Contents
Trio of mayoral candidates show ‘contempt’ by snubbing disability hustings 1
Met took formal action on just nine disability hate crimes in 2023, hustings is told 3
Government denies fixing Jodey Whiting inquest date to clash with Labour conference 5
Disabled people living on the streets, yards from former DWP offices 7
Government is misrepresenting workplace disability inequality, MPs are told 11
Call for volunteers to fill ‘massive gap’ in support for autistic survivors of sexual violence 13
Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week 15
Trio of mayoral candidates show ‘contempt’ by snubbing disability hustings
Three candidates to be the next mayor of London have refused to explain why they failed to turn up to a packed hustings event that would have allowed disabled people from across the capital to question them on their policies.
Just one of the four candidates invited, Zoë Garbett, for the Green Party, turned up to answer questions at the sold-out event, with more than 100 people attending, and about another 100 watching or listening online.
Conservative candidate Susan Hall, Labour’s Sadiq Khan – the current mayor – and Liberal Democrat Rob Blackie all sent spokespeople to replace them rather than turning up themselves to face questions from disabled people.
Inclusion London, which organised the event, has now launched a #NoMoreNoShows campaign to ensure that candidates for the upcoming general election attend disability hustings, rather than sending replacements.
Svetlana Kotova, Inclusion London’s director of campaigns and justice, told the event as it began that she and her colleagues were “deeply disappointed” at the failure of the three candidates to attend.
She said: “We did everything we could to convince them to come.”
Kotova said their failure to attend was “really, really concerning for the democratic process; we think it’s really important that candidates talk to disabled people and hear from disabled people.”
Inclusion London has shared its own manifesto with all four candidates, with demands across equality and inclusion, transport, housing, work and study, poverty and policing.
Inclusion London’s co-chair, Adam Gabsi, who was chairing the hustings event, told Disability News Service (DNS) afterwards that Hall, Khan and Blackie had been invited in “numerous ways” but had still not attended.
He said: “Even though I am very proud of our hustings, the work that went into it and the turnout, I am deeply disappointed and frustrated that the aforementioned politicians failed to engage and sent representatives to speak on their behalf.
“Hustings are an integral part of the democratic process and ignoring disabled people gives us the impression that our concerns are not worthy of being listened to and our votes are not important.
“This is an election year and disabled people deserve better treatment.
“We should be listened to and spoken to directly. We do not want to be ignored and a repeat of the mayoral candidates’ behaviour is unacceptable.”
Spokespeople for Hall, Khan and Blackie had not responded by noon today (Thursday) to requests from DNS to comment on their failure to attend the hustings.
But Jack Gilbert, chief executive of Real, a disabled people’s organisation (DPO) based in Tower Hamlets, east London, who attended the event and asked a question about disability hate crime (see separate story), said the trio’s failure to attend was “very disappointing”.
He told DNS: “Time and again, disabled Londoners are considered as an after-thought, whether it’s in the design of transport infrastructure, or other matters to do with housing, or policing.
“The potential leaders of London had an opportunity to give a clear message that they saw disabled Londoners in a different, new light, and they missed that opportunity.”
Disabled activist Jamie McCormack, who also attended the event, said: “The supposed Big Three talk about inclusion and the importance of each voter, but when the candidates get an oh-too-rare chance to hear from Deaf and disabled Londoners they show their contempt by sending stand-ins.
“This mirrors the lack of progress in creating positive change for 1.2 million Deaf and disabled Londoners.
“Telling us in warm words what they think we want to hear when we know exactly how hard things are and the failures of the Greater London Authority and successive mayors in tackling the big issues, I honestly found insulting.”
He also pointed out that none of the candidates appeared yet to have created any campaign material in British Sign Language.
He added: “If they want our votes, they will have to do so, so much better, but I fear they won’t.”
Hallie Banish, campaigns manager for the DPO Ruils Independent Living, also expressed concern at the trio’s failure to attend.
She said: “We were deeply disappointed that only the Green Party candidate came to the Inclusion London hustings.
“Representatives from Labour, Lib Dems and Conservative parties told us that engaging with disabled people and our organisations is a top priority for their party’s candidate, particularly from the start of any process.
“Why, then, did the candidates themselves not show up and speak with us?
“How are we to expect them to prioritise the views of disabled people and take action as the mayor of London, if they decline our invitation to a hustings?
“We are not a tick-box exercise, and we hope the future mayor is serious about tackling entrenched ableism in the Met, the lack of accessible and genuinely affordable homes, inaccessible public transport and all other issues that affect disabled Londoners.”
Laura Vicinanza, policy and stakeholder engagement manager for Inclusion London, said: “We are deeply disappointed that of the four parties represented at hustings, only the Green Party sent their mayoral candidate.
“We heard from other candidates via their spokespeople, but we know how important it is to be able to engage directly with the candidates we’re voting for and ask for clear commitments in a way that is accessible to us.
“Our rights as disabled people must be valued and upheld by all our elected representatives.
“Hustings are a vital part of the democratic process – a chance for politicians to talk directly with voters.
“If we don’t use our democratic rights, we will lose them, so we’re calling for all political parties to commit to #NoMoreNoShows for London-wide community hustings.”
11 April 2024
Met took formal action on just nine disability hate crimes in 2023, hustings is told
Only nine disability hate crimes in the whole of London led to significant action being taken by police last year, politicians have been told during a disabled people’s election hustings event.
Although 600 disability hate crimes were recorded by the Metropolitan police in the year to January 2024, just 1.5 per cent of them were cleared up through formal action – known as sanction detections – such as a criminal charge or a caution to the offender.
The figures were revealed by Jack Gilbert, a police adviser for two decades and chief executive of Real, a disabled people’s organisation based in Tower Hamlets, which has secured the data for a report it has yet to publish.
Gilbert has been a member of the Metropolitan Police Service’s (MPS) LGBT+ independent advisory group for more than 20 years, and has also been involved in intersectional community relations work in east and north London.
He told the London mayoral hustings event that statistics from the force on the number of disabled victims of crime suggested that the figures the MPS was collecting were not reliable.
Despite Office for National Statistics figures from the Crime Survey for England and Wales showing disabled people were far more likely to experience anti-social behaviour, domestic abuse, sexual assaults and violent crime, only about 2.5 per cent of all crimes recorded by the MPS are “tagged” to indicate they relate to a disabled victim.
Gilbert called for all the mayoral candidates to commit to drawing up a disability action plan for the MPS if they win May’s election.
The hustings event was organised by Inclusion London so the candidates for next month’s London mayoral election could be questioned by disabled Londoners.
But only one of the four candidates turned up to the event – Green candidate Zoë Garbett – while Conservative candidate Susan Hall, Labour’s Sadiq Khan and Liberal Democrat Rob Blackie all sent spokespeople in their place (see separate story).
Inclusion London’s co-chair, Adam Gabsi, who was chairing the hustings event, told the panel of speakers that too many disabled people felt unsafe in London and that they were often not “believed and supported by the police when reporting crimes”.
Gabsi asked the representatives of the four parties what their plans were to tackle disability hate crime in London, and what actions they would take to tackle disablism in the Metropolitan police, “to make sure all disabled Londoners feel they can trust the police and report crimes”.
Gilbert and Gabsi’s concerns came almost exactly a year after Baroness Casey’s review of the force’s culture and standards was heavily criticised by disabled campaigners for finding significant evidence of disability discrimination across the force, but failing to conclude that the MPS was institutionally disablist, even though she found it to be institutionally racist, sexist and homophobic.
Garbett had already told the event that she recognised that the Met was “rarely held to account on addressing the disablism within their service”, and she promised to do so if she was elected mayor.
She said she would “hold the Met to account to reform to make sure that disabled Londoners can trust that it’s a service you can report crime to, and I will make sure that there is regular training on inclusion, and I will challenge all forms of hate”.
She also promised to commit to “genuine co-production” of policies with disabled people if she was elected.
In her response to Gabsi, Garbett said she believed that “the disablism within the Met often gets erased when people talk about the homophobia, racism and misogyny” and she called for action on “rooting out the bad officers, improving recruitment” and ensuring “appropriate training”.
In response to Gilbert, she said she fully supported a disability action plan and called for it to be co-produced with disabled people, while also stressing the need for the “right data”.
Sadiq Khan, the current mayor, was one of the candidates who failed to turn up to the hustings, and his spokesperson failed to mention disablism or disability hate crime in her response to Gabsi, although she accepted that disabled Londoners “have been let down by the police and a culture change is now required to address this”.
In response to Gilbert, she said the lack of accurate statistics was “completely appalling”, and she appeared to support a disability action plan for the Met, although she was not clear on whether the mayor would implement this policy if re-elected.
Conservative candidate Susan Hall also failed to turn up to the hustings, but her spokesperson said his party would “sign-up to the disability action plan”, although again it was not clear whether this was a solid policy commitment from Hall.
He also called for “better records of the crimes against disabled people”.
Liberal Democrat Rob Blackie also failed to attend, and his spokesperson said there was “not enough data or accurate data about hate crime towards disabled Londoners”, and she agreed with the call for a disability action plan, although yet again it was unclear whether this was a policy commitment from Blackie if he became mayor.
11 April 2024
Government denies fixing Jodey Whiting inquest date to clash with Labour conference
The government has denied playing any role in deciding that a high-profile second inquest into a disabled woman’s suicide – linked closely to the actions of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) – will clash with the Labour party conference.
A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said Disability News Service (DNS) would be “irresponsible” if it reported concerns that the Conservative government could have played a role in ensuring the inquest took place at the same time as the Labour conference.
The family of Jodey Whiting have been waiting since March 2023 for a date for a second inquest into her death.
But they have now been told that the three-day hearing will take place on 23, 24 and 25 September, the same as the last three days of Labour’s annual conference in Liverpool.
With the general election set to take place in the following weeks, it is likely that coverage of the inquest by mainstream media will be significantly reduced because of the attention focused on the conference.
A government spokesperson told DNS: “It would be totally inaccurate and irresponsible to report that government played any role in the listing of this inquest which was, as is always the case, determined by an independent coroner.”
Jodey’s mother, Joy Dove, said she believed there would still be local coverage of the inquest, but she did not know what impact the clash with the conference would have on wider media coverage.
She has been campaigning for justice for her daughter since approaching their local newspaper, the Gazette, just days after Jodey’s death in February 2017.
She told DNS: “I don’t mind waiting, as long as I get the right result. I have worked on it for that long.
“I wish she was here and I was not having to do it, but she will never be forgotten.”
She said that other disabled people were still losing their lives now, seven years after Jodey’s death.
And she thanked all those who have supported the campaigning and her family over the last seven years.
Among the new evidence that will be considered by the second inquest will be a report by the Independent Case Examiner, which concluded in February 2019 that DWP failed five times to follow its own safeguarding rules in the weeks leading up to Jodey Whiting’s suicide.
Despite this proof of the systemic flaws within DWP, Dove is not yet convinced that there will finally be justice for her daughter at the second inquest.
She still finds it impossible to forget that DWP removed her daughter’s benefits without a face-to-face assessment.
She said: “I can’t get over the fact that they had never seen Jodey’s face.
“She never got to an appointment, and they took all her benefits off her. They drove her to it. They had no right to do what they did.”
The Court of Appeal ordered a second inquest into the 42-year-old’s suicide in March 2023 so there could be a public examination of the “consequences” of DWP stopping the benefits of disabled people who rely on social security.
The delay in setting a date for the second inquest may have been partly caused by the Legal Aid Agency initially refusing to provide funding for the family to have legal representation at the inquest, before it was granted after an appeal by the family’s solicitors at law firm Leigh Day.
The first inquest into the death of the mother-of-nine and grandmother, from Stockton-on-Tees, took place in May 2017.
It failed to examine DWP’s role in her death or take evidence from any DWP witnesses, and it lasted just 37 minutes.
There was no criticism of DWP by the coroner, even though Dove had told the inquest that she blamed the department for her daughter’s death, Jodey’s sister Donna had said that having her benefits stopped had been a “triggering factor” in Jodey taking her own life, and Jodey’s daughter Emma had blamed DWP for her mum’s death.
She had taken her own life in February 2017, 15 days after her employment and support allowance (ESA) was wrongly stopped by DWP for missing a work capability assessment.
She had been a long-time claimant of incapacity benefit, and then ESA, and DWP and its assessors had previously noted the severity of her mental distress, and the risk of harm if she was found fit for work, while they were aware of her long history of suicidal thoughts.
The high court rejected Joy Dove’s request for a second inquest in September 2021, despite two key pieces of new evidence.
But the Court of Appeal ruled in March 2023 that it was “in the interests of justice” for there to be another inquest.
Teesside and Hartlepool Coroner’s Service had not responded by noon today (Thursday) to a request to comment on the date set for the second inquest.
11 April 2024
Disabled people living on the streets, yards from former DWP offices
Some of the hundreds of disabled people left homeless on London’s streets have described how they came to be living in tents just yards from where the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) used to have many of its offices.
An area behind the historic Adelphi building in central London, which looks out over the Thames, has become a temporary home for several disabled people, with a line of tents pitched in the shadow of the huge office block.
As recently as 2012, some DWP departments were based in the grade II-listed Adelphi.
One of the current tenants of the building is the Economist magazine.
When Disability News Service (DNS) visited the Adelphi late last month, there were about 10 tents pitched against a wall just yards from its back entrance.
All four of the occupants DNS spoke to were disabled people.
None of them knew of the building’s historic connection with DWP.
Iesha Muhammad, who shares her tent with her autistic husband Dominic and has the life-limiting condition ALS, said her experience with universal credit had been “appalling” even though “they understand I’m a vulnerable person”.
She said she has been given an early morning appointment by the jobcentre but when she explained that it took her longer to get up in the morning and to get to the meeting because of her health condition, she was told: “If you can survive on the streets, you can get here on time.”
She said: “We are on universal credit, but it’s less than it should be.
“We have been told numerous times we cannot have crisis loans. It’s either life or death on the streets.”
Despite receiving universal credit, it has not helped the couple find housing.
Without a guarantor, she says, landlords will not accept people who claim benefits.
Another of those living in the tents, Alex, came to Britain 13 years ago and was a construction worker until he developed a heart condition and needed to have an implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) fitted, while he also has a mental health condition and epilepsy.
He is forced to rely on personal independence payment (PIP), while a council key worker supports him with his long-delayed universal credit claim.
He says he receives £500 a month through PIP but that is “far away not enough” and means he cannot afford all the medicines he needs.
He said: “I am trying to stay positive. I feel sad to see so many [homeless people].”
The housing situation of his neighbour, Brian Smith, is complex and he says he does not blame DWP.
Smith has both mental health and physical impairments, including schizophrenia, and left his flat in Oxfordshire after being sectioned following his brother’s death, as he felt increasingly isolated, and due to problems with his medication.
Until his tenancy expires, he says, he won’t be able to approach DWP for financial help with his housing, although he receives both employment and support allowance and the daily living and mobility elements of PIP.
He says he enjoys the company of the other homeless people who have pitched their tents behind the Adelphi.
He said: “I have never felt better. For me too much time on your own isn’t good for you.
“I need people around me. Down here you’re left alone [by the authorities].”
But he told DNS that other disabled people who live in the tents are in a more difficult situation.
He said: “Some people have got no benefits. People like us who do get benefits do try and help them out.
“I can’t see one of my fellow men struggling for a sandwich or a cup of tea.
“I know quite a few here don’t get benefits or have been suspended for some reason or other.”
Asked how he felt about there being so many homeless people living on the streets, he said: “I don’t like to see it in the 21st century.”
He believes about 90 per cent of those living in tents behind the Adelphi are disabled.
He receives support from the nearby St Martin-in-the-Fields day centre.
He said: “If you go there between eight and nine [in the morning] you will see them all queuing up inside.
“You will realise just how many disabled people are on the street.
“The big majority of the people you will talk to will be disabled people in one way or another.”
DNS approached DWP, Westminster council, St Martin-in-the-Fields and London mayor Sadiq Khan about the presence of so many disabled people on London’s streets, and whether universal credit might be worsening the situation.
A Westminster council spokesperson said: “As the centre of London, Westminster is a destination for rough sleepers from both the UK as well as abroad and the council spends far more than any other council – £7million a year – to help those arriving here.
“We work with charity partners to provide outreach teams across the city.
“These teams work day and night to find, and offer support to, people sleeping rough on our streets. Known gathering places are visited frequently.
“We aim to assess every person on the streets based on their specific disabilities or vulnerability, with either the council or our charity partners offering support based on individual needs.
“We appreciate each person has unique, complex needs and many have physical disabilities or serious mental health problems which can create barriers to accessing help.
“Our staff do everything they can to accommodate these specific needs. Regrettably not all those with complex needs choose to accept support.”
The council said there was a recognised correlation between spending longer on the street and developing complex needs such as issues with mental and physical health, and that many people may not be disabled when they come onto the streets, but will almost inevitably become more disabled the longer that situation continues.
The council said that was why its goal was always to help people access support and eventually help them off the streets and into accommodation.
St Martin-in-the-Fields had not responded to requests to comment by noon today (Thursday).
Figures provided by London’s mayor Sadiq Khan to the London assembly two years ago showed there were 786 people with a “learning or physical disability” seen rough sleeping in the capital in 2021-22.
A spokesperson for the mayor, who is standing for re-election next month, said he had made tackling rough sleeping a priority since he was first elected in 2016, quadrupling London’s rough sleeping budget and delivering “record funding to homelessness charities and service providers across the capital, helping over 16,000 people off the streets”.
She said he had also delivered “record-breaking affordable homebuilding, including the highest council homebuilding levels since the 1970s” and had “invested in specialist and supported housing programmes”.
She added: “But Sadiq is well aware that more support is needed.
“Disabled people have been disproportionately affected by Tory cuts to our social security system and to council budgets, along with ministers’ continuing failure to ban ‘no fault’ evictions so that renters are secure in their homes.
“This is why he has repeatedly called on the government to give London the funding it needs to carry on delivering more genuinely affordable homes.
“If Sadiq is re-elected on May 2nd, he will continue to do everything he can to end street homelessness in our city and to provide support to disabled people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness.”
A government spokesperson told DNS in a statement: “We know the challenges many are facing, which is why we are increasing disability benefits by 6.7 per cent and providing an unprecedented £108 billion cost of living support package.
“We are also spending £2.4 billion to help people at risk of homelessness and support rough sleepers and will continue to work with local authorities to help people off the streets for good.”
DWP declined to say whether it believed problems with universal credit could be partly to blame for the number of disabled people who were homeless in London.
But it said the number of people in families where someone was disabled and were in poverty, after housing costs, fell by 100,000 between 2022 and 2023.
DNS reported in January that the proportion of families with disabled children who were living in poverty rose by nearly a third in two years, even before the cost-of-living crisis, according to a new poverty measurement being developed by DWP.
The measurement – which aims to provide a more accurate way of calculating deprivation – showed that nearly half of all individuals in families with at least one disabled child and one disabled adult in the UK were living in poverty by 2021-22.
The new measurement, which calculates “individuals in low resources”, found the proportion of people in families with disabled children who were living in poverty increased from 33 per cent in 2019-20 to 43 per cent in 2021-22.
And the proportion of people in families with at least one disabled child and one disabled adult who were living in poverty, according to the new measure, rose from 39 per cent in 2019-20 to 46 per cent in 2021-22.
11 April 2024
Government is misrepresenting workplace disability inequality, MPs are told
A disabled people’s organisation has accused the government of misrepresenting the high levels of inequality faced by disabled people in the workplace.
In its submission to an inquiry by a Commons committee, Disability Rights UK (DR UK) pointed to research which undermined government claims to have supported more than one million disabled people into work since 2017.
The government has repeatedly been told that the figures it quotes are “meaningless” when it comes to the inequality disabled people face in the jobs market, with evidence suggesting that years of government employment policies have had little or no impact on reducing the employment discrimination disabled people face.
In its response to the Commons work and pensions committee’s inquiry into disability employment, DR UK said the government’s statistic “is a misrepresentation of employment inequality and doesn’t recognise the reality that Disabled people currently face”.
It also pointed out that the disability employment gap has remained “stubbornly at just under 30 per cent since 2019”.
DR UK told the committee that the government needed to change its approach to social security “from punitive to supportive”.
It pointed out that – only last month – the UN’s committee on the rights of disabled people accused the UK government of demonising disabled people and treating them as “undeserving citizens” by preparing to fund tax cuts by slashing disability benefits, and said the social security system and rhetoric from ministers “devalues disabled people and undermines their human dignity”.
DR UK said the government needed to address the disability employment gap by tackling systemic barriers, rather than forcing disabled people into “unsafe, unsustainable, and exploitative work”.
Among those actions, DR UK said, it should hold employers accountable for breaching the Equality Act, telling the committee: “One of the most impactful barriers to Disabled people staying in work is employers refusing to implement the reasonable adjustments required to make their workplace accessible.”
DR UK said in its response to the inquiry that enforcement of those duties was vital, saying: “It is essential that Disabled people can rely on the Equality Act being enforced, otherwise in practice it gives us no protection.”
It also called on the government to ensure that local authorities are adequately funded to meet their legal obligations to support disabled children and young people, and it said the government should address the “lack of support and mismanagement of the transition from education to employment” for young disabled people.
It also branded the government’s much-criticised Disability Confident employment scheme “unworkable” and in need of a “complete overhaul”, while highlighting the lengthy waits for disabled people seeking support through the Access to Work scheme.
DR UK also called in its response for the government to co-produce its employment support policies with disabled people and their organisations.
And it warned that the government’s plans to reform the work capability assessment would “widen” the disability employment gap.
It pointed out that the Office for Budget Responsibility reported (PDF) in November 2023 that proposals to tighten eligibility to the WCA would only lead to 10,000 more disabled people in work but would cut benefits for 370,000 disabled people.
DR UK also highlighted government plans to scrap the WCA entirely after the next election.
Under the plans, disabled people who cannot work will only be able to qualify for a new health element of universal credit if they also receive personal independence payment, disability living allowance, or, in Scotland, adult disability payment.
This would mean it would be left to DWP’s over-worked work coaches – who would usually have no health-related qualifications – to decide if a disabled person should carry out work-related activity.
DR UK said it was “extremely concerned” by these plans, which will “likely result in incorrect work conditionality commitments and the use of sanctions in decision making and will reduce accountability, certainty, and the ability of the claimant to challenge”.
It called for these reforms to be scrapped.
DR UK added: “The easiest and most constructive way to help more people into work is to ensure the workplace is inclusive.
“The growing number of people who are out of work because of ill health is a reflection of demographic changes and discrimination in the workplace.
“The focus needs to be on improving the workplace, not on pushing people into poverty.”
11 April 2024
Call for volunteers to fill ‘massive gap’ in support for autistic survivors of sexual violence
A new disabled-led organisation is appealing for volunteers to help it fill the “massive gap” in support for autistic survivors of sexual violence and abuse, and allow their voices to be heard more loudly and enable them to influence change.
Lotus Collaborations was founded by Dr Susy Ridout, herself an autistic survivor, who says her “dream” is for autistic volunteers to use the roles as a path towards a new career.
Although there are no reliable statistics to show how many autistic people have experienced sexual violence or abuse, she believes they are at a much higher risk than non-disabled people.
This can be because of their dependence on care workers or family members, the threat of losing support if they disclose the abuse, their social isolation, and the lack of any meaningful sex education.
She said: “So if you talk to autistic people about whether they’ve experienced abuse, most autistic people will say, yes, they have.”
It was her own experience of sexual violence – and being one of the few autistic survivors to secure a prison sentence for the perpetrator – that inspired her to set up Lotus.
She realised that mainstream services for survivors of sexual violence often do not understand the different needs of autistic people.
She said: “Our different ways of communicating, our different ways of processing information, our sensory differences, all of those factors are not necessarily understood.”
Her own “monotropic” way of thinking meant she was “very focused on the trauma” after the violence she experienced, and she found it “very difficult to shift that focus onto recovery”, a situation she believes many other autistic survivors share.
There is, she said, a “massive gap” in the availability of suitable services.
The language used by services can be “victim blaming, and autistic people very much feel blamed a lot of the time.
“It’s all very, very much as though everything’s our fault, that the world’s sort of not designed for us.
“So when we go to services, we’re faced with someone who is using, to put it mildly, profoundly disabling language, that can actually make us not able to talk.
“It takes away our agency, it can gaslight our narrative, and it gets in the way of us explaining our needs to the people who we need to support us.”
At a police station, for example, autistic people can be confronted with “bright lights, lots of noise, lots of sudden movements, all the things that aggravate autistic people, all the things that if you’ve been exposed to a huge amount of trauma will be very, very triggering.
“When autistic people present, we present very, very differently in that sort of setup. And that’s a real challenge for the police.”
These barriers, she said, are heightened by intersectionality, with the autistic person’s other identities – as a black or gay person, for example – often being “ignored”.
The four new volunteer roles Lotus is seeking to fill are all at director level: as treasurer, ambassador, website developer, and ambassador with responsibility for improving the visibility of the website and social media.
The roles will provide a unique opportunity and a safe space for autistic survivors “to be heard and to be involved” in training and other projects.
Although the roles are open to other disabled people and allies, autistic applicants will be given priority if they have the required skills.
Ridout – who paid tribute to the work of company secretary Sanya Bhasin, who joined Lotus in December 2023, and is also disabled – said she hopes the volunteer roles will eventually develop into paid positions, which she said would “absolutely be my dream”.
Lotus, a community interest company, offers education, training and consultancy services around the issues facing autistic survivors of sexual violence and abuse, such as wellbeing, heathy relationships, coercive control and consent, while it also aims to work with survivors to allow them to explore their own unique routes to recovery.
Ridout said: “What I’m absolutely passionate about is that the people who deliver this training are autistic, disabled, neurodivergent themselves.”
She has written widely on the violence experienced by autistic people, and is currently helping to train police to respond to neurodivergent survivors of sexual violence as part of the Home Office-funded Operation Soteria Bluestone.
Anyone interested in applying for one of the volunteer positions can email lotuscollaborationsuk@gmail.com
11 April 2024
Other disability-related stories covered by mainstream media this week
A council which wanted to deduct more than £2,000 a year from benefits paid to an autistic man to contribute towards his care package has agreed to review its policies, following a high court legal challenge. Michael Sherratt has a care plan and has been assessed by Bolton council as having high levels of need for which he receives additional support, covered by direct payments and benefits. Before 2022 he was not required to make a contribution towards the cost of his care, but following a financial assessment, he was told to make a contribution of £39.92 per week towards his care: https://www.theboltonnews.co.uk/news/24227122.bolton-council-court-westhoughton-mans-care-package/
Two former head teachers locked disabled pupils in “calming rooms” with bolted doors, a report has revealed. Ordran Doran, 66, and Simon Black, 62, have now been banned from teaching after a probe into concerns about their leadership at The Bridge School in Ipswich, Suffolk: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/headteachers-banned-locking-children-special-32519251
A multi-million-pound investment to make transport more accessible has been given to small bus operators. The £4.65 million funding will help operators install technology that provides live audio and visual updates, so passengers with visual and hearing impairments can stay informed throughout their route. The investment comes after concerns that small companies would not be able to comply with new government regulations before the October 2026 deadline: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c6py36eey72o
The government is facing calls to make countryside walkways more accessible to disabled people and others with limited mobility. Walking charity Ramblers is calling for the removal of “unnecessary barriers” in the next five years. Ramblers said wheelchair-users, some older people, those with pushchairs and dog-walkers are hindered by unmaintained gates, stiles, steps and path surfaces, as well as a lack of public toilet facilities and seating: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czdz8yvvwq8o
11 April 2024
News provided by John Pring at www.disabilitynewsservice.com
