showed what a “nightmare” it has proven to be and that it was time for the government to admit that it was “not a simplified system in any sense” and was causing “immense harm” to claimants.
24 November 2022
Six train companies guilty of widespread discrimination, say campaigners
Six train companies are discriminating against disabled passengers at nearly 300 rail stations across the south-east of England, according to new research.
The research shows that c2c (which runs between London and Southend), Chiltern Railways, Greater Anglia, Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR), Great Western Railway (GWR) and Southeastern are all regularly denying “turn up and go” services to those who need boarding assistance.
Between them, their staffing policies mean there is either occasional or permanent denial of “turn up and go” services at 292 stations, or one in nine of all rail stations in Britain.
All six rail companies offer policies to mitigate lack of access for “turn up and go” passengers at their stations, such as sending staff from a mobile team or another station, or providing a taxi service, but these are all likely to mean significant delays or an inferior service for disabled passengers needing assistance with boarding.
The analysis by The Association of British Commuters (ABC) shows how many stations there are where it is impossible for disabled passengers to secure immediate assistance with boarding a train without booking in advance, because of the companies running driver-only operated (DOO) trains to unstaffed stations.
The six operators are currently the only ones in Britain that are believed to combine DOO train services with unstaffed stations*.
ABC’s figures show many of the stations operated by each company have this combination of DOO trains – those without a member of customer services staff on board, where the driver has responsibility for opening and closing the doors – at times when they are unstaffed, either sometimes or all the time.
The figures show that c2c has 96 per cent of its stations not available for turn up and go travel (92 per cent sometimes not available, four per cent unavailable all the time); with 71 per cent at Chiltern (43 per cent sometimes, 29 per cent all the time); 45 per cent at GTR (36, nine); 38 per cent at Southeastern (37 per cent, two per cent); Greater Anglia, 32 per cent (22 per cent, 11 per cent); and GWR, 16 per cent (eight per cent sometimes unavailable, nine per cent never available).
ABC said its research showed there were “no go areas” for disabled rail passengers across the south-east and London, with particular hotspots in the London boroughs of Bexley, Bromley, Greenwich and Lewisham, and the counties of Buckinghamshire, Essex, Oxfordshire and Surrey.
The findings should increase pressure on the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) to act on the claims of widespread discrimination.
ABC is using the figures to attempt to persuade EHRC to act against all six operators for breaching the Equality Act.
It says in the report that it believes EHRC “now has no choice but to investigate, and apply its full legal weight to breaches of equality law by train operators”.
GTR has already admitted, in a document leaked to ABC in September, that it had been breaching access laws for more than 10 years across large parts of its rail network because of insufficient staffing levels across its Thameslink, Southern and Great Northern rail franchise in England.
Disabled people, accessibility experts and campaigners have repeatedly warned of the “escalating human rights crisis” for disabled passengers caused by staffing issues across the rail network.
Reports have suggested that the government’s rail reforms are likely to see about four-fifths of ticket offices closing, while campaigners led by ABC have called on EHRC to take “urgent action” on railway staffing.
Last month, a leading expert on accessible transport quit his role as a government adviser after accusing ministers of backing policies on de-staffing the rail network that discriminate against disabled rail passengers.
Matthew Smith, a key member of the Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee (DPTAC), told the government that its already discriminatory staffing policies looked set to get “drastically worse” if it went ahead with secret plans for mass ticket office closures.
He said in his resignation letter that DPTAC had repeatedly warned the Department for Transport about the “toxic combination of driver-only trains and unstaffed stations” and urged it to secure legal advice.
Each of the six companies insisted this week that their policies have been approved by the regulator, the Office of Rail and Road, and that they had measures in place to offer alternatives to disabled passengers who turned up to an unstaffed station visited by DOO trains.
These measures include mobile units that allow staff to travel to an unstaffed station if requested by the passenger, with help points available at stations for disabled travellers to seek help.
A GWR spokesperson declined to say if it accepted ABC’s figures, or if they showed it was discriminating against disabled passengers, but said: “ABC has reached some headline-grabbing but rather spurious conclusions based not on GWR’s policies but on a leaked document from another train operator.”
Southeastern also declined to say if it accepted the ABC figures, or if they showed it was discriminating against disabled passengers.
But a Southeastern spokesperson said its assistance was “well above the rail industry average” and it would “continue to improve the service we offer”.
GTR said it did not accept that it was discriminating against disabled rail passengers, and that the research was inaccurate because the rail industry had failed to update the websites where ABC had sourced its figures.
A GTR spokesperson said: “We are dedicated to making sure all customers can travel independently with confidence across our network and are happy to discuss this with the EHRC.”
A Greater Anglia spokesperson said: “We do not accept that these figures show that assistance is not available at these stations.
“They represent staffing levels at stations using the criteria ABC adopted.”
She said the figures did not show it was discriminating against disabled passengers.
Another Greater Anglia spokesperson had said earlier: “We have markedly improved accessibility on our trains and across our network over the last three years and the accessibility features of our Stadler-built trains have set a new positive benchmark for accessible trains on the UK rail network.”
She said the company had 134 stations, and not 133, as suggested in the analysis.
A Chiltern Railways spokesperson said its figures differed from those in the ABC report, and it insisted that with its unstaffed stations it made reasonable adjustments for disabled passengers, in line with its legal obligations.
He said: “We are committed to delivering and continuously improving this policy.”
A c2c spokesperson declined to say if it accepted the figures, or if they showed it was discriminating against disabled passengers, but she said: “We can reassure customers that we are committed to maintaining and improving current standards of accessibility to make the railway as accessible as possible for all our passengers.”
She was another to claim that some of the information used by ABC in its report was incorrect because of the rail industry’s failure to update the source material.
EHRC declined to comment.
*ScotRail may run some DOO services to unstaffed stations in the Glasgow area, but the company has refused to release figures to ABC that would allow this analysis to take place
24 November 2022
Covid death stats suggest discrimination impact on people with sensory impairments
Working-age people with both a hearing and visual impairment in England were nearly 12 times more likely to die due to Covid during the pandemic than people of the same age without such impairments, “shocking” new official figures have shown.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) says in a new report that reasons for the increased risk of death could include discrimination experienced during the pandemic, and lack of access to information and services such as transport, health care and personal assistance.
The ONS statistics show that younger people* with a visual but no hearing impairment were more than eight times more likely to die than those without such impairments in the same age group, and those with just a hearing impairment were still four times more likely to die a Covid-related death.
Even after taking into account factors such as age, whether someone lived in a care home, if they lived in a more crowded home, working in a job that involved greater exposure to the virus, the level of deprivation of their neighbourhood, or if someone had pre-existing health conditions, the risk of a Covid-related death for people with a hearing, visual and dual-sensory impairment was still 1.30, 1.38 and 1.42 times higher than those without.
The statistics covered deaths between January 2020 and July 2022 for people aged 30 to 100.
Among the organisations that discussed the research with ONS before the report was published were disabled people’s organisations Inclusion London and Disability Rights UK, and the Deaf-led organisation Royal Association for Deaf People (RAD).
They told Disability News Service this week that they were appalled and alarmed by the ONS figures.
Fazilet Hadi, head of policy for Disability Rights UK, said: “These are deeply shocking statistics, which require action from health, social care and other public services.
“The higher mortality rates for people with hearing, vision and dual sensory impairments during the pandemic are unlikely to solely be a feature of COVID-19.
“Instead, the statistics point to systemic health inequalities which need to be challenged.
“It is imperative that voices from these impairment groups are given the opportunity to be heard at the Covid public inquiry.
“We must never again face a pandemic where there is such a deep lack of equity for disabled people.
“The reasons cited by ONS, such as barriers to information and services, are those that are faced daily.
“The government must get serious about implementing the Equality Act and tackling the health inequalities faced by disabled people.
“The endgame if it doesn’t is clear – it really is a matter of life and death.”
Svetlana Kotova, Inclusion London’s director of campaigns and justice, said: “We are appalled, but not surprised, to see the finding that people with sensory impairments were at a much higher risk of death during the pandemic.
“This shows again how the government’s response to the pandemic has failed to protect our lives and livelihoods.
“Instead of making sure vital information is provided in accessible formats, protecting access to services and ensuring reasonable adjustments are made, providing people with support they need, the government chose to reduce our rights or forget about our needs.
“Lessons must be learnt.
“The government must fully consider and address our needs in future pandemics or other emergency planning and work with disabled people and DDPOs** to do so.
“We are also calling on the Covid inquiry to fully investigate and expose those failures, so lessons can be learnt.”
Amanda Casson Webb, RAD’s joint chief executive, said: “The ONS statistics are alarming, but to some extent they confirm what we already know from experience about the impact of COVID-19 on deaf people, especially BSL-users***.”
She said RAD believed the “drivers” for the statistics were about access to information and access to health services.
She said: “Information about the pandemic, and the measures to combat it, was too often inaccessible.
“We frequently worked through the night to translate key announcements into BSL and share them the next morning.
“Even this delay wasn’t acceptable, which is why we supported the grassroots ‘Where is the Interpreter’ (#WITI) campaign and the resulting judicial review of the government’s actions.
“As GP surgery doors slammed shut and telephones became the only way of accessing healthcare, our teams were kept busy contacting doctors on behalf of deaf patients and organising interpreting for remote consultations.
“NHS teams were very variable in their awareness of the impact their actions would have on deaf people.
“That is why we have recently worked with NHS England on their review and updating of their Accessible Information Standard and how it is implemented.
“Only when the government and every healthcare worker and administrator understand how to communicate with deaf people and provide uninterrupted access to services, can we avoid this happening again.”
Previous studies by ONS have concluded that about 58 per cent of Covid-related deaths were of disabled people.
ONS has also previously estimated that, after adjusting for factors such as age, pre-existing health conditions, vaccination status, and the level of deprivation of their neighbourhood, more-disabled women**** were still 1.6 times more likely to die from COVID-19 than non-disabled women.
More-disabled men were 1.4 times more likely to die a Covid-related death than non-disabled men, after adjusting for all the factors.
A spokesperson for the UK Covid-19 Inquiry was unable to say if the new ONS figures would be accepted as evidence and if it would ensure that disabled people with visual and hearing impairments would be asked to give evidence to the inquiry.
But he said: “The inquiry’s terms of reference, which set the scope of the inquiry, require it to consider the impact of the pandemic through the lens of inequality, including disability, and to carefully consider the experience of bereaved families and others who have suffered loss or harm.
“The inquiry’s third investigation, looking into the impact of the pandemic on healthcare, is already underway and will examine people’s experience of healthcare including through illustrative accounts.
“The inquiry will review existing research, in addition to commissioning its own research, to help understand the UK’s preparedness and response to the pandemic.”
*Aged 30 to 69
**Deaf and disabled people’s organisations
***Users of British Sign Language
****That study examined the deaths of those who had described themselves in the 2011 census as “limited a little” in their daily lives by a long-term impairment or health condition (less-disabled), “limited a lot” (more-disabled), or not limited by a long-term impairment or health condition (non-disabled)
24 November 2022
Disabled woman who fled abuse says universal credit caused fresh trauma
A disabled woman who fled a violent relationship says she was left without any income after the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) refused to ease demands placed on her by its “abusive” universal credit system, and then stopped her payments.
DWP has closed Chantelle Greene’s* claim after she said she was being “pushed towards the edge” by the universal credit system and asked for her work coach to ease the demands being made.
She finally escaped a 20-year relationship with an abusive partner earlier this year when she fled to a different part of the country and changed her name.
But she now feels she became “embroiled” in another “abusive” and violent relationship, this time with DWP and universal credit.
Last week, Disability News Service (DNS) reported how a disabled woman left traumatised by the daily demands of universal credit took her own life just four days after being told she would need to attend a face-to-face meeting with a work coach.
It also told how disabled activists who have spent years raising concerns about universal credit have warned of its cruelty and how the system “hounds” claimants into complying with strict rules.
DNS also reported last week on two other disabled people who have been left in despair by the system.
This week, DNS has heard from two more claimants who say they have been treated appallingly by the universal credit (UC) system.
One of those is Chantelle Green.
In the months before she managed to escape her abusive partner, she started a new universal credit claim, but she said the process proved “extremely distressing and traumatic”.
The first adviser she spoke to, in July 2021, promised DWP would not bother her for six months while she was escaping her partner and moving to a new home.
But the next adviser she spoke to, early this year, said his colleague should “under no circumstances” have made that promise, and then passed her case to another work coach who was “good with mental health”.
But instead of supporting her through the trauma of escaping her abusive ex and starting afresh in a new part of the country, UC became a process of “coercion and limitless, mind-crushing pressure”, Green said.
DWP began to make regular “friendly” calls, which she felt were aimed at rushing her back into work, even though she was claiming UC because of the significant mental distress caused by the years of abuse and stalking she had experienced at the hands of her ex.
Instead of understanding the distress she experiences when visiting noisy and busy places full of men, Green was told she would have to attend face-to-face appointments with a male work coach.
She claims the work coach also pressured her to prepare for low-paying jobs, rather than allowing her to recover her health in preparation for reopening the business she previously ran.
She says she was unable to manage the pressure and constant demands of keeping up-to-date with her UC journal, which was helping to push her “towards the edge”.
Green says she was threatened with sanctions if she did not commit to a “claimant commitment” and its list of “completely unattainable things” she must achieve.
The pressure imposed by the universal credit journal and the threat of the claimant commitment caused her mental health to spiral downwards, until last month she had to seek crisis help in her local accident and emergency department.
Green told DNS that she sees universal credit as a version of her ex, a “financially abusive, controlling and coercive entity who refuses to allow me to be my own legitimate self”.
She said: “I don’t know what to do. How can I sign a commitment I know I will fail? I’m in a ‘sanctioned if I do, sanctioned if I don’t’ situation.
“How can I not set myself up for being starved with no income? I despair at the cruelty.”
She has now been told that her universal credit claim has been closed, leaving her with just £100, enough to buy food for herself and her dog for the rest of the month.
DWP declined to explain how it justified its treatment of Chantelle Green, whether it would take steps to make universal credit safer for disabled people, and whether it would now ensure that it made reasonable adjustments for universal credit claimants.
But a DWP spokesperson said: “We deliver a supportive and compassionate service supporting millions of people a year on universal credit and our priority is they get the financial support to which they are entitled as soon as possible.”
DWP also claimed that no work search requirements had been placed upon Green during her claim.
It said her case had been referred for a mandatory reconsideration, and if the decision was made to re-open her claim, any payments owed would be issued to her.
The Labour party had not responded to the concerns about universal credit by noon today (Thursday).
*Not her real name
24 November 2022
DWP’s ‘barbarian’ universal credit ‘ignored reasonable adjustment requests’
A disabled woman has described how she was repeatedly denied permission to communicate with her work coach by telephone, thanks to the “barbarian” benefits systems run by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).
Alana Cooper, from Preston, is one of the many disabled people who have found universal credit inaccessible and harmful to her health.
Last week, Disability News Service (DNS) reported how a disabled woman left traumatised by the daily demands of universal credit took her own life just four days after being told she would need to attend a face-to-face meeting with a work coach.
It also told how disabled activists who have spent years raising concerns about universal credit have warned of its cruelty and how the system “hounds” claimants into complying with strict rules.
DNS also reported last week on two other disabled people who were left in despair by the system.
This week, DNS hears from two more claimants who say they have been treated appallingly by the universal credit system.
One of these is Alana Cooper.
She has told DNS how she asked repeatedly – over two short spells on universal credit – for DWP to deal with her claim by telephone rather than through the online universal credit “journal”, but her requests were ignored.
Alana, who lives in Preston, placed several messages on her journal explaining her access needs as a disabled person and asking for DWP to make reasonable adjustments for her, but she did not receive a response.
She had a series of strokes when she was younger and is also autistic and has ADHD, and she finds dealing with emails and text-based messaging “really stressful”.
She then managed to speak to a work coach on the telephone after she told her she had Covid, but when she asked if communication could continue to be via telephone rather than the online journal, she was told: “No, we can’t do that.”
She is also frustrated that, although she stated in her universal credit claim that she was receiving PIP, no-one suggested that she might want to fill in a UC50 capability for work questionnaire, even though she believes she is not fit for work.
She even put a message on her online journal, asking for a UC50 form, but her request was ignored.
Cooper said: “I didn’t feel that I was going to be listened to in any capacity, so I stopped engaging.
“It was the anxiety of having to wait for a reply. It was causing me to have outbursts on the journal.”
She receives just £600 a month through universal credit and £400 of that goes on rent. She has just £200 left to live on, and she is only managing to survive because her grandmother is helping her.
She said: “I have tried every avenue and I don’t know where to turn. They don’t give a damn about disabled people.”
She has now finally been told by a senior team leader that she can communicate with her work coach by telephone.
She believes DWP made that decision after DNS reported last month how the department had admitted repeatedly breaching the Equality Act, after a disabled man was left needing hospital treatment three times for suicidal thoughts caused by months of failures by universal credit advisers and jobcentres.
Cooper had also warned DWP that she would contact the media and take legal action if it did not meet its duties under the Equality Act.
She said: “It is infuriating because my entire life has been put on hold.
“Yes, I am surviving and existing, but I cannot properly move forward with my life and attempt to get a proper career because I am stuck.
“Within a year or two I could have been able to get to a point where I could get out there and do things, but [the universal credit system] wears you down.”
DWP declined to explain how it justified its treatment of Cooper or whether it would take steps to make universal credit safer for disabled people.
It also declined to say if DWP would take steps to ensure that it makes reasonable adjustments promptly for universal credit claimants, meeting its obligations under the Equality Act.
But a DWP spokesperson said: “Our work coaches endeavour to meet the needs of claimants and amend appointments when requested if possible.
“All of Ms Cooper’s appointments in the immediate future will be completed via telephone.”
The Labour party had not responded to the concerns about universal credit by noon today (Thursday).
24 November 2022
Whistleblower’s horror after suicide mirrored her universal credit warning
A whistleblower has spoken of her horror after learning how a disabled woman took her own life following pressure from the universal credit system, a few weeks after she warned such tragedies could happen.
Last week, Disability News Service (DNS) reported how Rebecca*, a disabled woman left traumatised by the daily demands of universal credit, took her own life just four days after being told she would need to attend a face-to-face meeting with a work coach.
But Rebecca’s death, in April, took place just a few weeks after a Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) whistleblower had warned that harsh new policies that were forcing more disabled people to attend weekly face-to-face jobcentre meetings could lead to claimants taking their own lives.
The whistleblower, Jane*, described how she and her colleagues were being “bullied and harassed” into forcing claimants with significant mental distress into attending work-related meetings.
Many of them had been waiting months for a work capability assessment – just like Rebecca – and would eventually be found not fit for work and placed in universal credit’s limited capability for work-related activity group.
Jane said in March that she was “very concerned” that DWP’s new, even stricter, approach “might lead to more people taking their own lives”.
Just a few weeks later, Rebecca took her own life.
Now, after hearing of Rebecca’s suicide, Jane has told DNS that she feels “sick to the stomach”, although not surprised, and she warned that there would likely be more such deaths.
She said: “I knew it was an accident waiting to happen. I am surprised it’s not more.”
She said DWP was still making disabled customers come to the jobcentre for appointments with their work coach, even if – just like Rebecca – they were not well enough to do so, and would eventually be found not fit for work.
A DWP spokesperson referred DNS to the statement it issued last week, and the statement it issued in March.
In March, it said: “Not all claimants need to come into the jobcentre and work coaches can take a flexible approach for those with long-term health conditions to best meet the individual’s need.
“This includes considering their circumstances when agreeing achievable work-related activity and whether appointments should be carried out in person or via phone or their online journal.”
Last week, DWP refused to answer a series of questions about the safety concerns around universal credit.
It refused to say if it needed to make changes to ensure the safety of universal credit, whether it believed claimants were being hounded through their online journals, and if it would collect figures showing how many people on universal credit were taking their own lives.
Instead, a DWP spokesperson claimed in a statement that an “emphasis is placed on protecting vulnerable claimants”.
She added: “Universal credit offers a vital safety net to millions of people, enabling them to support themselves and their families while building towards financial independence through work.”
The Labour party had not responded to the concerns about universal credit by noon today (Thursday).
Meanwhile, Labour has clarified its position on calls for a public inquiry into deaths linked to DWP’s actions.
Vicky Foxcroft, Labour’s shadow minister for disabled people, attended a meeting last week with the party’s shadow work and pensions secretary, Jon Ashworth, relatives of three disabled people who took their own lives following DWP failings, and the charity Rethink Mental Illness.
Foxcroft said this week: “We need a benefits system that works for everyone and does not result in people losing their lives or being treated without dignity.
“When we met with the families who have lost loved ones, it was heart-breaking to hear their stories.
“We deeply empathise with their desire for a public inquiry, but when we get into power, we are keen to start reforming the system straight away.
“The shadow DWP team is concerned that if we were to wait for the outcome of an inquiry, our ability to effect immediate change would be restricted.”
She later clarified that statement and said that Labour would continue to engage on the call for an inquiry with the families and with Rethink.
She told DNS: “The shadow DWP team committed to investigating the inquiry option further.
“The shadow ministers made clear the system needs urgent reform, so these tragic deaths don’t happen again.”
She added: “We need a Labour government that supports disabled people, gives those who want to work the ability to seek work without threat of sanctions and ensures those that can’t don’t live in fear of the DWP.
“A future Labour government will ensure that transparency is at the heart of how we govern.”
*Not her real name
24 November 2022
Scope admits ‘falling short’ after excluding people of colour at awards
The disability charity Scope has been forced to apologise after facing accusations that its new annual awards ceremony excluded disabled people of colour, as well as those who are clinically vulnerable to Covid.
The charity has also been criticised for refusing to pay disabled people who were asked to join its judging panel.
Only two of the 18 judges for the Scope Disability Equality Awards were people of colour, while every one of the awards was handed to a white person, despite several nominations of disabled people of colour.
Scope is also facing criticism over the lack of diversity among its top executives, all of whom are white.
The concerns have been raised in a petition which calls for action by Scope and was launched yesterday (Wednesday).
The petition says: “We’re one of the most intersectional and diverse communities in the world and this exclusion does not represent who we are, and instead echoes the systemic inequalities in opportunities and visibility we experience on a daily basis.”
The petition was co-authored by 11 disabled people, all from minority ethnic and marginalised communities or allies.
Among the concerns they raise is that no awards were given to or presented by disabled people who would have had to take part virtually.
The petition points out that the decision not to compensate judges for their time will exclude those who are most marginalised and cannot afford the time and energy to work for free.
It is not the first time Scope has faced criticism for attempting to use disabled people’s talents and time without paying for them.
Three years ago, Disability News Service reported how Scope sent out a message on social media seeking a “disability blogger” to write an article about sex and relationships on a “voluntary” basis for its online forum.
That request caused anger among a string of disabled writers, who reminded the charity that disabled journalists were often “devalued” and exploited and asked to provide free content.
The petition accepts that Scope has apologised for its failings, but it says this apology was not widely seen on social media.
Some of those who helped draw up the petition have spoken out about their concerns.
Sukhjeen Kaur, chief executive of Chronically Brown, which aims to empower disabled South Asians, and one of those who drafted the petition, said: “As disabled people, we all know that not seeing yourself in those that are platformed can be heart-breaking, so not being able to see myself in the winners that night was a reminder of how much work still needs to be done.
“We hope that this letter will address the internal issues with diversity and inclusion within Scope and model better behaviour for disabled people’s organisations that have not yet considered diversity within their work.”
Priya Rekhi-Smith, co-founder of NYM magazine, said Scope’s selection of a limited number of non-white award nominees but not a single non-white winner was “tokenism”.
She said: “The inclusion of our community felt like Scope was playing the ‘diversity’ card and felt very much like an afterthought.
“However, we feature in your comms, marketing and in the presenters on the night; we are not a PR opportunity and demand to be recognised for the work we are achieving.”
And Sabrina Tirvengadum, co-founder of we’re all human, said she had been “shocked” to hear that all nine award winners were white, despite the diverse audience.
She said: “Disabled people of colour were invited into the room but then made to feel like outsiders at your awards.
“I hope Scope can look within and learn from this mistake by making real changes to [its] ethics.
“Make us feel like we belong in our own community and champion all disabled people. Welcome us onto the stage instead of excluding us.”
A Scope spokesperson told Disability News Service (DNS) yesterday: “We welcome the feedback that we have received about the Scope Disability Equality Awards through the petition and directly from individuals over the past few weeks.
“We are sorry we fell short, and we know that there will always be more that we can learn and improve on to make sure our work reflects the experiences of the diversity within the disability community.
“We know there is more we need to do to make sure our work champions and reflects the diversity of Britain’s 14.6 million disabled people.
“We know we fell short in representing Black, Asian and ethnic minority disabled people and organisations in the winners, shortlist and judging panel.
“We have received important feedback on the awards which we will be acting on for next time, including promoting the awards with grassroots organisations, being more explicit about our commitment to diversity in our criteria and judging guidance and increasing the diversity of our independent judging panel.”
She said the judging panel had included disabled TV stars, journalists, business leaders and activists.
She said: “Many are well-paid professionals, and we did not feel as a charity that it was appropriate to use public donations to pay people in these circumstances.
“However, we have taken on board the feedback we have received about this and will be reviewing how we engage and compensate individuals as part of any awards in the future.
“Additionally, a group of disabled people were paid to work with us to co-produce the awards.
“This group were involved in designing and decision-making across all aspects of the awards over many months.”
She added: “We asked all guests to let us know of any access requirements or any support needs.
“We talked through tailored options to support people to attend physically or virtually.
“We are confident the awards was an accessible event, and if anyone presenting or accepting an award wanted virtual or pre-recorded access this would have been provided.
“We also made the event hybrid, so that anyone unable to attend could enjoy the event from home via our public livestream link.”
She said that three of the seven people in Scope’s senior leadership team self-identify as disabled people, while more than half of the nine people on its board of trustees are disabled, including its chair, music producer Robin Millar.
She also said the charity had taken steps to make its apology easier to find on its website.
But Yen Godden, a disability advocate and social media accessibility specialist, who helped draw up the petition, said in response to Scope’s statement that the awards were “a white out and excluded many from our community”.
She told DNS: “Scope’s initial apology to the social media backlash from the disabled community and their response to our petition further confirms the concerns our community has and has raised in the petition.
“They are not disabled led, yet claim to speak for disabled people and collect millions in funding using our needs and our community’s name.
“The lack of diversity in the awards is embedded within Scope itself.
“Following the exclusion of non-white disabled people as winners at the Scope awards and the exclusion of the clinically vulnerable it is time to say, ‘Nothing about us without ALL of us.’”
She also criticised Scope’s “disgusting” excuse for not paying its judges.
She said: “If they, a disability charity, do not feel it right to spend funds to pay disabled people for their work, they need to do a complete overhaul of their attitudes towards, and views of, disabled people.
“They are perpetuating old bigoted attitudes towards disabled people as not worthy of real pay and real equity.
“If judges are not fairly compensated, the awards will always exclude many, especially the most marginalised of our community from the table where decisions are made.”
24 November 2022
Failure to appoint disabled peers ‘is infecting policy-making’
The failure of the membership of the House of Lords to reflect the lived experience of disabled people is “infecting” the process of making policy, according to a disabled peer.
Lord [Kevin] Shinkwin, a Conservative peer, told fellow members of the Lords on Friday that he believes that not one of the 54 peers appointed in the last two years had lived experience of disability.
He said his experience in the Lords over the last seven years suggested that there were just a dozen members with experience of non-age-related disability out of nearly 800 peers.
He said this was important “because it weakens our claim to be a House of expertise and experience when there are 14 million disabled people in the UK – unless, of course, one still believes that disabled people are simply a homogeneous group to and for whom stuff is done”.
He was speaking in support of a private members’ bill introduced by the academic and Tory peer Lord Norton, who has been convenor of the Campaign for an Effective Second Chamber for the last 20 years.
His House of Lords (peerage nominations) bill would, among other measures, ensure an appointments commission took diversity into account when considering future nominations.
Lord Shinkwin told Disability News Service (DNS) this week: “The deficit of lived experience informs and infects the policy-making process with predictable results: we never break out of the cycle of non-disabled politicians viewing disabled people as those to and for whom things are done.”
He was speaking following reports that Labour leader Keir Starmer would abolish the House of Lords if Labour wins power at the next general election.
Lord Shinkwin said: “Regardless of who wins the next election, we can’t afford to pretend that being so unrepresentative isn’t hurting and even endangering us.”
He said the Lords “urgently need to get our own house in order so that disabled peers feel supported and valued, if and when more are appointed.
“At the moment, this is not the case.”
In March, Lord Shinkwin told fellow peers of the lack of support he had received from the House of Lords following major surgery.
He told them: “I might as well have been dead.
“It reminded me that this wonderful institution remains a place whose rules and modus operandi were designed by and for rich, non-disabled men.
“I will say no more on the matter now, but it is clear to me that this needs to change if we are to become a stronger, more diverse, more representative House.
“If we do not want to be consigned to the past, we must stop living in the past.
“The appalling way we treat members whose disability enforces temporary absence from your Lordships’ House is indefensible and cannot continue.”
Although he provided no further details of how he had been treated, he told DNS this week that, until the Lords gets its “house in order” when it comes to procedures and ways of working, “any disabled person who’s appointed will face the same problems I experienced”.
He added: “It’s awful that this discrimination is being perpetrated as a matter of course by part of the national law-making body, which should be a beacon of best practice.”
Baroness Falkner, the crossbench peer and chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, also offered support to Lord Norton’s bill.
She told fellow peers last week that it was important to have diversity in the Lords so its membership could “demonstrate to our diverse population that there are some members of their kind, of their lived experience, who form part of the legislature and are aware of the problems of their tangible day-to-day lives”.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe, a Cabinet Office minister, made it clear that the government did not support the bill.
She said it would hand more power to “an unelected and ultimately unaccountable body to restrict the ability of the prime minister to make recommendations to the sovereign, and indeed allowing it to come up with its own additional criteria for appointing new peers”.
The bill passed its second reading and will now be debated further at its committee stage.
24 November 2022
History month launch hears disabled people ‘must keep fighting back’ on austerity
Disabled people must “keep fighting back” and “politicise” so they can battle the impact of a decade of austerity, a series of leading disabled figures have urged.
They spoke about the importance of working together to fight back against the impact of 12 years of austerity, at the launch of this year’s UK Disability History Month.
The month-long event, which runs between 16 November and 16 December, is focused this year on disability, health and wellbeing.
Professor Colin Barnes, founder of both the Centre for Disability Studies at the University of Leeds and The Disability Press, told the launch event: “For the future, disabled people must come together and become politicised.”
He said it was a “sad state of affairs” that anti-discrimination legislation had “never been put fully into practice”.
He said: “Without political action against discrimination against disabled people there will be a continuation of the sad state of affairs, and unfortunately the way the world is moving at the moment, it seems that the politicisation of disablement is more important than it has been for the past 20 years.”
He added: “One of the things that is so terrible about the last 20 years, and particularly the last 10 years, 12 years, is that in Britain, poverty is increasing, and poverty generates impairment and ill-health.
“The modern world is not geared to generating wealth for equality, it’s generating wealth for inequality, and that’s something that we all must fight against.”
Disabled activist Ellen Clifford, author of The War On Disabled People, spoke of the importance of peer support as a way to protect disabled people’s health and wellbeing with a new wave of austerity on the horizon.
She said: “From my experience as a disabled person, it is our peer support networks that play a vitally important role in our lives.
“It’s where we share information about how to survive, we are able to share resources, we are able to keep each other going.”
But she also pointed to the importance of campaigning.
Research she has been involved in with the University of Essex has shown that “an attitude of resistance” can help disabled people “maintain a sense of positive identity during the worst times of cuts”.
She said: “It can give us a sense of empowerment that can make us want to keep going.
“That kind of anger can be much better to experience than a feeling that you just want to give up, but it also puts you in contact with other people and it is social networks which are really, really important to the wellbeing of many of us.”
Linda Burnip, a founder of Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC), told the launch event: “Disabled people really can’t cut back any more. They’ve already cut back and cut back and cut back for the past 12 years.
“There’s just nothing left to cut. I’m really worried about the levels of malnutrition people face and how the levels of malnutrition have increased massively.
“Access to healthcare has got much worse. Social care is in crisis, incomes are totally inadequate, and all of that is before the cost-of-living crisis kicks in.
“It’s really important that we have to keep fighting back because I honestly believe it will result in massive numbers of deaths if we don’t try and stop these attacks.”
Richard Rieser, founder of UK Disability History Month, said he saw a theme developing during the launch event.
He said: “We have to collectivise our issues. We cannot allow ourselves to be isolated and individualised and social media and the internet have helped with that.”
But he added: “There’s no alternative, really, to meeting with other disabled people on actions, and events, and in meetings, and discussing.”
Deborah Williams, executive director of the Creative Diversity Network, which works to enable broadcasters to improve diversity and inclusion, spoke of how disabled people were still seen in the industry – both on-screen and off-screen – as “the patient” and as non-sexual, and were “pitied”, with much of the approach still “very disablist”.
But she said she had come that day from a meeting with the industry regulator Ofcom, and she said she was encouraged that it would soon start improving the way it monitors disability and ethnicity, and issues such as sex and disability on screen.
She said: “So there are droplets [of progress] all over the place; the thing is: how do we connect them together and how do we make sure that we are changing structures and changing systems and… changing the way people think about disability and disabled people?”
She said Ofcom was also examining how it could challenge the criteria for how programmes are commissioned and ensure that that process was “appropriate in terms of disability”, and she said the regulator wanted “to start moving towards” a social model of disability approach.
Disabled artist-activist Dolly Sen spoke at the launch of the distressing abuse she experienced as a child, how she first began to hear voices, and how she began writing in her late 20s “as a way of expressing really painful things… writing about loneliness made me less lonely”, and how she found her creative work “soulful”.
She also described her art-activist project in which she filmed herself and others protesting the abuses of the Department for Work and Pensions.
Andrew Lee, director of People First (Self Advocacy), spoke of the campaigning work of the COVID-19 Support and Action Group of self-advocates during the pandemic.
He said the pandemic had left many people with learning difficulties frightened to leave their homes, with self-advocacy groups having to adapt how they operate.
He said: “For society generally, it has finished, it’s over, but for a lot of people with learning difficulties, and other people with pre-existing conditions, our minds are still stuck in the Covid mindset.”
Others who spoke included Jon Luxton, a disability equality adviser to the Welsh government, who spoke about his work and the ground-breaking, disabled-led Locked Out report, which analysed the impact of the pandemic on disabled people in Wales.
The report described how the pandemic led to medical discrimination, restricted access to public services and social support, exclusion from public spaces and public life, restrictions on independent living and an erosion of basic human rights.
Luxton said the work carried out by the disabled people who produced the report was “staggering”.
He said: “I think it is probably the first time disabled people have been allowed to go into government, with the full support of government, and say what they truly believed about the situation of their life, and that was an incredibly empowering thing for all those involved, including myself, and I was there as an adviser.”
Three disabled community curators described their work on Manchester People’s History Museum’s disabled-led Nothing About Us Without Us exhibition*, which runs from 6 November 2022 to 16 October 2023.
Anis Akhtar, one of the curators, said: “I think it’s really important, as disability advocates, that we learn about our history.
“The tagline for the exhibition is ‘disability activism: past, present and future’ so we’re trying to look at our history, what’s going on currently, and what’s going to happen in the future, and how all these tie together.”
The meeting was also addressed by Louise Regan, national officer for membership and equality for the National Education Union, which sponsors UKDHM.
24 November 2022
Roger Lewis: Kindness, decency and dedication to fighting oppression
Disabled activists, politicians, family and friends have paid tribute to Roger Lewis, a dedicated and much-loved activist who played a key role in the disabled people’s anti-cuts movement over the last decade, and who died this week.
A string of fellow activists have described his determination, kindness, sense of fun, patience, and commitment to fighting injustice and oppression.
He had been a member of the national steering group of Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) since 2011, and he played a leading role in many DPAC protests and direct actions.
Paula Peters, a fellow member of the DPAC steering group, said: “He taught us so much, made me laugh, made me smile and gave so much to the movement of which he was such a big part.
“I will remember the big roars, the little roars, and sharing his day-to-day experiences of visual impairment, his sense of fun and wicked sense of humour, and his sharp political perspective.”
His sister, Jenny, said: “He was an incredible, inspirational man who cared more about others than himself.
“We have lost one of the truly good people in this world. He will be badly missed but so very, very fondly remembered by the many, many people whose lives he touched.”
John McDonnell, a Labour MP, former shadow chancellor and a long-time DPAC supporter, said: “Roger was a tremendous and courageous campaigner for disabled people.
“With his wonderful speeches and by his example he inspired us all to fight for the rights of disabled people.
“Roger always led from the front with determination and compassion. It was a privilege to count him as a friend and comrade. He will be so greatly missed.”
DPAC steering group member Bob Ellard said Lewis was “such a lovely guy, with warmth and a cracking sense of humour”.
He said: “I also had the privilege of his quiet wisdom in our discussions within the DPAC steering group; he had the ability to disagree gently but persuasively against a prevailing consensus, and his thoughts on an issue were always valuable.”
Ellen Morrison, Labour’s disabled members’ representative on its national executive committee, said Lewis had been “welcoming, supportive and patient” when she was a young activist who was new to the disabled people’s movement.
She said: “You could learn so much from him, not just about politics and theory and the policies we desperately need in the here and now, but he demonstrated kindness and decency in everything he did, too.
“He fought hard for a better world, but he did it with an infectious sense of joy and fun.”
Tracey Lazard, chief executive of Inclusion London, said: “He was a dedicated disability rights activist, a key member of DPAC and socialist who lived by the principles of solidarity and community.
“He was also a really kind and lovely bloke, always willing to do what he could to support and contribute to our movement. He will be greatly missed.”
Justine Jones, co-chair of Inclusion London and co-founder of Bromley Experts by Experience, said Lewis was “an amazing person – in an effortless way”.
She said: “He was such a lovely person, who always made me feel heard and what I had to say valued.
“Despite his pain, he focused on supporting others. What I admired most about him was that he was a proactive and fearless campaigner, and he will always be remembered with respect within the disability community.
“He always had such wise words. Without him, when faced with difficult questions, we will have to learn to say to ourselves, ‘What would Roger say?’”
Denise McKenna, co-founder of the Mental Health Resistance Network, remembers how supportive Lewis had been to the “hitherto insular mental health survivor movement” when it united with other disabled people to resist the government’s welfare cuts and reforms in 2010.
She said: “Roger welcomed us with open arms, he included our voices everywhere, fully integrating us into the wider disability movement.
“It went way beyond his political activism. He was eager to understand our experiences at every level and made it his business to open doors for us.
“I will remember of Roger that he gave to others, unconditionally, his positivity and hope, his wisdom, intelligence and thoughtfulness, all of these things he shared freely, asking nothing in return.
“He was more than a political activist; he was a man who was profoundly in touch with his humanity and with that of others.
“I think of Roger as someone who gave and then gave again.”
Roger Lewis was born in June 1962, near Ipswich, the son of two teachers who were humanists and socialists, and he attended a rural secondary modern school.
Although he struggled to engage with school and did not excel academically, he became interested in politics as a teenager, began to read voraciously and moved to south-east London in the early 1980s.
He settled in Brixton and began working for Lambeth council as a support worker for disabled adults, and joined the Socialist Workers Party.
He developed arthritis in his early 20s and began to lose his sight in his early 30s, due to retinitis pigmentosa.
When he became completely blind, he fought off attempts by Lambeth council to make him redundant, and he remained employed by the council, running community groups for visually-impaired and Deaf residents.
As a member of Unison, he represented many disabled workers as they fought against discrimination.
He was being examined following a possible heart attack earlier this month when he was found to have advanced stomach cancer.
Friends and family say he was cheerful to the end, and repeatedly thanked the NHS staff for their exemplary care.
Funeral details will be posted soon on DPAC’s website.
24 November 2022
Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week
Ill patients are refusing sicknotes from their GP because they cannot afford time off work, while physicians suffer “moral distress” at their powerlessness to do more to help those in the most vulnerable situations, the new leader of Britain’s family doctors has revealed. More patients are experiencing asthma attacks or other serious breathing problems because they cannot afford to heat their homes, said Dr Kamila Hawthorne, the chair of the Royal College of GPs, while many have reported deteriorating mental health due to financial stress: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/nov/22/severely-ill-refusing-sicknotes-as-they-cannot-afford-not-to-work-says-gps-head
The European Space Agency (ESA) has unveiled its astronaut class of 2022, including five career astronauts, 11 members of the astronaut reserve and, notably, the first ever disabled astronaut. ESA received a record number of applications to join this year’s class of potential space-goers, with more than 22,000 hopefuls applying to be part of the programme. Among the successful applicants, John McFall has become the world’s first disabled astronaut. The 41-year-old lost his right leg in a motorcycle accident when he was 19, going on to represent Britain in the Paralympics: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/european-space-agency-announces-brit-28568228
Several cafes in York could be forced to stop serving customers outside after councillors agreed new regulations. Under the new rules, tables would only be permitted outside cafes on pedestrianised streets if there was a remaining 4.9 feet (1.5 metres) of pavement. The decision has been welcomed by disabled campaigners concerned about city centre access, but some businesses said they feared the financial impact. The full council is expected to take a final decision in December: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-63727362
24 November 2022
News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com
