Shielders ‘left adrift’ after government’s COVID guidance failure
Disabled people who have been shielding at home say they are having to rely on peer support and their own judgement to protect themselves from the pandemic, after despairing at the lack of clear government guidance.
Many of those who have shielded from the virus, often without pause since March, said this week that they had no confidence in Boris Johnson and his government.
Among their concerns are the lack of access to testing and personal protective equipment (PPE) for their personal assistants (PAs), and the difficulty of securing food deliveries, as the number of COVID-19 cases across the country continues to rise.
The grassroots disabled people’s organisation Bristol Reclaiming Independent Living (BRIL) said it was “very concerned” about the impact of a potential second national lockdown on disabled people who are still shielding, and their families.
One member said: “From the beginning of the pandemic, the government’s guidance and advice has been unclear, confusing and inaccessible, which has only added to the anxiety many of us feel.”
BRIL founder Mark Williams said the government’s mixed messages” were “putting people at harm”.
Another BRIL member said: “Disabled people have told us they do not trust the government, and are shielding regardless of the constantly changing regulations.”
A BRIL spokesperson added: “The experience of disabled people and people with chronic illness during the first lockdown, both those who were included on shielding lists and those who were missed off, has been ignored.
“As one member said: ‘If we are going to be shielded – they need to get it right. There are three of us who shielded, but we didn’t get the letter. It seemed that it was very ad hoc.’
“This cannot happen again. The government has a duty to directly consult with us and our organisations. A failure to do this will have deadly consequences.”
Disabled campaigner Fleur Perry, who has not left her home for more than six months, said: “I feel like there’s less information available than before.
“I still haven’t been out since March, and I doubt I’ll be going out for the rest of the year unless there’s a dramatic improvement somehow.
“Even though case numbers are rising, there’s been no update on precautions for shielders.
“The guidance makes it very clear that it’s now people’s choice how safe they want to feel, rather than a team effort.
“We’re going to have to continue to support one another in finding information and resources and new ways of doing things. Until the government steps up, it’s up to us.”
Baroness [Jane] Campbell, a disabled crossbench peer, who spent months shielding, said: “I think we all need to make our own decisions about our safety and continue to be very careful when mixing with those that we do not have to.
“What government still doesn’t appear to understand, is that disabled people who require care/support of another person, whether that be a PA, agency care, informal carer etc, cannot self-isolate.
“Therefore, we should be able to have priority access to testing both for ourselves and their essential support people. Plus, easy access to PPE.
“We are on the frontline and don’t want to become metaphorical cannon fodder again if the virus returns with a vengeance in the winter.”
She said that one of her PAs had had a cold recently and wanted to check that she was safe to work but was denied a test.
Baroness Campbell said she had tried for six weeks during the height of the pandemic to obtain basic gloves, masks and aprons, and by June had received just one box of gloves.
She added: “I have now sourced my own, at a cost, but I can afford it – many can’t.”
Fazilet Hadi, head of policy for Disability Rights UK, said: “Shielders have been left adrift since the protections granted to them at the start of lockdown were removed in late summer.
“With increases in the rate of infection and hospital admissions, and with great swathes of the population in local lockdowns, the government is failing to support and protect those who are clinically vulnerable to the virus.
“DR UK has asked the government to produce guidance on shielding for local authorities, health bodies and employers, and to give financial, practical and emotional support to those individuals who want to shield on the basis of their individual medical needs.
“We are particularly concerned for those who can’t work from home and are required to return to work.
“Many people have already had to choose between their life and their livelihood. As infection rates rise and the furlough period ends on 31 October, more people will face this dilemma.”
The current government advice to the millions of disabled people in England who have previously been told they are “clinically extremely vulnerable” (CEV) is that they should continue to “take precautions” but “do not need to shield at the moment”.
Areas where there is a local lockdown have “specific guidance” for shielders, but the advice for shielders yesterday (Wednesday) in Bolton, Greater Manchester, the north-east of England, the West Midlands and West Yorkshire, was matching that for the rest of the country, other than a warning that “it is important that you continue to take precautions”.
In Leicester and some parts of the north-west of England, those who are CEV have been advised to shield until 5 October, when “formal shielding” will be paused and they will be given guidance locally, while being advised to continue to “take precautions”.
Vicky Foxcroft, Labour’s shadow minister for disabled people, who shielded for several months during the summer, has written to health and social care secretary Matt Hancock with her concerns about the “ambiguity” that remains about support for CEV people, including in the areas where there has been a local lockdown.
She also raised concerns about those disabled employees unable to return to work, including the inadequate level of statutory sick pay, the failure of the chancellor’s new less-generous furlough scheme to mention CEV people, and continuing concerns over the rates of benefits.
She told Hancock that he had failed to answer when asked in the House of Commons for his advice to shielders, and called on him to “clarify this advice urgently, so that CEV people are not once again made to feel like an afterthought”.
Kathy Bole, co-chair of Disability Labour, said she was worried about the support that cash-strapped local authorities would be able to provide during local lockdowns, and the prospect of further cuts to social care.
She said: “I am shielding because my husband is extremely vulnerable. I have gone out twice in the last six weeks.
“I am not comfortable at all with the mask arrangements and how many are just not wearing them. I don’t know how I will cope if he gets ill.
“My own mental health is not doing well and that is because I have no faith in anything the government says.
“I know so many disabled people who will not go out and if there is no one to help them with shopping and the like, we will see many more people die.”
Fran Springfield, her co-chair, said she shared Boles’s concerns on shielding.
She added: “I have continued to shield, like many of my friends. I’m only leaving home for urgent medical appointments.
“I’m appalled by people not wearing masks and not social distancing, putting people like me at risk.
“We should be following medical science and the respected experts. The government must not be allowed to put lives before profit.
“I have no faith that decisions will be made in the best interests of disabled people.”
She added: “In Lambeth, the mutual aid groups that were so busy and supportive at the beginning of the pandemic are now suffering from volunteer fatigue, donations have dried up and it’s difficult to find people willing to help out.
“I’m noticing too that greedy shoppers are now causing supermarkets to limit purchases of essentials.
“I still have limited choices when I’m trying to shop online and eight-hour delivery slots. Totally useless for anyone who needs a PA or carer to put away frozen foods.”
She said she agreed with London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, that the capital should be placed under a local lockdown.
Vici Richardson, community care and personalisation advisor for the disabled people’s organisation Disability North, said there were “so many mixed messages and no real guidance”, while the local lockdowns had caused “further confusion”.
Richardson, who has a disabled teenage son who remains on the CEV list, said: “There has been nothing mentioned on any of our local authority communications about shielding, and we are in a high-risk area.”
Her son’s clinicians have received no guidance to pass to the family that they should reshield so they have been “left to make our own judgements”.
She said: “Some of the disabled people I work with stopped PAs coming in from March to August, then they began to bring them back in.
“Some of these are already making the difficult decisions to stop them, but with furlough ending and many people back in work, the network they may have depended on in March is not there.”
She said some disabled people with PAs were still struggling to access the correct PPE.
Her family has been told to source its own PPE, and use direct payments funding to do so, but that they can go back to the council for help if they struggle, although she said other local authorities were supplying PPE to disabled people directly.
She said there were also concerns over shopping deliveries.
She said: “Already disabled people who managed to get back delivery slots are now struggling again and because they aren’t on the clinically vulnerable list, they can’t have priority.”
Disabled campaigner and retired Paralympian Chris Channon, another on the CEV list, said he was continuing to shield, despite the government’s advice.
He said the prime minister, Boris Johnson, had “so muddled the waters it’s difficult for anyone to have any real confidence in anything that he and his ministers are saying.
“Just days after telling office workers it was ok to return to the workplace he suddenly instructs them to work from home while, at the same time, telling those of us who are shielding that it was OK to go out.”
Although he managed to book a delivery from Sainsbury’s last week for the first time since March, he said he found the isolation “difficult to deal with at times” although “in many respects I’m lucky as I still feel in control”.
He said be believed the government should reinstate the delivery of food parcels for CEV people and enable a “clear line of communication” between health experts and those in the CEV group so they could hear from someone who “doesn’t act on behalf of the government”.
*For sources of information and support during the coronavirus crisis, visit the DNS advice and information page
1 October 2020
NHS trust, regulator and Atos all apologise over nurse’s dishonest PIP assessment
An NHS trust, the nursing regulator and a government contractor have all been forced to apologise over their failure to carry out proper investigations into a nurse who dishonestly assessed a disabled teenager’s eligibility for personal independence payment (PIP).
The Nursing and Midwifery Council, Atos* and Lancashire and South Cumbria NHS Foundation Trust have all apologised to the teenager’s family over their failings.
The case, which saw the teenager stripped of her benefits, has again highlighted the flaws at the heart of the PIP assessment system and the continuing dishonesty of many of the healthcare professionals who carry out the face-to-face tests.
But it also highlights again the failings of the organisations at the heart of the system, and those that regulate their staff, such as NMC.
And it raises concerns about the involvement of NHS organisations in the controversial and much-criticised assessment process.
The teenager’s father, David**, has spent more than three years seeking justice after witnessing – and secretly recording – his daughter’s assessment.
The subsequent assessment report, he says, was littered with errors, inaccuracies and fabrications.
He eventually submitted more than 50 complaints about the assessment and its aftermath.
The nurse who carried out the assessment claimed it lasted 48 minutes, when in fact she rushed through it in just 19 minutes.
She had arrived at the assessment in August 2017 armed with nothing but a single sheet of notepaper.
David’s daughter, Paula**, had been claiming disability living allowance at the higher rate for care for 10 years, but the dishonest assessment led to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) finding her ineligible for PIP.
She was so damaged by the experience that she has refused to go through the assessment process again and has resigned herself to coping without the financial support she needs to help her through university.
In David’s complaint to the Independent Case Examiner (ICE), he said that Atos’s response to his concerns about the assessment had been “full of lies”.
After carrying out an initial investigation and listening to the secret recording of the assessment, ICE has now persuaded Atos to apologise and pay the family £150 compensation.
In its letter to David, ICE said: “The recording appears to show that the assessment lasted approximately 19 minutes, there were no explanations at the start of the assessment from the HCP [healthcare professional] as to the purpose of a PIP assessment and the format it would take, the HCP did not ask about [Paula’s] ability to follow or plan a journey, or about current medication and did not explore information about a bad day – rather she focused on gathering information on a good day only.”
Atos has now apologised to David for how it handled his original complaint and for “the poor service we have provided”, and admitted it was “somewhat concerning” that the nurse had failed to discuss “planning and following a journey”.
The Atos PIP client relations officer admitted this was a “vital piece of the PIP consultation”.
An Atos spokesperson this week refused to answer questions about the case, including whether the nurse was still carrying out PIP assessments on its behalf.
The nurse had been working for Lancashire and South Cumbria NHS Foundation Trust (LSCFT), which had been sub-contracted by Atos to carry out PIP assessments for five years.
The trust has now apologised to David for the “distress” caused both by the assessment and its subsequent botched investigation into his complaint, which it said had led to a “comprehensive review” of its complaints process.
But it also claimed that it could not carry out a proper review of its original investigation into the nurse’s assessment because all the staff involved, including those who investigated his complaint, had now left the trust, “along with the records relating to the cases and the guidance the staff had worked to”.
A trust spokesperson said this week: “We accept that the review did not meet the standards we expect and are sorry for the distress caused to the service user and their family. This should not have happened.”
He said all the information about its PIP assessment services had been transferred to a new provider when the trust ended the contract in July 2019, after five years providing PIP assessments.
Asked if the nurse was still working for the trust, he said: “We are unable to make comment about staff members, past or present, without compromising confidentiality.”
David said he was also appalled by the way the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC), which regulates nursing, dealt with his complaint about the nurse.
In January 2018, NMC wrote to David to say that it had decided not to investigate his allegations any further after talking to Atos and LSCFT, because of a lack of “sufficient credible evidence”.
He subsequently provided further information to NMC, which has now admitted that “something went wrong” when it carried out a preliminary screening of his complaint, and that its decision “did not consider all of the concerns raised by [David] in his referral”.
NMC has now decided to carry out further enquiries into his complaint.
David told Disability News Service: “My daughter has given up on PIP and says she will never ever apply for anything like it again after what she has gone through.
“I can clearly see evidence of collusion between all agencies to protect nurses who are producing deliberately false PIP assessments.
“I think there is a fear that if they allow a nurse to be struck off for a poor PIP assessment it will open the floodgates and, with hundreds if not thousands of NHS nurses involved, it could damage the NHS.”
He said NMC had been “hell bent” on proving that his allegations were unfounded.
He added: “I can fully understand why people simply give up trying to get justice for their incorrect assessment.”
David also passed his concerns to the Professional Standards Authority (PSA), which oversees the work of health and care regulators.
A PSA spokesperson said this week that David was “one of a number of members of the public who raised concerns with us about the NMC’s approach to complaints about registrants conducting PIP and other disability benefit assessments.
“His valuable feedback contributed to our decision to conduct a targeted review of the NMC’s cases involving similar complaints.”
The PSA subsequently concluded that there had been widespread mishandling by NMC of complaints it had received in 2017-18 about the way nurses carried out disability benefit assessments.
The PSA spokesperson added: “We will continue to monitor the NMC’s overall performance in these areas and [David’s] complaint provides valuable information for us in that work.”
The previous year, PSA also concluded that there were “issues of concern” over the way the Health and Care Professions Council dealt with similar complaints about how physiotherapists and paramedics carry out PIP assessments.
DNS spent months investigating allegations of dishonesty by PIP assessors in late 2016 and throughout 2017, hearing eventually from more than 250 disabled people in less than a year about how they had been unfairly deprived of their benefits, with such cases still continuing to come in nearly four years after that investigation began.
Emma Broadbent, NMC’s director of professional regulation, said it was sorry for its failings with David’s and other complaints about PIP assessors.
She said: “We are reviewing the information provided by [David] and will remain in touch with him to ensure he’s informed about any further action that we take. We are unable to comment further at this stage.
“We have taken steps to fully address the issues raised about our decision-making process for PIP-related concerns.
“Since 2018, we have reviewed our procedures and made changes to improve the process.
“These changes have included new quality assurance checks for PIP cases, additional support materials for our investigators including information about the DWP benefits process and practical guidance on how to investigate PIP cases.”
*Atos delivers its PIP assessment contracts through Independent Assessment Services, a trading name of Atos IT Services UK
**Not their real names
1 October 2020
‘Heartless’ Coffey’s duty of care claim ‘sticks fingers up to benefit death families’
Therese Coffey has been accused of “sticking her fingers up” at every family whose relative has died because of the failings of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), after she claimed that her department has no “duty of care” to benefit claimants.
The work and pensions secretary told MPs yesterday (Wednesday) that it was not DWP’s responsibility to have a statutory duty of care to the people who rely on it for support through the benefits system.
Instead, she said, that duty should be left to “the local councils, the social services, the doctors and other people”.
She was responding to Labour MP Debbie Abrahams about written answers she had sent to the Commons work and pensions committee the previous day, following her appearance before the committee on 22 July.
In one of her written answers, Coffey had told the committee that DWP did not have a statutory duty of care or a safeguarding duty.
Abrahams, who has led efforts in parliament to hold DWP to account for the countless deaths of benefit claimants caused by its failings, suggested the government had a “moral obligation” to have such a duty of care to benefit claimants in vulnerable situations and that it was “simply not good enough” to leave that to local authorities.
Coffey said she had tried to “accelerate the amount of support” provided to claimants, and that DWP was working with local safeguarding teams and safeguarding boards “in order to provide the outcome… which is about how can we help more”.
After being told of Coffey’s comments, disabled campaigner Alison Turner accused the work and pensions secretary of being “heartless” and “sticking her fingers up to all the families who have lost someone” because of DWP’s actions.
Turner’s partner is the son of Errol Graham, who starved to death after his out-of-work disability benefits were wrongly removed by DWP as a result of flaws in the work capability assessment process.
She told Disability News Service: “It’s only right and caring that you make sure of a person’s safety before you do anything that could kill them. It’s common sense.”
She said Coffey’s message to families whose relatives have died because of DWP’s failings was: “I don’t have a duty of care and I don’t need one and that’s why your loved ones died.”
She added: “That’s her problem: she’s heartless.”
Turner said Coffey’s comments were “absolutely disgusting” but they did explain how Errol Graham and so many other disabled benefit claimants had died over the last decade, and why this “continues to happen to other people”.
She said: “People like Errol have died because of it, because of the department’s lack of care, its lack of concern for people’s safety.”
She said that disabled people’s financial support from DWP was often their “lifeline” and she did not understand how “a department as big as DWP, responsible for millions of disabled people” can argue that it does not have a duty of care.
Coffey also told the work and pensions committee yesterday that DWP was discussing how it could “safely reintroduce a limited number” of face-to-face assessments for disability benefit claims.
Face-to-face assessments have been suspended since March because of the coronavirus pandemic.
John Paul Marks, the department’s director general of work and health services, said the number of new claims for personal independence payment (PIP) had now returned to a level that was “close to what it was this time last year”, after falling sharply in the early months of the pandemic.
Coffey also said that Atos*, one of the two DWP contractors that carries out PIP assessments, had last week started to record telephone assessments, although the other contractor, Capita, had not yet begun to do so.
Marks said that another contractor, CHDA (a subsidiary of the US firm Maximus), had started to trial online video assessments of “fitness for work”, while DWP was carrying out a trial of about 500 online video PIP assessments.
*Atos delivers its PIP assessment contracts through Independent Assessment Services, a trading name of Atos IT Services UK
1 October 2020
Government ignores calls to scrap COVID care restrictions
The government has ignored repeated calls from disabled people’s organisations and allies to scrap measures that limit the rights of disabled adults and children to social care and education support during the pandemic crisis.
In the first parliamentary review of temporary measures introduced through the government’s Coronavirus Act in March, health and social care secretary Matt Hancock insisted that measures that suspended key protections in the Care Act and the Children and Families Act would not be switched off.
But he did make one concession, agreeing to revoke powers that reduced the rights of people using the mental health system.
MPs overwhelmingly backed Hancock by voting yesterday (Wednesday) to continue the social care, education and other temporary measures introduced through the Coronavirus Act.
More than 150 organisations, including Disability Rights UK, Inclusion London, Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People and Disabled People Against Cuts, had signed a statement calling on the government to remove the powers in the act that “diminish the rights of those who rely on social care and education support”.
Hancock argued that the care measures in the Coronavirus Act had “without doubt helped us both to protect the NHS and to support social care”.
But he said that he would scrap powers that could have been used to reduce the number of doctors’ opinions needed to detain someone under the Mental Health Act (MHA) from two to one and to extend legal time limits on the detention of mental health patients.
He said these had been “powers of last resort” and that he was “not persuaded” that they had been necessary.
Akiko Hart, chief executive of the National Survivor User Network, welcomed the announcement on the mental health powers, although she said it was “perhaps unsurprising”.
She said: “No one liked the proposed amendments to the MHA, they didn’t make a huge amount of sense and they became increasingly at odds with the forthcoming white paper on the reform of the MHA.”
The grassroots disabled people’s organisation Bristol Reclaiming Independent Living (BRIL) said the vote to continue to allow the so-called “Care Act easements” to continue confirmed that MPs “have failed to consider or listen to us”.
BRIL said it had been contacted by disabled people across the country who have had cuts to their support or had essential services “paused” during the pandemic.
It also pointed to Inclusion London’s Abandoned, Forgotten and Ignored report and a new investigation published yesterday on the openDemocracy website, which have shown that some local authorities “seem to be using the pandemic to justify taking measures against people who are shielding and already struggling”.
More than half the councils responding to openDemocracy’s freedom of information requests admitted cutting the amount they were spending on care in people’s own homes, and on direct payments to disabled people, during the first wave of the pandemic, even though other councils had increased their spending to meet rising demand.
Earlier in the week, the disabled crossbench peer Baroness [Jane] Campbell told the House of Lords that all the easement powers allowed under the Coronavirus Act must be “switched off”.
She said there was “mounting evidence that disabled children, adults and older people are experiencing disproportionate stress and serious health risks as a direct result of decreased care and support services during this pandemic”.
She said: “I would argue that the continuation of the easement powers is neither necessary nor proportionate.”
And she argued that allowing them to continue would condemn many of those disabled people in the most vulnerable situations to “another six months of misery, and possibly death”.
Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey, who has a disabled child and is patron of Disability Law Service, told Hancock yesterday that the Coronavirus Act “undermines the rights to care of disabled people”.
He said the act breaches the UK’s obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
Davey said: “Two thirds of the public believe that the act’s social care reductions are unacceptable.
“Liberal Democrats agree, as do more than 150 organisations campaigning for the rights of disabled people that have called for those sections of the act to be withdrawn.”
He pointed to Inclusion London’s Abandoned, Forgotten and Ignored report, on the experience of disabled people during the pandemic, which he said “should shame this government”.
He said: “It has horrifying reports from disabled people across the country about cuts to their care packages, food shopping not done, personal washing not done and vital care at home not done.
“Speaking as the father of a disabled child, huge numbers of parents of disabled children have been hit.”
He called on MPs to “speak up for those families, for those carers, for disabled people and vote against this measure tonight”.
But at the end of the debate, only 24 MPs voted against the government – six Labour MPs, nine Liberal Democrats, seven Conservatives, Green MP Caroline Lucas and the Northern Ireland Alliance MP Stephen Farry. Labour MPs had been ordered by their party to abstain. All 330 MPs who voted with the government were Conservatives.
*For sources of information and support during the coronavirus crisis, visit the DNS advice and information page
1 October 2020
Watchdog ‘could finally be set to launch benefit deaths inquiry’
The human rights watchdog may finally be ready to announce an inquiry into the deaths of benefit claimants that have been linked to the actions of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), according to a campaigning MP.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) had previously delayed a decision on whether to launch such an inquiry into benefit-related deaths, and the wider impact of DWP’s policies on disabled people, blaming the COVID-19 crisis.
But Labour MP Debbie Abrahams, who has been lobbying the commission over the need for an inquiry for nearly 18 months, told an online parliamentary meeting that an announcement of an EHRC inquiry in 2021 could be imminent.
She told Tuesday’s meeting of the all-party parliamentary group for disability, which was attended by at least 50 parliamentarians, disabled campaigners and human rights experts: “I hope that they will be confirming very soon that they will be undertaking this inquiry for 2021.”
If the commission fails to do so, she said, “we need to look at other avenues”.
An EHRC spokesperson told Disability News Service later that its position had not changed, which was that it would not be able to carry out the inquiry in 2020 because of the “significant impact” of the COVID-19 crisis on its work.
Abrahams said she first began investigating the “alarming” rate of deaths of disabled claimants and pushing for change in 2013, after hearing of the death of David Clapson, who died from an acute lack of insulin, three weeks after having his benefits sanctioned.
Because he had no money, he couldn’t afford to pay for electricity that would have kept the fridge where he kept his insulin working, in the height of summer, and he had also run out of food.
Abrahams said evidence of links between the actions of DWP and the deaths of claimants that has since emerged, including documents secured by Disability News Service and this year’s report by the National Audit Office, was just “the tip of a scandalous iceberg”.
She also told the meeting that Conservative members of the work and pensions select committee had successfully resisted her appeals to hold an inquiry into benefit-related deaths because of their majority on the committee.
Abrahams said she had “pushed the select committee” to carry out an inquiry but had been unable to secure its agreement because of its Tory majority, although she had persuaded it to ask work and pensions secretary Therese Coffey to give evidence to the committee on the subject, which she did in July.
And she supported the suggestion from the disabled Tory peer Lord [Kevin] Shinkwin that they should put together a cross-party delegation of MPs and peers to visit Coffey and “see what can be done of practical use, particularly regards to the safeguarding process and the shocking attitudes of the DWP”.
The meeting also heard from Alison Turner, whose partner is the son of Errol Graham, who starved to death after his out-of-work disability benefits were wrongly removed by DWP, as a result of flaws in the work capability assessment process.
Turner said she “just wanted straight answers” about DWP’s failure to meet its duty of care and check on Graham’s welfare before removing his employment and support allowance (ESA).
She said: “How can there be no communication whatsoever and no duty of care to make sure he’s OK before you take something that could potentially be his own lifeline?
“Since that day, that question has never been answered.”
Turner has secured a judicial review of DWP’s failure – dating back more than a decade – that will seek to ensure the safety of disabled people claiming ESA.
The family’s solicitor, Tessa Gregory, of Leigh Day, told the meeting that Turner had chosen to “stick her head above the parapet” and bring a case against DWP to ensure that “no other families have to live through what her family has lived through”.
She said: “What we are asking the court to do is to declare the current safeguarding policy unlawful.
“We are also asking the court to find that the department has acted unlawfully in promising at Errol’s inquest that it was going to review and overhaul those safeguarding procedures but then failing to do so.”
Gregory also said that the attitude of DWP to Turner and her family had been “profoundly troubling”.
She said: “Since Errol’s death, there has been no effort to understand their position, there’s been no effort to listen, and there’s been no effort to explain.
“I know that the department’s conduct in that regard has had a profound impact on the family and exacerbated their grief.
“I just do not understand why the department has not consulted directly with Alison and all her family.”
Abrahams told the meeting that, without action from DWP, she did not see Errol Graham’s death being the last, and she said: “Surely the government has a responsibility to keep all its citizens safe, including disabled people.”
One campaigner who spoke at the event, Tom Griffiths, said that evidence linking deaths with DWP had been given to select committees over “many, many years” in relation to both ESA and personal independence payment, and yet “more people are dying and possibly in increasing numbers because of the pandemic”.
He welcomed the Errol Graham judicial review, but he said: “That just isn’t good enough. It needs action at a parliamentary level.
“This evidence has been given to you over many, many years. The [work and pensions] committee must have a library full of evidence and resources highlighting [the deaths].”
He added: “I would hope in a democratic society parliament can do more and the select committee process can do more. Surely much more needs to be done.”
Abrahams said she had pushed the committee to carry out an inquiry, but she added: “The reality is if you do not have a majority [on a select committee], you’re seriously limited.”
1 October 2020
Hundreds dying every year after PIP rejections, and number may even be rising
Hundreds of disabled people are continuing to die every year after having their claims for disability benefits rejected, new Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) figures have revealed.
The figures show that, in just two years, 1,700 disabled people died within three months of having their claim for personal independence payment (PIP) rejected.
The figures do not prove that the rejections of the PIP claims caused the deaths – although it is possible that wrongful decisions may contribute to or cause some deaths – but instead suggest that hundreds of disabled people every year appear to be dying without the financial support they need and deserve, after having their claims wrongly rejected by DWP.
All 1,700 disabled people who died had their claims turned down between April 2018 and January this year, and died between April 2018 and 30 April 2020.
Comparing them with figures released in early 2019 also suggest that the likelihood of someone having their PIP claim rejected and dying soon afterwards may even have increased in the last two years.
The findings on the increase are tentative because the two sets of figures were not calculated in the same way by DWP.
But other figures have showed a deteriorating performance across a similar time period by DWP contractors Atos and Capita, which carry out the assessments on the government’s behalf.
When taken as a proportion of about 1.461 million PIP registrations between April 2018 and January 2020, about 0.12 per cent of claimants went on to die within three months of having their claim rejected.
The earlier figures, released in February 2019, showed 3,680 PIP claimants died within three months of their initial PIP application being rejected between April 2013 and April 2018, out of about 3.6 million registrations, a rate of about 0.10 per cent.
These comparative rates are only approximate figures, and they have been calculated by Disability News Service (DNS) and not DWP, while there may be unknown factors that explain the apparent increase in the likelihood of someone dying soon after having a PIP claim rejected.
But they do raise further questions about the PIP assessment system, and they could add to mounting calls for major reform.
The new figures were released to Labour MP Jessica Morden by the minister for disabled people, Justin Tomlinson.
He insisted that the figures showed no links between the reason the person had submitted a PIP application and their subsequent death.
Tomlinson told Morden: “There is no evidence in this data to suggest someone’s reason for claiming Personal Independence Payments was the cause of their death and it would be misleading to suggest otherwise.”
He also claimed that DWP “treats the tragic death of any claimant sympathetically”.
But there have been repeated warnings of substandard assessments carried out by Atos and Capita.
DWP figures released last year showed the percentage of substandard PIP assessment reports carried out by Atos rose from about 25 per cent in 2016-17 to reach more than 36 per cent in 2018-19.
The proportion of substandard PIP reports completed by Capita reached 37 per cent in the 2018 calendar year, from less than 33 per cent in 2016.
DNS spent months investigating allegations of dishonesty by PIP assessors in late 2016 and throughout 2017, hearing eventually from more than 250 disabled people in less than a year about how they had been unfairly deprived of their benefits, with such cases still continuing to come in nearly four years after that investigation began.
A DWP spokesperson said: “These figures do not show causality and any claim to suggest otherwise is misleading.
“People claim PIP for various reasons, the majority of which are non-life threatening.”
1 October 2020
Little progress in 12 years since ground-breaking hate crime report, says follow-up
Little progress has been made in the 12 years since a ground-breaking investigation exposed how disabled people were being “harassed, attacked, humiliated and even killed” because their lives were considered less valuable than others, says a new report.
The extent of disability hate crime was highlighted for the first time in the autumn of 2008 in Getting Away With Murder, a report produced by Disability Now, the UK Disabled People’s Council and Scope, and written by journalist Katharine Quarmby.
Now, 12 years on, Inclusion London has published a follow-up report – Still Getting Away With Murder: Disability Hate Crime in England – which shows how such crimes are “as common as ever”.
The report, written by disabled academic Dr Laura Chapman, describes an “omnipresent and toxic culture in which people only react to the most shocking attacks and murder”.
Often, the report says, disabled people experience the “nightmare” of a “bombardment of micro aggressions” before the increasing severity and frequency of “sustained attacks, excessive violence; cruelty, humiliation, degrading treatment” finally alerts the criminal justice system.
The report concludes that there has been no “radical change” in the last 12 years and that research suggests there has even been a “steady increase” in disability hate crime.
It also suggests that more work needs to be done to uncover the true extent of disability hate crime in England.
And it says that the perception that disability hate crime is “an occasional problem for a few individuals” remains “all too prevalent” across the criminal justice, transport, education, and housing sectors.
It also warns that disabled victims are still not taken seriously and are often dismissed as “unreliable witnesses” and “routinely denied access to justice”.
And it says that professionals must accept the message that disability hate crime is a significant part of many disabled people’s life experience.
But the report also says there have been “positive changes” where there has been co-production between services, public bodies and disabled people’s organisations and where agencies begin to view disabled people as “actively working against disability hate crime” rather than as “passive, weak and needy victims”.
The new report was commissioned by Inclusion London as part of its work as lead organisation of the London DDPO* Hate Crime Partnership, and was funded by The Three Guineas Trust.
In a foreword to the report, Anne Novis, who played a significant role in the original report, said there had been some progress since 2008, with criminal justice agencies now accepting that they needed to address the flaws in the system.
But she said that the “murders, attacks and harassments” of disabled people continue.
Novis says in the report: “Whenever society is pressured by financial constraints like ‘austerity’ or issues like the recent pandemic, Disabled people become the focus for hostility.
“We are deemed a burden on the state, recently named as spreaders of disease, targeted if not wearing a mask, deemed a strain on the NHS.
“Therefore, some feel justified targeting us online, in media, and where we live and work.”
She calls for a national approach to tackling disability hate crime, and one that does not depend on individual disabled people or the commitment of particular police officers.
Novis, who chairs Inclusion London. said there was also a need for new legislation “that ensures all hate crime is treated the same”.
She adds: “Until we get this we hold the history of the experiences, the ones murdered, tortured, abused, attacked and harassed because of who they are.”
*Deaf and disabled people’s organisations
1 October 2020
Councils face calls to re-think COVID streetscape changes
By TJM
Local authorities in England and Wales are facing calls to re-think the “streetscape” changes being made in response to COVID-19, amid concerns that the new street infrastructure is making parts of towns and cities inaccessible to many disabled people.
Disabled people and their organisations have previously warned that many of the measures are discriminatory and that public bodies are ignoring their duties under the Equality Act and using the crisis as an excuse not to consult with disabled people about the changes.
But councils are pressing ahead with changes to roads, cycle lanes and pavements despite the concerns raised by disabled people, arguing that they are needed to make social distancing easier and prevent an increase in car usage and deterioration in air quality.
One of them is Bristol City Council, which is introducing suspensions of parking bays, new cycle lanes, pedestrianisation and changes to road layouts.
But Bristol Disability Equality Forum (BDEF) said the council had failed to prioritise the access needs of disabled people or take enough action to address their concerns, resulting in streetscape changes that make it harder for disabled people to move around the city.
BDEF told Disability News Service (DNS) that there were not enough public seating areas or blue badge parking spaces in and around the partially-pedestrianised old city centre, while too much priority was being given to businesses, with bars and cafes being allowed to spread their tables and chairs across roads and pavements.
In addition, BDEF said some widened pedestrian zones in local high streets had taken up precious parking spaces, making access even harder, while many visually-impaired people were not able to identify the pedestrianised sections of roads.
A BDEF spokesperson said: “Yet another failure to provide solutions that accommodate the needs of disabled people will see us losing even more of the human rights the disabled people’s movement worked so hard to secure; rights that have been steadily eroded since 2008.
“It is also short-sighted as businesses need our custom even more than ever – something they are not going to get if we are further excluded from our high streets and leisure outlets.”
A city council spokesperson said: “The COVID-19 pandemic has seen some of our plans to change travel habits and behaviours and build a more sustainable future accelerated, while other measures such as widening pavements offer greater accessibility as well as better social distancing for disabled people.”
The spokesperson said that, although some of the changes had removed through traffic, access to the city centre and neighbourhoods remained, and existing blue badge parking bays had been maintained, while the council was exploring the possibility of providing further such bays.
In York, disabled activists say they believe the post-lockdown closure of the city centre to motor vehicles is discriminatory.
Helen Jones, from York Disability Rights Forum, said she believed the changes only affected blue badge holders, so they impacted significantly on disabled people and their friends, family and carers.
She said: “The changes took a ‘one size fits all’ approach and it’s important that the council recognises that disabled people and blue badge holders are a diverse group.
“We understand that things are moving rapidly this year, but the council had previously engaged with disabled people about access to the city centre.
“This work could have been used to complete a more accurate equality impact assessment and would have resulted in more appropriate decisions.”
Jones, herself a blue badge holder, acknowledged that traffic reductions in the city centre benefited the environment, but she said that blue badge holders and taxis carrying disabled people should be an exception to the new rules.
York Council failed to respond to a request to comment.
Concerns about poorly-planned social distancing measures have also been voiced by Disability Wales, which says that modifications to city centres, building entrances and exits, and accessible parking spaces have been implemented with no regard for the needs of disabled people.
Miranda Evans, policy and programmes manager for Disability Wales, said: “There’s been a lack of consultation with local disabled people and organisations, a lack of thought about the possible impact and a lack of equality impact assessing going on in Wales.”
She said access problems have emerged all over Wales, with roads being closed and accessible parking bays blocked off outside buildings, including schools and hospitals, to allow for wider entrances and exits.
In Bridgend, the accessible parking bays outside a school have been blocked to make way for a wider exit, while in Saundersfoot, blue badge bays have reportedly been covered with tables and chairs to allow for “al fresco” dining.
In Cardiff, Castle Street, a major city road, has been closed to cars, again to allow for al fresco dining through the new Castle Quarter Cafe, making it more difficult for disabled people to move around the city.
Evans said: “We’re challenging all this and we’re trying to raise it with local councils and the Welsh government. At the moment we’re gathering our evidence.”
A Cardiff Council spokesperson said: “The al fresco dining area in Castle Street has been set up to help the hospitality trade in light of the ongoing COVID-19 restrictions.
“The scheme has been very successful and the feedback from the businesses that are taking part and those who use the facility has been very positive.”
The spokesperson said a motorised buggy was available to assist disabled visitors around the pedestrian areas of the city centre.
And they said that Cardiff Council held regular meetings with representatives from diverse groups, which provided information, assistance and advice on its COVID recovery strategy (PDF), with equality reports available on the council’s website.
Campaigners working to address issues around air pollution have stressed its impact on people with long-term health conditions.
Andrea Lee, clean air campaigns manager at environmental law charity ClientEarth, said: “Urgent action to tackle toxic air is vital to protect our health and innovative measures such as creating more space for people to safely walk or cycle in our cities can be part of the effort – if well designed.
“The benefits for all of a less polluted city cannot be underestimated.
“Air pollution harms us all, cutting lives short and reducing quality of life and the data shows it has a disproportionate impact on certain groups, including those with long-term health conditions.”
Disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) such as BDEF have acknowledged the need to improve air quality, particularly because of the disproportionate impact on disabled people.
A BDEF spokesperson said: “It’s not quite as straightforward as some frustrated drivers might view it.
“There needs to be much more of a discussion with disabled people around the breadth of factors that need to be balanced against each other.
“We’ve got an environmental crisis, a health crisis and really poor public transport. We need to square that circle.”
In Lambeth, south London, a range of infrastructure changes are being implemented across the borough to cut pollution and improve safety for cyclists and walkers, partly as a result of the pandemic.
The changes include multiple low traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs), which aim to provide improved protection for cyclists, tree planting and improved green spaces.
Cllr Claire Holland, the council’s deputy leader (sustainable transport, environment and clean air), said: “These important measures are needed to tackle transport and health inequalities exacerbated by the coronavirus, and to support a local, economic recovery.
“We are keeping them under review and making tweaks to the schemes as necessary.
“Before any of the schemes become permanent there will be further community engagement.”
Rather than viewing the changes as a barrier to disabled people, Cllr Holland believes they will improve access for people with a variety of impairments.
She said: “These measures are intended to support those residents [disabled people without cars] to be able to move more freely around their local areas – our low traffic neighbourhoods provide links between homes and town centres, schools, parks, shops and local amenities.”
Isabelle Clement, director of Wheels for Wellbeing, a Lambeth-based DPO that promotes cycling among disabled people, said: “As an organisation we are supportive of the changes on the one hand because whatever makes cycling safer for any cyclist makes it safer for disabled cyclists and there’s a big need for that.
“However, we’re also a disabled people’s organisation and we’re very aware that if the changes are not done with due regard to disabled people’s access needs, that will have a negative impact on non-cycling disabled people.”
She added: “Disabled people are the people who are the most in need of being able to go out safely again after lockdown and if the environment is not changed fully accessibly, then disabled people could be the most excluded yet again.”
According to Clement, who lives and works in Lambeth, the key problem is that the government has asked local authorities to make changes that help people avoid using cars and public transport but has failed to give them a “quick guide” on how to do it in an accessible way.
This has led to some inaccessible features being put in place in Lambeth and other parts of the country.
Clement said: “There is no intrinsic clash between disabled people and cycling infrastructure, provided it is done with the right thinking in mind.”
She said that, as long as the new infrastructure for cyclists – which she calls mobility infrastructure – is wide, flat and smooth it can also benefit mobility scooters and many wheelchair-users, and can de-clutter pavements.
Transport for London (TfL) is working with London boroughs to introduce temporary new cycle lanes, wider pavements and low-traffic corridors across the capital, as part of its Streetspace programme, and it wants many of them to become permanent.
Sam Monck, Transport for London’s head of investment delivery planning for healthy streets, said: “We’re absolutely determined to make sure that our temporary Streetspace schemes introduced in response to coronavirus are inclusive and benefit everybody in London.
“All of our cycle schemes are designed to be accessible to adapted cycles and our schemes also undergo an equality impact assessment to ensure that they are inclusive.
“We will continue to work closely with our stakeholders on our Streetspace plans and would urge people to contact us with any feedback on the changes.”
TfL also said it was reviewing pavement widening schemes that have been created with temporary barriers and was looking to replace them with a “full built out, level pavement where possible”.
Transport for All (TfA), a pan-impairment London-based DPO that campaigns for accessible transport systems and inclusive street design, said that the “rapid, unprecedented and often inaccessible changes to streetspace across the UK” were a “huge concern”.
TFA said: “Whilst, in principle, we fully support changes that facilitate social distancing and expediate active travel [such as walking or cycling] initiatives, the lack of consultation around the impact of these initiatives on disabled people is throwing up real issues.
“Disabled residents in areas affected have not been consulted and equality impact assessments – if they have been carried out at all – are, without exception in our experience, written without the necessary expertise in accessibility and inclusion.”
TfA added: “We fully support the concept of active travel, and indeed many disabled people can and want to make more active journeys, either by walking, pushing a wheelchair, or by cycle.
“But many cannot make these journeys simply because the infrastructure is not accessible.
“The lack of dropped kerbs, uneven pavements, lack of tactile signage, poorly designed cycle lanes, shared space, and street clutter are just some of the barriers disabled people face to walking and cycling.
“Restricting the option for car travel cannot be done without an accompanied infrastructure accessibility project.”
In July, TfA launched its Pave The Way campaign, aimed at highlighting the importance of building both environmentally-friendly and accessible streetspace, and it is carrying out in-depth research into the impact of LTNs on disabled people.
It hopes this will lead to a better understanding of “what the issues are and how to find the most inclusive and accessible solution”.
1 October 2020
News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com
