DNS is taking a summer break and will return on 8th September
Truss and Sunak dodge questions from disabled Tory members
The two Conservative candidates to be the next prime minister are both refusing to face questions at an event organised by disabled members of their own party.
Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak have both ducked out of attending hustings events for the Conservative leadership race organised by the Conservative Disability Group (CDG) and the Conservative Mental Health Group.
They will each instead send MPs to answer questions on their behalf.
If they had attended, they would be certain to be asked what action they would take to support disabled people through the cost-of-living crisis.
Disabled people’s organisations warned this week that the crisis could lead to avoidable deaths this winter if not addressed by the next prime minister (see separate story).
Truss is sending Chloe Smith, the minister for disabled people, to answer questions from CDG members tomorrow (Friday), while Sunak will be sending disgraced former health and social care secretary Matt Hancock to speak for him a week later, on 26 August.
Only last week, Disability News Service (DNS) reported how both Truss and Sunak had refused to answer questions about their disability policies, despite repeated requests.
Among the questions they refused to answer were how they would improve the lives of disabled people if they won the leadership contest, and what they believed was the greatest achievement of 12 years of Conservative-led government in improving the rights of disabled people.
But it also emerged this week that both Truss and Sunak have failed to respond to a letter from more than 50 disability charities that called on them to ensure they put disabled people at the heart of any government plans to address the cost-of-living crisis.
Barry Ginley, CDG’s chair, told DNS in a statement yesterday: “We are comfortable with the calibre of candidates that [will] speak to us at the hustings.
“Ideally, we would like both candidates to come and speak to us and we are still hoping that that may be able to happen.
“It is disappointing that they have not answered any questions from the disability sector because we would like to have them work with the disability sector.
“This is something that we are going to be pushing and ensuring it gets [fed back from] the hustings.”
Ginley pointed out that he had written to each candidate this week, outlining issues raised by CDG which its members would like the next prime minister “to have particular focus on”.
These include employment, education, accessible transport – including “removing the barriers to travel created by the Brexit Agreement” – and extra support for disabled people facing rising bills.
He also called in his letter for the next prime minister to overturn the government’s decision not to implement the recommendation from the Grenfell Tower Inquiry to introduce personal emergency evacuation plans (PEEPs) for all disabled people living in high-rise flats who may find it difficult to self-evacuate.
Karim Sacoor, CDG’s deputy president, told DNS yesterday: “I am very comfortable that they have sent somebody.
“They are speaking on behalf of the candidates, so they can answer whatever questions they want.”
He said he had not been involved in the preparations for the hustings as he had been travelling, but he added: “They are sending somebody who knows about disability issues.”
But Vicky Foxcroft, Labour’s shadow minister for disabled people, said: “The Conservative party’s strategy for disabled people has been found to be illegal.
“The leadership candidates need to engage with disabled people, including their own activists, if they are serious about improving their lives and helping them deal with the daily pressures.
“It’s sad to see that both Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak are unwilling to do this.
“It certainly does not send the right message to disabled people who are already struggling with the cost-of-living, which is only set to get worse.”
A CDG spokesperson told DNS on Twitter yesterday that both candidates had “sent their ambassadors and said they will come in person later if they can”.
18 August 2022
DPOs demand chancellor accepts seven-point plan to save lives this winter
Campaigning disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) have called on the chancellor to accept a seven-point plan that they believe will save disabled people’s lives this winter.
Members of the Disability Poverty Campaign Group (DPCG) have told Nadhim Zahawi that the millions of disabled people who now live in poverty “simply do not have the means to survive this national crisis”.
They point to the extra impairment-related costs faced by many disabled people, including spending on food, care and support services, equipment, energy, fuel and travel costs.
The letter adds: “We have legitimate cause to believe that, without urgent Government action, energy costs and wider inflationary pressures will result in avoidable loss of life over the winter months.
“It is in the national interest that Government act now to save Disabled people’s lives.”
In a letter (PDF) asking for urgent measures to be taken by the government, they call for four immediate actions, to be put in place by 1 October.
They want to see an emergency uprating of benefits, by at least the 13 per cent inflation rate predicted by the Bank of England.
They also want a permanent ban on the automatic deduction of utility bill arrears from benefits, and a temporary ban, at least during the autumn and winter, on deductions for other forms of debt, such as repayments of Department for Work and Pensions advances and overpayments, under its “third party deductions” scheme.
And they want the chancellor to restore eligibility for this winter’s £150 Warm Home Discount to the 290,000 disabled people on benefits such as personal independence payment who do not receive means-tested benefits and had their eligibility for the payment withdrawn earlier this year.
The fourth request is for “further targeted, non-repayable” financial support for disabled people in “vulnerable circumstances”.
But they also go further than immediate changes to the social security system.
The DPCG letter calls for social care to be made free at the point of use, and a ban on local authorities taking debt recovery action again service-users who have not paid care charges.
It also calls for the energy tariffs for customers using pre-payment meters – who pay in advance for their gas and electricity – to be the same as those for customers using standard meters.
And the letter calls for better protection for those disabled people who may not be able to top up their pre-payment meters this winter and so face the possibility of having no power through so-called self-disconnection (PDF).
The letter, written by Kamran Mallick, chief executive of Disability Rights UK (DR UK), on behalf of DPCG, tells the chancellor that there has been a “wealth of recent evidence” that has shown the impact of the cost-of-living crisis on disabled people.
And it points to Office for National Statistics research, which last week exposed the deepening impact of the cost-of-living crisis on disabled people and found that 42 per cent of disabled adults were spending less on food and other essentials, compared with 31 per cent of non-disabled people, because of the rise in the cost-of-living.
Members of DPCG include DPOs Inclusion Barnet, Cheshire Disabled People’s Panel and Inclusion London.
Fazilet Hadi, DR UK’s head of policy, said: “The Disability Poverty Campaign Group heard media reports that the Treasury was putting together financial options for the new prime minister to consider.
“We wanted the chancellor and officials to be absolutely clear about the mounting evidence that disabled people in poverty are being the hardest hit by the cost-of-living crisis and need urgent support.”
The Treasury had not commented on the letter by 11am today (Thursday).
18 August 2022
Call for watchdog to act on rail staffing to prevent ‘human rights crisis’
Campaigners have called on the equality watchdog to take “urgent action” to prevent an “escalating human rights crisis” for disabled passengers, caused by staffing issues on Britain’s rail system.
They say reports that the government plans mass ticket office closures mean this could be the last chance to act on rail accessibility, which they believe is in a “state of national emergency”.
Their letter comes three years after the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) warned train operators about destaffing and set up a legal fund for victims of discrimination on public transport.
EHRC had also warned the government and train companies earlier in 2019 that the move towards running more trains without a member of customer services staff on board – driver-only operated trains – and an increase in unstaffed stations, as well as the need for many disabled rail passengers to book assistance before their journeys, could be breaching the Equality Act.
But yesterday’s letter says the government has ignored EHRC’s warnings.
The letter says: “Disabled people’s right to independent living is now under greater threat than ever, due to planned government cuts to railway staffing, a key driver of the industrial dispute ongoing across the country.”
It calls on the government to take measures that will guarantee “turn up and go” unbooked assistance for all disabled people at all locations on the rail network.
A string of disabled activists, campaigners and allies have signed the letter, which was put together by the Association of British Commuters (ABC).
Among those who have signed it are Ann Bates, a transport access consultant and former rail chair of the Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee (DPTAC); Andrew Hodgson, president of the National Federation of the Blind of the UK (NFBUK); Jan Shortt, general secretary of the National Pensioners Convention; and Paula Peters, a member of the national steering group of Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC).
It has also been signed by Professor Philip Alston, a human rights lawyer and a former special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights for the UN.
Other signatories to the letter include prominent campaigners on accessible transport Alan Benson, Doug Paulley, Tony Jennings, Sarah Leadbetter, Sarah Gayton and Sam Jennings.
ABC, and its co-founder Emily Yates, have been behind a series of revelations in recent weeks that have shown how DPTAC, the government’s accessible transport advisers, has been raising serious concerns with ministers over the accessibility of the rail network.
One document secured by ABC showed how staffing levels on a section of the rail network were “completely inadequate to deliver an accessible railway”.
DPTAC has warned that a lack of staff causes problems with provision of assistance for station navigation, boarding and alighting trains, providing customer information, ensuring passenger safety, and offering face-to-face ticket sales.
This week’s letter says the government is continuing to allow rail companies to run unstaffed trains to unstaffed stations, which means there is no assistance available to help disabled passengers board and exit trains.
It points to a report in the Sunday Times last month which claimed that 980 ticket offices in England were to be closed or “repurposed” as part of the government’s reported £2 billion cuts to annual railway spending.
The letter adds: “In the absence of any evidence to the contrary, the further destaffing of trains and stations is sure to follow; increasing the impact of the existing discriminatory staffing policies on Britain’s railway.”
It calls for EHRC to demand “full transparency” from the government about its rail staffing plans, and a public consultation.
And it says the watchdog should consult and then feed into a report being prepared by the UN special rapporteur on the rights of disabled people, Gerard Quinn.
Quinn is seeking evidence from around the world on innovation in the design and delivery of those services that “underpin the right to live independently and be included in the community”.
The letter calls on EHRC to “work proactively with the UN to encourage a permanent, joint approach to disabled people’s fundamental right to public transport”.
Bates said: “True ‘modernisation’ would mean an inclusive railway that supports disabled people’s right to independent living – not staffing cuts that ignore the needs not only of disabled people, but also a large proportion of the travelling public.”
Hodgson said: “NFBUK urges the government and rail industry to heed the warnings of human rights experts that the destaffing of stations and trains will lead to blind, partially-sighted and deafblind people losing the access and confidence to travel on our railways.”
And Bob Ellard, a member of DPAC’s national steering group, said: “Ticket offices provide an essential service for many disabled people who can’t access online ticketing nor use machines.
“Closure and loss of assistance staff on stations would mean loss of access to train travel for these people – it cannot be allowed to happen.
“The EHRC must step in and prevent this national crisis in rail accessibility and disability rights.”
An EHRC spokesperson said: “We are committed to upholding disabled people’s right to equal travel and know many disabled or older passengers rely on station staff and ticket offices to access rail services.
“Service providers must make reasonable adjustments to ensure disabled people are not unfairly disadvantaged.
“We are carefully considering the association’s letter and will respond in due course.”
The Department for Transport had not commented by 11am today (Thursday).
18 August 2022
Staff shortages repeatedly shut down step-free access at tube stations
Staff shortages are repeatedly causing step-free access to be suspended at stations across London’s tube network, new figures have shown.
Transport for London (TfL) has provided figures showing that at one station – West Finchley – the lifts have had to be taken out of service temporarily on more than 120 occasions since 1 April because of the “unavailability of station staff”.
Disabled campaigners had feared that lifts at some of London’s tube stations were regularly being taken out of service because of a lack of staff, with passengers wrongly being told that they are faulty.
But TfL insisted this morning (Thursday) that this did not happen.
Instead, it released figures showing how many times step-free access at three stations had had to be suspended due to faulty lifts or staffing problems between 1 April and 15 August.
There were 123 incidents of staffing shortages at West Finchley, four of staffing problems and one of a faulty lift at Southfields, and 10 incidents of staff unavailability and six faulty lifts at Morden, all resulting in step-free access being suspended.
These are three of the capital’s smaller tube stations, with lower staffing levels than busier stations.
TfL insists that it always correctly announces the reason that step-free access is suspended.
Step-free access across much of the London Underground network depends on the availability of working lifts.
But accessible transport experts had become increasingly concerned at the number of lifts that were being declared “faulty” by TfL and were then declared fixed just hours later.
They feared that many of these lifts were in good working order but were being shut down by TfL because it did not have staff available at those stations.
The latest concerns among campaigners were triggered by a tweet on 11 August from barrister Jack Harrison, who described how he and three strangers had to carry a wheelchair-user up the stairs at Wimbledon Park station because the lift had been turned off.
He said: “Happens every night. Helpline just rang out. Disgusting from @TfL.”
It appears to have happened again the following evening, 12 August (Friday), this time at 7.59pm, when the TfL Access Twitter feed reported: “Wimbledon Park station. Step free access is not available due to a faulty lift.”
Access consultant and campaigner Christiane Link, who has been campaigning on the availability of lifts on the network for the last decade, responded: “Again? At 8pm exactly? Is the lift on shift too?”
Another wheelchair-used commented: “Funny that. I’ll bet it’ll be magically fixed first thing tomorrow.”
He was right.
Tony Jennings, co-chair of a rail accessibility panel and member of the Campaign for Level Boarding, reported that the lift was back working at 5.30am the following morning.
TfL later claimed that the lift doors had failed at 7.55pm, an engineer attended the station at 1.05am, and the lift had returned to service at 02.25am.
TfL claimed the lift had to be “temporarily closed” again two days later due to “the unavailability of staff”, which was “communicated as the lift being closed due to staff unavailability”.
On Tuesday this week, there were a series of posts by the TfL Access Twitter feed, including suspensions of step-free access to the Waterloo & City line due to unavailability of station staff; and at Newbury Park due to unavailability of station staff; as well as other suspensions due to “a faulty lift”.
TfL this morning provided DNS with a spreadsheet showing nearly 150 incidents between 1 April and 15 August this year at West Finchley, Southfields and Morden in which step-free access had been suspended, mostly due to unavailability of staff.
Link first became concerned about lifts being taken out of service nine years ago.
Her freedom of information request at the time revealed more than 50 occasions in six months where step-free access had been suspended by TfL because of staff shortages.
The situation appears to be far more serious now, with staff off sick due to Covid likely to play a part.
A TfL spokesperson said: “The reason lifts are sometimes closed when staff are unavailable is our station staff are trained to assist customers by releasing them should a lift fail.
“They are also the first people to answer an alarm if it is activated by a customer.
“As part of station management, staff also monitor the lifts regularly to ensure they’re working properly and any defects are reported to our assets team promptly.
“Having a member of staff on site reduces the chance that a customer requiring assistance would be stuck for an extended period while help arrives from elsewhere.”
Esther Sharples, TfL’s director of asset performance and capital renewals, said earlier in a statement: “I would like to apologise to customers whose journeys were impacted by the unavailability of step-free access at Wimbledon Park station last weekend.
“Unfortunately, due to unavailability of staff and a fault with the lift earlier in the week, we were not able to provide step-free access at Wimbledon Park.
“We understand the importance of ensuring our step-free access is available and we appreciate the significant impact that unavailability of step-free access causes for customers who rely on it.”
As the figures were only released this morning, DNS has been unable to secure comments from disabled campaigners about the significant number of suspensions of step-free access due to staff shortages.
18 August 2022
Mental health reforms are ‘full of loopholes’ and will ‘uphold the status quo’
The government’s planned mental health reforms contain “far too many loopholes” and will retain a “fundamentally discriminatory” system, according to some of the first detailed concerns raised by disabled people.
Three leading disabled campaigners have told Disability News Service this week that they believe the government’s draft mental health bill “lets people down very badly” and is just a “sticking plaster” that will “uphold the status quo”.
The draft bill, which applies to England and Wales, will reform the Mental Health Act 1983.
It is being examined in detail by a parliamentary joint committee, which issued a call for evidence on 1 August, ahead of hearings due to take place in the autumn.
But significant concerns are already emerging about its content, particularly the failure to provide full rights for disabled people as laid out in the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD).
Among concerns raised by Dorothy Gould, founder of the user-led, rights-based organisation Liberation, are that the draft bill will retain key ways in which the Mental Health Act currently breaches the convention – through involuntary detention, forced treatment in psychiatric hospitals and community treatment orders – even if it aims to reduce their use.
Those judged not to have capacity would not have the same weight attached to their advance wishes about their treatment as those said to have capacity, she says.
And the draft bill would – if it eventually became law – continue to allow denying a person the right to a trial on the basis that they lack mental capacity.
Gould has also questioned some of the supposed improvements included in the draft bill.
The draft bill aims to reduce detentions, but the terminology it uses is so vague that it is unlikely to reduce the number of people detained, and the lengths of their detentions, she says.
Even if someone is assessed as having capacity, clinicians will still be able to have the final say on what goes into their new statutory care and treatment plan, and overrule their wishes, if that professional has a “compelling reason” and approval from a second opinion appointed doctor (SOAD)*.
And Liberation says that, even though the bill will allow patients to choose their own “nominated person” to take on various rights and responsibilities, rather than have a “nearest relative” assigned to them, this will only apply to those judged to have “capacity” at the time of their choice, and the nominated person could also be overruled or displaced.
The government says its bill will “ensure greater choice and autonomy for patients in a mental health crisis”, address the disproportionate number of people of colour detained under the Mental Health Act, and improve the treatment of people with learning difficulties and autistic people, and of people with mental distress in the criminal justice system.
It is based on a white paper published in January 2021, which was put out to consultation, with the government publishing its response last July.
Although many of last year’s white paper’s proposals were welcomed, it built on recommendations made by Professor Sir Simon Wessely’s independent review of the Mental Health Act in 2018, which was criticised for falling “significantly short” of recommending full human rights for people in mental distress.
Clenton Farquharson, a director of the user-led organisation Community Navigator Services, said detention will still be the “default position” within the mental health system “if resources are not wrapped around the changes needed”.
He said: “The government needs to travel in the direction disabled people want, which is the UNCRPD.
“Detention should not be the default position. The government needs to put in the missing jigsaw pieces to prevent it happening.”
He said this means that funding needs to be “wrapped around law, attitudes, education systems, culture and services”.
He said the disabled people’s movement “believes passionately in choice and autonomy for everyone”, which means enabling people who find communication difficult “to understand what others are saying and be understood”, but the draft bill will not allow that to happen adequately.
And he said there was no evidence that the draft bill would “make a difference to people from racialised communities”.
He said: “Racial equity holds society to a higher standard, demands we pay attention not just at an individual level, but at societal, systems and outcomes levels.
“What the government is proposing is a sticking plaster.”
Cheryl Prax, from the campaign group Speak Out Against Psychiatry (SOAP), said she believed that psychiatrists – including Wessely – had been put in charge of the reforms, which she said was “like putting gambling dens in charge of Gamblers Anonymous”.
She said: “They are not going to put the patients’ needs and wants first.”
She said that psychiatry had a history of forcing treatments on people which they later renounce as useless or even harmful, such as lobotomies and insulin comas, while electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), brain implants and psychiatric medications were all “under scrutiny for worsening outcomes”.
She said that forced, unwanted psychiatric treatment should not be an option for people in distress.
She said: “It is perfectly reasonable not to want ECT or chemicals in your body, yet incapacity is cited as a reason to overrule choices, even choices made when they considered you capable of making them.
“We are all human and when in difficulty we need compassion and choices. Human rights should be for all.
“In my opinion, psychiatry has tried to uphold the status quo when reviewing the Mental Health Act.”
Gould said the draft bill “lets people down very badly” and would allow people to continue to be “subject to coercion through involuntary hospitalisation, forced treatment and community treatment orders, in circumstances which are illegal for others”.
She said: “It’s not enough to make ‘improvements’ while retaining a mental health system which is fundamentally discriminatory.”
She said the draft bill was still “based on the idea that, for safeguarding reasons, coercion may be necessary for those of us given mental health diagnoses.
“Yet we are far more often subjected to abuse and violence than put others at risk and we rarely even receive legal reparation.
“It’s also well known that risk assessments are not a good predictor of risk, yet, unlike members of the public in general, we can still be locked up on the basis of potential risk.
“It’s very wrong, too, that the bill continues to deny many of us our rights on capacity grounds.
“There are also far too many loopholes in the draft bill and these undermine even the proposals that it does contain.
“For example, how much real difference will it make now to say that people must pose a ‘serious’ risk if they are to be detained?
“Quite apart from the unreliability of risk assessments, ‘serious’ risk could be interpreted in so many different ways.
“And, given the current power-dominated culture of many psychiatric hospitals, how was it wise to give clinicians the final say, even about what treatment a detained patient receives?”
She added: “This draft bill is not good enough. What we want and deserve are our full human rights under the UNCRPD.”
*The SOAD service is run by the Care Quality Commission, and it aims to safeguard “the rights of patients detained under the Mental Health Act who either refuse the treatment prescribed to them or are deemed incapable of consenting”
18 August 2022
Festival invites ‘beautiful disfluent voices’ from across the world to Liverpool
The campaigning work of a UK disabled people’s organisation (DPO) will receive international recognition next week when it hosts a global conference that is set to attract people who stammer from all over the world.
STAMMA will host the five-day STAMMAFest Global at the University of Liverpool and hopes it will build confidence within the community of people who stammer and allow their “beautiful disfluent voices” to be heard.
The disabled-led UK charity was asked to host the International Stuttering Association’s 14th World Congress after the success of its campaigns Find the Right Words and No Diversity Without Disfluency, both of which have been copied by organisations around the world.
Find the Right Words was launched in October 2020 and aimed to start a conversation around the negative language used when talking about stammering, and to “help those who don’t stammer to understand that this is just how some people talk”.
Last October’s No Diversity Without Disfluency called on broadcast media to include people who stammer.
All but one of STAMMA’s trustees stammer, and Kirsten Howells, the charity’s support services manager, said it was “vital” the conference was being run by an organisation led by disabled people.
She said: “This is our conference, where we decide what’s on the agenda, and where we reflect the diversity of opinion, experience and perspective within our community, too.
“We’re not all the same.”
She said the request for STAMMA to host the global conference was “a recognition of the strides we’ve taken as an organisation to build a community as well as addressing public attitudes to stammering”.
Paul Roberts, a volunteer member of the organising committee, said the conference would show people who stammer that they “can organise and pull off a fantastic event for ourselves, without fluent intervention, without someone speaking for us”.
STAMMAFest Global, being held from 24 to 28 August, will incorporate STAMMA’s own biennial conference and will be the first time the charity has been able to hold that event since 2018, after the Covid pandemic caused its cancellation in 2020.
Howells said the pace of change in attitudes to people who stammer was “glacial”.
She said: “People who stammer continue to face considerable discrimination in employment and educational settings, in the way customer services are provided, and in access to health care, as well as social interactions.”
STAMMA’s helpline has received calls from sixth-form students who are denied access to modern languages A-levels because their schools are concerned about the impact of stammering on their exam results, and therefore the schools’ positions in league tables.
University students who stammer have been denied extra time in oral examinations, and STAMMA’s employment support service has heard from people worried that telling a potential employer they stammer will mean they will be refused a job interview.
Only two years ago, a YouGov poll found 21 per cent of respondents said they felt fairly or very comfortable with jokes about stammering.
But Howells said invisible discrimination was also a key issue, with the proportion of stammered voices heard in the media at “miniscule” levels, even though eight per cent of children stammer for at least a short period of time, while a YouGov poll in 2021 found two per cent of adult respondents reported a stammer.
People who stammer also find barriers to accessing services, such as GP appointments or banking systems that rely on telephone use, including voice-activation.
Howells said: “We receive frequent reports from people who have such difficulty getting GP appointments, who are cut off by voice-activated banking systems that don’t understand their speech due to stammering (but where alternative methods of contact are not offered or only involve social media options which not everyone has or wants access to), or are hung up on by customer service representatives who assume it’s a prank call when, really, the caller is just stammering.”
Roberts said he once worked for a company with remote door security, which meant staff had to identify themselves via a microphone to gain access.
He said: “You can imagine the scene by the door when I needed to get in, but maybe you don’t think of the anxiety during my journey to work and walking up to the door, not knowing whether I would be able to say my name and gain quick access.
“The employer had not installed this system to make life hard for me, it had just not considered the impact.”
Next week’s conference will have four themes: change and empowerment; community; culture; and work and education.
The opening plenary session, on Thursday (25 August), will discuss the global community of people who stammer, and how they can find a sense of belonging, empowerment and support, and push back against stigma.
Friday’s plenary session will see a discussion about stammering by a panel of artists, writers and musicians.
They will include actor, writer, rapper and podcaster Scroobius Pip; novelist Hannah Tovey; novelist, poet and playwright Professor Owen Sheers; and – appearing via videolink from the US – musician and poet JJJJJerome.
Saturday’s plenary session will examine stammering in the workplace; and Sunday’s session will hear from speakers who are challenging discrimination, lobbying those in power, and helping the public understand “that stammering is simply the way some of us talk”.
There will be more than 40 workshops during the conference, including one that discusses the concepts of stammering pride and prejudice; and another examining how virtual reality is being used by people who stammer as a safe space to speak.
Other workshops will examine research that has looked at how stammering is presented in 200 films; and hear from creators of stammering podcasts and how they use those podcasts for advocacy, community-building, and empowerment.
Those attending the conference are due to come from across the world, including Cameroon, Japan, the USA, Rwanda, Germany, Italy, South Africa, Denmark and Sweden.
During the conference, STAMMA – formerly known as the British Stammering Association –will also host a family day, which will allow children who stammer to meet and build confidence, and enable their parents to make connections.
The family day will take place on Saturday 27 August, and will include activity and information sessions, with the opportunity also to visit the main conference.
Howells said she hoped STAMMAFest would be “a spur to a next phase of continued confidence-building within our community”, lay some groundwork for increased collaboration between stammering organisations around the world, and allow many “first-timers” to find out for the first time that “they are not alone”.
Roberts said: “We should not underestimate the value of feeling part of something; included instead of excluded; the same, instead of different.
“Those people who stammer will find that they are not the only person at the bar who stammers, and they will know that whoever you speak to ‘gets it’, understands how we feel, being able to relax and speak exactly how we want to, instead of with societal-imposed fluency.”
He added: “We can empower people to understand our beautiful disfluent voices are OK to be heard and do not have to be modified unless we choose to.”
18 August 2022
Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week
The number of universal credit claimants having their benefits cut or stopped has exploded to a record high after a government crackdown. Nearly 110,000 Brits on universal credit were being sanctioned by a jobcentre in May. That has more than doubled in six months and is now nearly six per cent of all potential claimants – despite a cost-of-living crisis. It comes after Conservative ministers forced claimants to look for more jobs or be sanctioned in a crackdown to get 500,000 more people into work by June: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/breaking-record-number-universal-credit-27751114
Survivors of the contaminated blood scandal have been awarded interim government payments after a 40-year battle, but thousands of parents and children of the victims have still received nothing. Ministers have accepted the urgency of the need to make the £100,000 payments to about 3,000 surviving victims, after being warned that those mistakenly infected with HIV and hepatitis C were dying at the rate of one every four days. But parents and children of the victims accused the government of perpetuating the scandal by failing to recognise their own trauma and loss in today’s announcement: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/aug/17/survivors-of-contaminated-blood-scandal-awarded-interim-payments
Some Brits on universal credit have been denied a vital cost-of-living payment – because they were sanctioned by their jobcentre. Boris Johnson previously said the £326 lump sum would show more than eight million Brits “we are on their side”. But guidance to Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) staff, seen by the Mirror, told them to refuse the payment to certain claimants if their benefits had been stopped. Campaigners demanded the DWP tear up the “outrageous” and “ill-judged” decision, as energy bills could top £5,000 a year: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/dwp-denies-326-cost-living-27728030
Autistic Scots and those with learning difficulties have been locked in secure hospitals and psychiatric wards for decades, a BBC investigation has found. They remain unable to get out despite Scottish ministers saying 22 years ago that they should be living independently in the community. BBC Disclosure found one person with a learning difficulty who had been behind locked doors in hospital for 25 years. Another was cleared for release eight years ago but is still in hospital: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-62477095
William Wragg has said he is taking a “short break” from his duties as an MP to recover from depression. The Conservative MP for Hazel Grove revealed he had lived with depression and anxiety most of his adult life, and both were currently “severe”. He said he hoped to return “refreshed” and “loving life and myself a little bit more”. He added his constituents would continue to be able to contact his office for assistance: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-62573991
18 August 2022
News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com
