Disabled people feel their lives are under threat and many of them are living in fear.

Data from Family Resources Survey and the National Equalities Panel Research (2010) found that:
· 75% of disabled women and 70% of disabled men are already at the bottom end of Britain ’s income distribution scale living in poverty.

· A tenth of disabled woman have disposable incomes below £31 per week and a tenth of disabled men have incomes below £59 per week including earned income and benefits.

· Already 30% of disabled people live below the poverty line and 1 in 4 families with disabled children cannot afford heating·

– The median level of total wealth for households headed by an employee is £217,500 compared to only £21,100 for households headed by someone who is sick or disabled.

– Under the coalition government’s austerity drive disabled people are set to lose at least £140 per month through direct cuts to disability benefits (initially devised to pay the extra costs of being disabled) alone.

• Care and Support funding. Funding from the Independent Living Fund for care and support has now ceased to all new claimants and any additional needs cannot be met by them. From 2015 the ILF will cease to exist cutting £330 million from funding for care and support. For the 20,000 of the most severely disabled people this is a total betrayal by the coalition government and will prevent independent living.

Social Services budgets are under extreme pressure and nearly all Social Services departments have been told to reduce their budgets by 25% which has an obvious knock-on effect to their provision of support and the amount people need to pay towards this. Local authorities all over the country are cutting the amount of care funding available, tightening eligibility criteria, and increasing charges for those who are still eligible for care. In Warwickshire it is anticipated that one-third of people who currently receive free care will no longer be eligible. InBirminghamthe council are trying to remove care from over 4,000 people and move to providing care to those deemed critical only.

In many local authorities charging for care services has rocketed. One woman has told us that although she has had free care for the last 7 years she is now paying over £50 a week for the same level of service. We also know that in Dudley and Warwickshire charges have risen steeply. Are there any other local government services that people have to pay for twice, once through council tax and again through charging policies?

• The Coalition are scrapping Disability Living Allowance and replacing it with a new benefit Personal Independence Payments. An arbitrary figure of removing 20% of claimants from entitlement to PIP has been decided regardless of need. Many disabled people use this benefit to help make up the shortfall they have in paying their rent or for care costs.

• The mobility component of DLA may no longer be removed from disabled people living in residential care homes who do not pay for their own fees. However many people who live in residential homes still face losing mobility funding due to the abolition of DLA.  This will leave many more residents with only £22 a week to pay for clothes, travel costs, outings, and basics such as toothpaste, soap, etc.

Many disabled people use this mobility component to pay for wheelchairs, mobility scooters and travel to meet friends and family. Losing DLA will leave disabled residents effectively trapped in these homes, and denied any right to a family life.

• Other Benefits Employment and Support Allowance (ESA)  and work capability assessments (WCAs) have been criticised by CAB, disability charities and Disabled People’s Organisations. Even people with terminal cancer have been declared fit for work and removed from Incapacity Benefit. The government have now said that from October 2010 they will speed up the re-assessment of everyone currently claiming Incapacity Benefit so that 10,000 claimants a week are ‘processed. Their overall aim in this is to remove a 1 million disabled people from higher paying Incapacity Benefit onto lower paying Job Seekers Allowance.

• These assessments which ignore GP and consultant views are earning Atos healthcare £100 million a year.

• Contribution based ESA has now been time-limited to 12 months and this will remove 700,000 from receipt of this benefit for any longer than that even though people may have paid National Insurance contributions for years.

• At the same time as the government claim they want to help disabled people back into work they have slashed Access to Work funding which meets the costs to employers of any reasonable adjustments needed in a workplace. Yet only 20% of people with Autism and 25% of those with a mental health condition are in employment. They are not workshy, but excluded by physical and attitudinal barriers.

From Guardian letters page June 3^rd 2011. Letter from Claire Debenham, Brighton

The government says it is committed to a ‘fair and accurate’ work capability assessment. The distress and injustice caused by this new system needs to be publcised far and wide.

My brother died last week of kidney cancer. He was disgnosed a year ago and at Christmas was told he had about four months to live.In the spring he was summoned for a work capability assessment (by this time he had two brain tumours) and found fit for work. In addition to everything else, he bacame anxious about losing the small amount of money he was living on. He was aked to go in to the job centre for an interview but was too ill at the time. On May 19^th he received a letter from Jobcentre plus telling him he was to be trested a shaving limited capability for work. The medical officer overseeing his case had advised that “death within six months is unlikely to occur due to the client’s cancer” and there would be no “sunstantial risk to his mental or physical wellbeing if he were found capable of work-related activity.”

He died six days later, having been unable to get out of bed for ffour weeks. What work were they suggesting he wa scapable of? He asked:”What have I paid tax and national insurance for if not help to pay the bills and feed me at ateim like this?”

• Changes to Housing and Housing Benefits

These changes will affect everyone living on a low income who rents either in the social housing or private rented sectors. The majority of people who get Housing Benefit and Council Tax benefit are in work.

There are 1.8 million households on social housing waiting lists. Last year in Birmingham there were almost 19,000 applicants on the homeless person’s register. Last year in Leicester 500 people needed an accessible property and only one was available. Currently 1 million children live in overcrowded households, changes to social housing tenure and housing benefits will only increase these numbers.

• The Chartered Institute of Housing has calculated that the cumulative effect of the coalition’s proposals mean that by 2020 every tenant’s Housing Benefit will be too low to cover their rent

There are plans to time limit people’s right to live in their social rented homes and it has been suggested that they will have to reapply every 2 years. If they have improved their lives by getting a higher income they may then be forced to move out of their homes. This will apply to new tenancies or if anyone moves to a smaller/ larger property. As well as removing the right to life-time tenancies it is proposed that rents in the social rented sector should rise to 80% of market value rents- a 30% increase in rent for most tenants. Together with the caps on Housing Benefits this will make renting in the social housing sector unaffordable in many higher priced areas of the country.

Local Housing Allowance, Housing Benefit for those renting in the private sector, will be reduced for the 2 million disabled people living in private rented accommodation. The Local Housing Allowance has now been set at the 30^th percentile rent in each Broad Market Rental Area, rather then the 50^th percentile as before. Disabled people will only be able to afford to rent in the cheapest properties in any area, which are more than likely to be inaccessible.

This change will also increase the difficulties disabled people face in finding suitable accommodation to live independently, and increase homelessness amongst disabled people. The caring Condems have said people will have to move to cheaper areas yet that may be impossible for disabled people as care packages are not transportable from one local authority to another. As each local authority has its own rules and regulations the care someone has in one area may not be the same as the care they can have if they move. It also means that disabled people will lose their trained Personal Assistants.

Disabled people with learning difficulties or those with visual impairments often need several years to be able to find their way around an area and need consistency in services like GPs, nursing services and so forth to be able to survive.

Due to the size criteria for LHA parents of disabled children are also unable to get an extra bedroom for a disabled child regardless of their needs as the number of bedrooms you can get benefit for is restricted simply by the age and gender of your children.

Already one in four homes in the social rented sector are inaccessible and often disabled people are unable to get into and out of their own homes.

• Housing Benefit levels have now been capped and will be capped again under Universal Credit plans.

For families renting in the private rented sector Local Housing Allowance levels is now restricted to the 4 bedroom rate regardless of the size of your family. New upper limits will be introduced which are scarcely likely to cover rent levels in many parts of London and the South East. According to government figures about 3-3,500 disabled people rent privately in central London. DPOs in London however have raised concerns that as the centre of London becomes unaffordable to most disabled people then there will be additional pressures on local councils for example in Brent where there is already a 10 year waiting list for re-housing as more people are forced to move.

• From 2013 housing benefit for working age social rented sector tenants will be restricted for those who are occupying a larger property than their household size would warrant. This is something that the Labour government and DWP tried to introduce in Welfare Reform bill 2007 but were forced to drop by pressure from Housing Associations. It means that if you are living in an adapted property which may have cost thousands of pounds to adapt then if you also have an extra bedroom you have no apparent need for you will only get HB paid at the one bedroom rate. I know 2 local disabled people who have 2 bedroom council flats – one who is blind and who needs to be able to live in a location and property that he knows well, and another who has had adaptations made to his flat who from 2013 will only get Housing Benefit for a one bedroom property which will either force them to move or push them into further poverty.

• Under 35s

Anyone under 35 years of age who is disabled but not in receipt of middle or higher rate DLA care component will not be able to claim for more than a shared room rate if renting in the private rented sector. Yet these are exactly the same people who cannot get onto waiting lists for social housing so they have no choice other then to rent from private landlords. As DLA is now being scrapped we currently have no idea of the full impact of these 2 changes together. However for anyone with Autism or a mental health condition being forced to live in a multiple occupancy house can be very difficult. The difference in benefit payable for a one bedroom and shared room rate is an average of £47 per week  and it has been estimated by housing charities that there are 11,000 too few multiple occupancy properties so we had all better get used to seeing increasing numbers of young, homeless disabled people on our streets.

Discretionary Housing Payments

Recognising the chaos their HB reforms are going to make the sum allocated by government has increased by £10 million in 2011 and by £40 million in 2012. This will apparently give more flexibility to local authorities but DHPs are not supposed to cover long term housing costs and have to be applied for every 13 weeks. There is no right of appeal if they are refused although you can seek a Judicial Review. Leicester for example has now introduced a policy where they will only pay for a maximum of 13 weeks during which time disabled people getting a DHP are harassed to move to a cheaper property, regardless of their independent living needs.

• Benefits will be linked to the Consumer Price Index (CPI) instead of the Retail Price Index, so claimants will lose £300 a year as the CPI ignores any housing costs you might have.
• VAT increased to 20% will hit those on the lowest incomes the hardest – it is estimated this rise will increase each household’s costs by £500 per year

What disabled people say about these changes

.“I am in receipt of DLA, without which I could not survive. I have severe allergies, home bound, mostly bedridden.  I have carers, and have to pay for extra hours not subsidized by social services. My utility bills are extremely high, and I have to contribute to the rent, which is not met by housing benefits. I also suffer from malnutrition!! Being chronically ill is costly, being depending on carers for everything.
Cutting DLA would mean that I have to find housing within the Housing Allowance which is much, much lower than rental market. There are pockets of housing, in undesirable areas, with mould and cockroaches, and no amenities, no lift, or if on the ground floor, simply not safe.
I could go on and on, about the misery it would cause, to remove DLA.
It would lead to a slow death painful death. Worth adding here, I have spoken to many in my situation, who are discussing mass suicide, rather than suffer more health miseries, for which there are no cures! They are not depressed, but pragmatic about what awaits all.”