Ministers push ahead with ‘highly damaging’ plans on ‘fit for work’ assessment
The government is to push ahead with “nightmare” cost-cutting plans to tighten the work capability assessment, which will save the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) nearly £1.3 billion a year by 2028.
Confirmation of the changes to the assessment were made as part of the autumn statement, as chancellor Jeremy Hunt said it was “wrong economically and wrong morally” to provide support for so many disabled people without forcing them to look for work.
He claimed the tightening of the assessment reflected “greater flexibility and availability of home working after the pandemic”.
The changes were confirmed less than a month after the end of a public consultation, although they should only take place if the Conservatives win the next general election.
In the aftermath of the budget, disabled people’s organisations and allies wrote to work and pensions secretary Mel Stride to express their “deep concern” over the work capability assessment (WCA) changes.
In their letter (PDF), they say the “overwhelming consensus” among those attending consultation events held by DWP was that the proposals would be “highly damaging”.
And they add: “Given the weight of opposition to these proposals that was evident during the consultation period, it is unfortunately hard to avoid the conclusion that in part its outcome was already determined.”
The letter was signed by Disability Rights UK and Inclusion London, and coordinated by the anti-poverty charity Z2K, with organisations including Child Poverty Action Group and the National Association of Welfare Rights Advisers also supporting it.
Disabled activist Ellen Clifford has already begun a legal action that aims to force the government to carry out a fresh consultation into its WCA proposals, with the support of Public Law Project.
There was also confirmation yesterday of plans announced last week that will mean some claimants – although not those with a disability-related allowance – who refuse to comply with conditions imposed on them by work coaches could have their universal credit claim closed entirely and lose their entitlement to additional benefits such as free prescriptions.
These measures could affect some disabled people found unfairly fit for work, including those appealing against that finding.
Evenbreak, the disabled-run online job board for disabled people, was highly critical of the government’s approach.
Jane Hatton, Evenbreak’s chief executive, said the reforms were based on “completely false assumptions”, most importantly that “disabled people who don’t work are lazy, and need to be forced into work by the use of harsher and harsher punishments”.
She said: “The government says that work improves people’s wellbeing, but not if you have a severe mental health condition or severe pain or fatigue.
“In some cases, work can make you significantly worse.
“The other assumption is that there are jobs that disabled people could do working from home.
“For many, just like non-disabled people, working from home may not be an option, but even if it is, those opportunities are becoming fewer and fewer.
“Instead of demonising unemployed disabled people as ‘benefit scroungers’, this government – any government – needs to look at the real barriers that prevent disabled people from working, many of which they have manifested themselves.”
Justin Donne, chair of the autistic-led charity Autistic Nottingham, said: “The only ‘moral wrong’ is the government’s callous attitude to people who are long-term unemployed, including the autistic people our charity supports.
“What’s concerning about the chancellor’s announcement is that it ignores the fact that few employers offer that kind of work-from-home flexibility and adequate pay, to make such plans realistic.
“We do not live in a dream world where these jobs exist, thus creating a nightmare for autistic people on benefits who are long-term unemployed due to a lack of accessible work.”
The autumn statement also confirmed that working-age benefits would be uprated next spring by 6.7 per cent (September’s inflation rate), with the state pension rising by 8.5 per cent*.
And Hunt confirmed last week’s announcement of an expansion of employment support through the new Back to Work Plan, much of it aimed at those with mental health conditions.
Alongside the chancellor’s statement, DWP published its response to the consultation on its proposed changes to the WCA.
The response came only three weeks after the consultation ended.
Documents released as part of the autumn statement say the number of people found to have limited capability for work and work-related activity (LCWRA) through universal credit – who therefore do not have any work-related conditions imposed on them by DWP – has increased by 0.7 million to about 2.4 million since May 2019.
The document confirms that many of the WCA proposals will go ahead from 2025 at the earliest.
Although ministers no longer plan to scrap the criteria that protects those seen as being at “substantial risk” of harm if found able to carry out work-related activity, they still aim to amend this safety net so that it only applies in “exceptional circumstances”, protecting those with “the most severe mental or physical health conditions”.
They will also go ahead with changes to the WCA’s “getting about” and “mobilising” activities, removing the mobilising descriptor for eligibility for LCWRA and reducing the points scored for the “getting about” descriptor for limited capability for work eligibility.
But they will not go ahead with proposed changes to the WCA descriptors for continence or social engagement.
The changes will apply to new claims for employment and support allowance (ESA), and to UC claimants who report a health condition and need a WCA, but DWP says they will “not affect existing claimants whose circumstances remain the same”.
The changes will save DWP an estimated £125 million in 2025-26, £500 million in 2026-27, £900 million in 2027-28, and £1.265 billion in 2028-29.
And, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility (PDF), this will mean 371,000 disabled people will lose their entitlement to extra support – and start being subject to conditionality and sanctions – as they are moved out of the LCWRA group (or the ESA support group) by 2028-29.
The WCA reforms will increase employment by just 10,000 by 2028-29, the Office for Budget Responsibility estimates.
DWP received more than 1,300 written responses to the WCA consultation, and it claims they have all been “reviewed and carefully considered”.
The DWP document admits that the responses “express concern” about the proposals, including the impact of disabled people losing out on the LCWRA additions – worth £390 a month at current rates – and “fears of being brought into a benefit regime with conditionality and the possibility of benefit sanctions”.
It also says there will be a new “offer” from 2025 which will mean that those already assessed as having LCWRA will be able to try work but will not face another WCA if that job does not work out.
But although they promise this means that almost all people currently assessed as having LCWRA “will never face a WCA reassessment again”, the government has already announced plans to scrap the WCA in the years after the next election, with the much-criticised personal independence payment assessment system to be used instead to decide eligibility for out-of-work disability benefits.
*Some disability benefits are devolved in Scotland, so the Scottish government will decide on how they are uprated, while all DWP benefits are devolved in Northern Ireland
23 November 2023
DWP told to release ‘worst case scenario’ report on impact of errors on claimants
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has been ordered to release a secret report that describes the impact of its errors on “vulnerable” benefit claimants, which it admits could have a “negative” impact on its reputation.
The report contains “worst case scenario” information that DWP has calculated about the impact of its errors on claimants, which it appears keen to keep hidden from the public.
A decision notice by information commissioner John Edwards, instructing DWP to release the report, suggests that the document contains estimates of how many benefit claimants have been harmed by the department’s errors.
The report is said to contain “a narrow, informal snapshot of information relating to some errors which may impact on the experience of some of its customers as well as case-specific information”.
DWP says the information was only intended to be considered by its serious case panel.
And it told the information commissioner that “some of the information, if presented in its current format, could have a negative reputational impact on DWP”, while also noting the report’s “informal language and candid tone”.
It is the third time in a month that DWP has been told to release a document to Disability News Service (DNS) that describes how its policies affect disabled people claiming benefits, particularly those experiencing mental distress*.
And it is the latest setback – now stretching back nearly a decade – to its continuing attempts to hide evidence of how its failings are harming disabled people, often fatally.
The report was considered by DWP’s serious case panel in October 2022 (PDF), and DNS has been trying to obtain a copy since March.
DWP has refused to release the document, claiming that publication “would be likely to inhibit candour and likely prejudice the effective conduct of public affairs”.
After DNS complained to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), DWP told the information commissioner that “maintaining the safe space for free and frank conversations, at the time of the request, outweighed the public interest in disclosure”.
It suggested that if the report was released now, it was “likely to lead to pressure for quick solutions or responses, rather than time and space to implement the most effective changes, which is ultimately in the greater public interest”.
DWP also told the commissioner that the report “includes details of a sensitive nature” and publishing it “could harm the overall working of the Department”.
The information commissioner said he accepted that the serious case panel “handles complicated and sensitive matters such as those relating to welfare and safeguarding” and that there was “a public interest in allowing DWP the time and space to implement the recommendations made in the paper”.
But he told DWP that this was “outweighed by the strong public interest in the timely understanding and scrutiny” of the recommendations made by the report, while he was “not persuaded that it is in the public interest to wait until after these actions have been implemented” before publishing the document.
He also said there was “strong public interest in understanding DWP’s approach to preventing future errors and safeguarding issues”, which would “allow scrutiny of the quality of the analysis put to the Serious Case Panel and whether the recommendations are accepted and implemented”.
The information commissioner also found that DWP breached the Freedom of Information Act by failing to respond to the original request by DNS within the correct timeframe.
A DWP spokesperson said: “We are aware of the decision notice from the Information Commissioner’s Office and we are currently considering our position.”
*Last week, DWP released a report that ministers had kept hidden for four years and which revealed significant flaws at the heart of the universal credit system and how DWP supports “vulnerable” claimants, after being ordered to do so by the information rights tribunal, thanks to the efforts of campaigner John Slater. Earlier this month, the information commissioner told DWP to release its written assessment of how the decision to abolish the work capability assessment would impact disabled people and other groups protected under the Equality Act
23 November 2023
Flawed universal credit means government’s plans for sanctions ‘are inexplicable’
Disabled campaigners have questioned government plans to tighten the benefit sanctions regime and even end access to free prescriptions for some claimants, at a time of mounting evidence of a deeply flawed universal credit system and fatal safeguarding failures.
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt and work and pensions secretary Mel Stride announced a “tougher” sanctions regime alongside an expansion of “tailored, intensive support” last week, as part of a new Back to Work Plan that will have the universal credit working-age benefits system at its heart.
The plan will mean some claimants – although not those with a disability-related allowance – who refuse to comply with conditions imposed on them by jobcentres could have their universal credit claim closed and lose their entitlement to additional benefits such as access to legal aid and free prescriptions.
These measures could still affect many disabled people, including those who have been wrongly found fit for work, and those appealing against such a finding.
There will also be an expansion of employment support, much of it aimed at those with mental health conditions, including the Individual Placement and Support programme.
Ministers claim that expanding the NHS Talking Therapies programme will “help those with mental health conditions stay in or find work”, while the Universal Support scheme will match 100,000 people per year in England and Wales with existing vacancies and support them in their new jobs, and the WorkWell service in England will support people “at risk of falling into long-term unemployment due to sickness or disability, through integrated work and health support”.
But the announcements came after weeks of revelations highlighting continuing concerns about the safety of the universal credit system, and the pressures that jobcentre work coaches are already subjected to.
Only last week, Disability News Service (DNS) revealed that a coroner had warned Stride he needed to take action to prevent flaws in universal credit (UC) leading to further deaths, following the suicide of a disabled man who had become overwhelmed by the application process.
In the same week, DNS reported how a “deeply troubling” government document that ministers had kept hidden for four years revealed significant flaws at the heart of the UC system and how DWP supports “vulnerable” claimants.
But DNS has also reported in the last month how whistleblowers from an Oxford jobcentre have raised serious concerns about safeguarding failures that have put the lives of benefit claimants at risk, with Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the PCS union, saying it was “beyond disgraceful” that many of his DWP members were “becoming too ill to work because of chronic understaffing”.
Dr Sally Witcher, former chief executive of Inclusion Scotland and founder of the social enterprise Inclusive New Normal, and a former chair of the UK government’s Disability Employment Advisory Committee, told DNS this week: “It’s inexplicable why, instead of a fundamental rethink, government chooses to double-down on a demonstrably failed approach that is linked to suicides.
“Yet they seem to think the answer is to throw more tax-payers money at it and compel people to engage with it, by issuing threats of dire destitution, gaslighting real sickness, barriers and employer discrimination, and accusing people of lack of effort to find jobs that are, in fact, wholly fictitious.
“By what stretch of warped imagination could that possibly constitute support of any kind?
“This does nothing to acknowledge the real reasons sick and/or disabled people are not in work and it will achieve nothing except compound exclusion and exacerbate mental ill-health.
“And, if benefits are totally withdrawn, be in no doubt that people will die.”
Disabled researcher Stef Benstead, author of Second Class Citizens, which describes the harm caused to disabled people by a decade of cuts and reforms, said the government was “good at creating new names for the same old ideas of increasing conditionality and sanctions whilst calling it increased support and incentives” but was “less good at understanding the lives of the people it is affecting”.
She said: “The DWP regularly designs employment support policy based on over-optimistic expectations of what claimants are able to do.
“Their own work coaches report being over-stretched and unable to help many of the people the DWP expects them to get into work.
“Now we hear that a 2019 report found that UC does not support vulnerable claimants properly.
“This is not surprising, given the DWP’s beliefs around benefit claimants, but it is further evidence that their constant focus on making benefits harder to access is badly misguided.”
David Hayes, from Disabled People Against Cuts Sheffield, which has warned for years of the flaws at the heart of universal credit, said DWP had access to “a plethora of research that shows the current system of disability payments is causing huge levels of impoverishment, distress and death”.
But he said the government, including Hunt, Stride, and prime minister Rishi Sunak, “seem determined to continue persecuting disabled people, and treating us with utter disdain”.
He said: “We all know the lived reality of the situation that their ideology has caused, despite their trying to convince people they come as ‘friends’.
“If all you have left in the tank is stripping disabled people of our meagre means to live so as to distract from the countless humanitarian failures you’ve presided over, forcing us to work when years of high-level research and the application of medical science prove that we are not fit to work, then it’s time to go or prepare to be removed.”
Meanwhile, the announcement by Stride and Hunt has been accompanied by a return to some of the harmful rhetoric of the post-2010 coalition years, with Laura Trott, chief secretary to the Treasury, telling Sky News: “Ultimately, there is a duty on citizens that if they are able to go to work, that’s what they should do.”
Hunt, who wrongly stated that “work is good for everyone” – contradicting research commissioned and frequently quoted by DWP over the last two decades* – also warned: “Anyone choosing to coast on the hard work of taxpayers will lose their benefits.”
Those words echo the language of David Cameron at the Conservative party conference in October 2010, when he told party members: “If you really cannot work, we will always look after you.
“But if you can work, and refuse to work, we will not let you live off the hard work of others.”
That speech, and others like it by coalition ministers, including Iain Duncan Smith, who spoke the following year of how incapacity benefit was “too often abused as an excuse for avoiding work”, were followed by years of deaths linked to tightening of the sanctions regime and the disability benefits system.
*The 2006 research (PDF) by Gordon Waddell and Kim Burton is often criticised by disabled activists, but it still found only that work is “generally” good for health, while more recent research has concluded that there is only “limited evidence on the effect of employment on health, with some studies showing a positive effect of work on health yet others showing no relationship or isolated effects”
23 November 2023
Research exposes hardship and emotional harm caused by care charges
New research has exposed the financial hardship and emotional harm caused by charging working-age disabled people for their care and support.
It is believed to be the first time that research has focused solely on how care charges impact on working-age adults in England.
Although it was only a small study, Inclusion London – which supported the research – said this week that it “evidences and exposes the cruelty of the social care charging system” and shows how the charging system “makes people powerless, demeans them and makes them more dependent”.
Participants in the study spoke of the considerable stress caused by the poverty and fear of poverty they experienced due to rising care charges.
The research, carried out by former BBC journalist Claire Bolderson for a masters dissertation, also suggests that charging can inflict “emotional harm” on disabled people and carers.
Her study says: “People drawing on care and their family members feel devalued by the unequal and often humiliating way in which they are treated by a charging system that undermines autonomy and independence.”
Of seven interviewees, all of whom lived in different local authority areas, two had recently ended their council-funded support after “significant increases” in how much they were being asked to pay.
Those with no family living nearby, or who were estranged from their family, appeared to live “in the most disadvantaged circumstances”, with the study adding: “This included those who had given up their care because of the scale of their assessed contribution, both of whom described emotionally as well as materially deprived lives in which they were very isolated.”
One of these two participants said: “I wash my hair once a month [that’s] why it’s always covered. Shower maybe once or twice a week. Flat is usually a Tip. I don’t eat great.”
The other said: “I’m missing my appointments… I’m missing getting my medications, I’ve got no social inclusion.”
One of the key concerns examined in the study is that most disability benefits are taken into account in the means test that determines how much a disabled person should contribute to their support.
For several disabled people who took part in the study, the percentage of their benefits deducted through the care charge was “significantly higher” than the basic rate of income tax, which crystallised their feelings about how society values those who cannot work.
Bolderson says in the study that the anger about charging was most apparent when participants discussed disability-related expenditure (DRE), disability-related costs that should be considered by a council when assessing how much a disabled person can afford to pay in care charges.
One participant in the study spoke of the “powerlessness” and “humiliation” she felt during lengthy negotiations over what spending could be included as DRE, which can “require disclosure of the most intimate personal care needs”.
One parent said she had asked for a small allowance under DRE to help pay for a particular type of sanitary wear for her daughter, but the local authority (LA) said a claim could only be made for a different item which did not meet her daughter’s needs.
The study says: “This was not a case of suggesting a cheaper product. It was the wrong product, accompanied by the LA arranging what the parent felt was an unnecessary and intrusive medical appointment for the young person.”
It adds: “Throughout the interviews, participants implied that the negative impacts of care charging are intrinsic features of the social care system.
“Without exception they portrayed that system as unhelpful at best, and openly hostile at worst.”
Some of the participants described living conditions of “extreme poverty – eating poorly and irregularly and being unable to afford heating through the winter”, while all three parents who were interviewed said they had been forced to subsidise their disabled adult son or daughter so they could have “some quality of life beyond a basic existence”.
Among the recommendations, the study calls for local authorities to review their charging systems to ensure they are cost-effective and “fair and transparent” for the service-user.
It also suggests reforming the means test to exclude all disability benefits from the income assessment.
In her conclusion, Bolderson says her research “provides some evidence that care charging can lead people assessed as needing care to reject it on cost grounds with potentially serious implications for their health and welfare”.
Svetlana Kotova, Inclusion London’s director of campaigns and justice, said: “This research evidences and exposes the cruelty of the social care charging system.
“It shows not only how the system pushes disabled people into financial hardship but also demonstrates emotional harm done to those who have the highest support needs.
“The system makes people powerless, demeans them and makes them more dependent. This is wrong.
“This research is [more] powerful evidence of why the system needs to change urgently.
“This is why we have been calling on the government to scrap care charges and in the interim stop taking disability benefits as income for the purpose of charging.
“This research must be a starting point for a more comprehensive study, and we will be looking to work with academics to build on it.”
23 November 2023
Rail industry unable to point to single train company ‘getting it right’ on access
Senior figures in the rail industry have been unable to point to a single train company that is even close to “getting it right” when it comes to providing an accessible service to disabled passengers.
Iain Stewart, the Conservative chair of the Commons transport committee, told three senior representatives of the industry yesterday (Wednesday) that he and his colleagues had heard “quite alarming stories” about the difficulties disabled people face when using the railways.
And he said that this situation “seems to be getting worse since the pandemic”.
Jacqueline Starr, chief executive of Rail Delivery Group – which represents the companies that run Britain’s railways – said she recognised there were “inconsistencies across the network” but she “would not support the statement that it is in absolute deterioration”.
She claimed there was evidence from the industry’s Passenger Assist mobile phone app – which has been heavily criticised by disabled campaigners – of “increased satisfaction from customers”.
But she added: “I do acknowledge that there are still way too many cases and instances where disabled customers experience difficulties when they’re traveling with us.”
Stephanie Tobyn, director of strategy, policy and reform at the Office of Rail and Road (ORR), the rail regulator, said the examples of access failures previously provided to the committee were “very alarming” and “very difficult to watch”.
She said ORR’s research showed that “the majority of people do have a positive experience”, but when just one step of the process does not go to plan “then effectively the whole system collapses for that passenger” although “for the wide variety of passengers, when it goes well, it goes extremely well”.
Asked if there was a single operator that had “got it right” or was close to “getting it right”, Starr was unable to provide an example, and said there were “good and bad examples across all operators”.
Tobyn was also unable to suggest an example and said it would be “very difficult to highlight one particular operator”.
Alison Smith, accessibility and inclusion lead for Network Rail, also failed to provide an example of a rail operator in Britain that was getting it right on access, but she said there were “some really good examples of best practice”, although she did not name them.
Members of the committee were hearing evidence on the industry’s legal obligations on accessible transport as part of an ongoing inquiry.
The SNP’s Gavin Newlands challenged Tobyn on criticisms from the disabled people’s organisation Transport for All about ORR’s failure to take action when there were assistance failures by train operators, and its tendency to rely on an “informal” approach to dealing with such issues.
Tobyn said that most people don’t see “the amount of work that goes on behind the scenes [at ORR] and the amount of things that we do change where we intervene and change behaviour and we don’t necessarily shout about it”.
She said ORR was currently taking a “deep dive” into areas such as the transfer of information about disabled passengers between rail operators, lift reliability, and how easy it is for disabled passengers to complain.
But she admitted that ORR had only issued one health and safety improvement notice to a train operator, because taking such action was “a last resort”.
Smith was asked by one MP why her organisation was “still building new, inaccessible infrastructure”, such as footbridges.
Disability News Service revealed in September that Network Rail had been forced into admitting it had no idea how many inaccessible footbridges it was building across Britain, while claiming it was too time-consuming and expensive to find out.
The public body, which owns and runs most of the country’s rail infrastructure, has admitted building at least 17 inaccessible footbridges across England, Scotland and Wales in 2022, 2023 and 2024, but the real figure is likely to be far higher than this.
Smith told the committee that it would be “very rare” for Network Rail to install an inaccessible footbridge in a station, but for other locations it had to “think very carefully and balance what can be quite often a set of competing needs”.
She said these bridges were often in locations that could not provide power for a lift, and that ramps “can be very substantial bits of infrastructure not always supported by the community”, so Network Rail makes decisions that are “in the best interests of the taxpayer”.
Labour’s Grahame Morris asked Starr about the concerns from campaigners that train companies saw the demands of disabled passengers for “turn up and go” access to the railways as a customer services matter rather than a “fundamental issue of human rights”.
Starr claimed there was a “huge appetite across operators to deliver against the needs of disabled customers, and they hear loud and clear what they’re calling for in relation to turn up and go”.
But she added: “Are there some challenges in terms of people really recognizing that and showing appropriate empathy? Yes.
“Are we doing something about that? Yes.
“So we’re undergoing significant training to help people better understand.”
23 November 2023
New bill should lead to strict quotas on access services for streaming platforms
A new government bill should lead to streaming services having to meet strict quotas on providing programmes with audio description, subtitles and audio description for the first time, but disabled journalists say the legislation should do more to tackle inequality.
MPs this week debated the government’s media bill, which also includes a wide range of other measures on broadcasting and newspapers and appears to have broad cross-party support.
Among the measures proposed by the government are new quotas for the scores of streaming platforms regulated by the communications watchdog Ofcom, such as Disney+, Amazon Prime, catch-up services run by public service broadcasters such as Channel 4, and many smaller, lesser-known platforms.
This would mean they would each have to provide subtitles for 80 per cent of their programmes, while 10 per cent would have to include audio description and five per cent would need to be accompanied by British Sign Language (BSL) interpretation.
There are currently no laws that oblige on-demand platforms to provide these access services.
Ofcom reported in May that, of those regulated on-demand providers that responded to its survey, only 82.4 per cent provided subtitles on any of their programmes, 14.3 per cent provided BSL, and just 22.4 per cent offered any audio description.
Of those that did provide access services, 72 per cent of programming hours were subtitled in 2022 (up from 66 per cent in 2021), with 15 per cent of hours offering audio description (down from 17 per cent in 2021) and just two per cent of hours were provided with BSL (2.3 per cent compared with 2.0 per cent in 2021).
Campaigners have been waiting for years for the government to act on quotas.
It has had powers since 2017 through the Digital Economy Act to impose quotas on on-demand providers, but failed to use those powers. The new legislation would finally make quotas law.
The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) welcomed some of the measures, but it called on the government to go further.
Dr Natasha Hirst, NUJ president and disabled members’ representative, said: “Although there are some important improvements to access being proposed in this long overdue bill, they need to be more ambitious with this.
“This is the opportunity to get it right.
“Our disabled members’ council will be working through the union’s cross-party parliamentary group to reinforce points about the importance of access for achieving disability equality and accessibility on media platforms and streaming services.
“We are also flagging disability representation – both in front of and behind the camera – and we will call for the Ofcom code to apply to video-on-demand services to tackle discrimination against disabled people.”
Sir John Whittingdale, the media minister, told Disability News Service in a statement on Tuesday: “People who are blind, partially sighted or have hearing impairments, should be able to access their favourite TV and radio shows, no matter where or how they choose to tune in.
“Our media bill, being debated in parliament today, will modernise the UK’s decades-old broadcasting rules, requiring video-on-demand streaming giants to meet subtitling, audio description and signing requirements that traditional broadcasters already follow.
“This means Britain’s estimated 12 million people with hearing impairments and 350,000 who are blind or partially sighted will be able to better enjoy world-class content on-demand.
“New rules in the bill will also secure the ongoing availability of licensed UK radio stations on voice-activated smart speakers, ensuring blind or partially sighted listeners can continue to easily tune in to British programming on their connected devices.”
23 November 2023
UK Disability History Month begins with call for action on disablism in education
Disabled activists have called for action to address the discrimination and disablism faced by disabled students and pupils, and to enforce the laws that should be protecting them.
They were speaking at the launch of UK Disability History Month (UKDHM), which this year is focusing on disability, children and youth.
Mette Anwar-Westander, founder and chief executive of Disabled Students UK, was part of the Disabled Students Network at University College London (UCL) when it published a report in early 2020 that described the discrimination they were facing.
After the report was published, she told the launch event, she began to be contacted by disabled students at other universities who were reporting similar concerns.
A meeting with fellow students from across the country led to the creation of Disabled Students UK (DSUK).
This year, DSUK has carried out the largest survey yet of disabled students in higher education in the UK, with input from more than 1,300 disabled students.
Anwar-Westander said the project had shown that the disability rights movement had brought advances in support for disabled university students that would have been “unthinkable 25 years ago”.
But she said the results also showed that “in many ways the law is not being enforced”.
She said: “Despite the right to access their education on equal terms with their non-disabled peers, only 35 per cent of our students actually stated that they have the support and adjustments needed to do so.”
The 2020 report – which was welcomed at the time by UCL – included results from a survey of disabled students, which found two-thirds of them (67 per cent) had experienced disablism by UCL and about three-fifths (58 per cent) said they had been made to feel unwelcome by the university because of their impairments.
Suzanna Chen, a postgraduate disabled student and disabled students’ officer at UCL, and campaigns assistant at DSUK, said many disabled students at UCL had “reported losing trust in the system” because their previous feedback, including the 2020 report, “has not really resulted in any substantial changes”.
She called for changes such as enforcing reasonable adjustments at universities, setting up complaints procedures to hold those responsible for disablism “accountable”, and ensuring there was disability awareness and equality training for all students and staff, to make “campus culture more inclusive”.
Richard Rieser, founder of UK Disability History Month, said there was “much to be fought for and much to be changed”, with 191,000 disabled children currently being educated in segregated schools.
He said there was a need to “value difference” and “remove the barriers for access and communication” within an education system that is being run on “eugenicist lines”, which “needs to be challenged as a human rights abuse”.
Rieser said there was also a need to enforce existing disability equality laws that should outlaw discrimination and harassment in schools and colleges but are rarely used.
And he said he regretted seeing the return of David Cameron to government, as the new foreign secretary was responsible for the 2010 coalition government’s policy of reversing what the former prime minister saw at the time as a “bias towards inclusion” in schools.
Rieser said: “We need a new leap forward now so that all children are included and can become part of the community.”
Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the National Education Union, which hosted the launch event in central London, said: “I absolutely fundamentally believe that with adequate resources, properly funded, most of our students can thrive alongside their peers, and that is something that we must absolutely be fighting for.”
He said the government’s focus “should be on making a school system that is inclusive and fit for purpose for educating all young people”.
But he said that “building inclusion requires investment, in terms of funding, and time for staff to do their jobs properly, and changing the overall culture of education”.
He added: “With the government’s SEN* and disability policy being directed largely towards saving money, rather than providing what young people need to thrive in an inclusive education system, putting the emphasis back onto the young people and empowering them to advocate for themselves is crucial.”
Yewande Akintelu-Omoniyi, Our Voice youth officer at The Alliance for Inclusive Education (ALLFIE), told the UKDHM event that discovering the disabled people’s movement at the age of 19 had changed her life, after a mainstream education where she had faced disablism and discrimination.
She said: “I understood that the discrimination that I had been facing was not my fault.
“I was able to identify with other young people who were experiencing the same barriers.”
But she said she still felt left out as she was often the only black disabled person at disability rights events.
She said: “That’s why joining ALLFIE’s Disabled Black Lives Matter group has been so helpful.
“I’ve been able to meet other people who understand my experience as a black disabled person.
“I would say to every young disabled person who is growing up and struggling with their identity: anything that you are experiencing now is not your fault. The world has not woken up to how amazing you are.
“I and many others will keep fighting for you so that we get close to an equal world for you; but until then, keep believing in yourself.”
Dr Miro Griffiths, co-director of The Centre for Disability Studies at the University of Leeds, advised against trying to “establish a youth voice” within the disability movement.
He said: “I think that does a disservice really to what we are trying to achieve within disability activism, which is to think about how all our ideas within the process of resistance and… articulating an alternative vision for inclusive societies, how that can flourish because of the collaboration and ideas that come from different communities, whether that’s youth groups, whether that’s people from ethnic communities, whether that’s those who are bringing in the intersections of sexuality and disability.”
Disabled self-advocate Ellen Goodey described how she had enjoyed a mainstream education from nursery school through to college in the east London borough of Newham, which pioneered an inclusive education system in the 1980s.
She said: “It meant I was part of my community, I have lots of friends and have a great life.”
Her mother, Linda Jordan, was one of a group of parents who worked with Newham council in the early 1980s to close special schools and enable their disabled children to attend local mainstream schools.
Jordan stood for election to the council and became chair of Newham’s education committee.
She said: “We came at it very much in terms of the human rights perspective that these were eugenic ideas that were no longer acceptable, and it was just morally wrong to segregate people on the basis of socially-constructed labels.
“What we discovered was that by kids going to their local schools, actually it was great for everybody; education for everybody improved, the teachers had much more joy in their teaching because they were having to think about how they could include everybody.
“We managed to break that barrier so we no longer thought that if you were clever you were more important… and education attainment actually improved dramatically and education attainment for all children increased.”
She told the meeting that the “backwards movement” on inclusion under the current government had been “shocking and utterly frustrating”.
*Special educational needs
23 November 2023
Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week
The high court is to consider for the first time whether universities owe a legal duty of care to their students, which campaigners argue would save lives and bring England and Wales in line with other countries. The landmark hearing next month comes at a time of widespread concern about declining student mental health and a number of widely reported suicides, including that of Natasha Abrahart, who was a second year physics student at Bristol University when she killed herself in 2018: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/nov/20/high-court-to-consider-whether-universities-owe-students-legal-duty-of-care
One in three people have missed work in the last year because of delays in accessing NHS care, according to new research. Opposition politicians said the findings showed that long waiting-times and the NHS’s record waiting-list were damaging the economy by leaving people too sick to work. Pollsters Savanta surveyed 2,235 people in the UK this month on behalf of the Liberal Democrats: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/nov/20/a-third-in-uk-missed-work-in-2022-due-to-delays-accessing-nhs-care
Soaring costs of school transport for disabled children is causing councils to warn of service cuts and potential insolvency, according to local authority leaders. The County Council Network, which represents mainly rural local authorities in England, says its 37 members are spending more than £700 million a year on school transport for 85,000 children with special education needs and disabilities (SEND), compared with less than £400 million five years ago. They blame the sharply rising costs on an acute shortage of SEND school places and lack of competition for specialist transport contracts: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/nov/18/soaring-special-needs-school-transport-costs-unsustainable-say-councils
23 November 2023
News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com
