Please read: Information regarding government proposals relating to disability benefits.

This is a guest post by Stacey Riley. Stacey blogs here. Thanks to Stacey.

Especially if you or someone you know claim Attendance Allowance (AA) or Disability Living Allowance (DLA)

The government have introduced proposals which would scrap these benefits, handling this money over to social services, who would then have the power to asses a person’s care needs, taking the choice out disabled people’s hands. Social would decide how a person’s personal budget would be spent, not the disabled person themselvelves: the person who really knows their own needs. Many people who currently claime these benefits may lose vital help under the new assessment scheme.

I have emailed the Disabled Persons Minister Joseph Shaw, asking for clarification on this issue. You can find his contact details here. If I do not get a reasonsonable answer to my query, I shall be contacting my local MP, and the relevant Shadow Minister/Spokesperson in the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties. I urge you to do the same.

I would recommend reading this useful information.

You can find the relevant Green Paper on these proposals here.

A petition is available. Unfortunately the ability to create petitions is not available on the No. 10 website while the Prime Minister is on his holidays.

PLEASE PLEASE pass on this information. I only found out about these proposals via my mum reading a letter in the local paper. Many disabled people are not aware of these changes and how it could affect them. The media, and even some disability groups are not aware of the devastating impact these changes could have on disabled people and their families. This is because has used the phrase ‘disability benefits’ and not referred to DLA directly, so the threat posed by this Green Paper, has not been picked up upon had it referred to DLA explicitly.

The cynic in me says that was probably deliberate to minimise the outcry caused by these proposals.