Sorry the blog is a bit late today, I’ve had an extremely busy week and I haven’t had time to think about much else other than Universal credit. You see the campaign doesn’t end when the demo finishes and I’ve published my blog. There’s so much more that goes into it, and anyone that runs a campaign will verify that.
I haven’t been sleeping well, which doesn’t help. I’ve been suffering from bouts of insomnia lately, but I can’t grumble because at least I’m lucky enough to have a bed to sleep in, thousands haven’t.
Anyway enough about me, I’m sure that you don’t want to hear my worries but I needed to vent a tad.
I arrived slightly early, and it was cold, really cold. It was a sharp reminder that winter is here and my heart goes out to everyone who is homeless or cannot afford gas and…
Kloey Clarke, 28, from Devizes in Wiltshire, has had severe anxiety and type II bipolar disorder for six years. “I’m scared to leave the house,” says Clarke, who does not feel emotionally or physically stable enough to hold down a job and relies on her husband for care and support. “I have a constant fear of dying. I can’t socialise and I can’t communicate outside [the house].” For four years, Clarke depended on a Disability Living Allowance (DLA). The DLA was replaced by Personal Independence Payments (PIPs) in 2012 – and phased in from 2013 – but she was receiving them for less than a year before she was reassessed by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and told she no longer qualified.
Clarke believes that the assessment for PIP is aimed at people with physical disabilities and does not account for mental illness. “I was asked if I could walk 200 metres unaided. No, I don’t need a stick or an aid, but I do need my husband or someone with me. Can I talk to people face to face? I talk to my family when they visit, but can I speak to strangers? No.”
She has had panic attacks as a consequence of losing her benefits, she says, and her family is now struggling financially. They have had to visit food banks twice since being rejected for PIP, but Clarke’s pride has stopped her from going more frequently. “I just find it so degrading. I don’t feel as if I should be there. I feel that, if I just had what I deserve, then I wouldn’t need to be in that place; I wouldn’t need to take food from, say, homeless people.”
Clarke’s marriage and her relationship with her children are suffering. “I’m useless to them, I’m not half the mum that I could be. I haven’t got enough funds. The government has no idea what these types of assessments do to people with mental health [issues]; how much it takes to walk into that room and talk about something so personal and then be told you aren’t ill enough.”
The evidence is mounting that people with mental health problems in particular are being failed by PIPs, with claimants reporting that the new system takes no account of the needs of people with conditions ranging from schizophrenia to severe depression. Figures released by the DWP in October showed that complaints about the PIP assessment process increased by 880% last year. The number of complaints that were upheld rose similarly dramatically, by 713%.
The DLA was first introduced in 1992 by John Major’s Conservative government and was paid to eligible claimants who had personal care or mobility needs as a consequence of a physical or mental disability. PIPs were introduced by the coalition government as part of the 2012 Welfare Reform Act, and have been steadily replacing the DLA since 8 April 2013. Some claimants who received indefinite DLA awards were not being reassessed, and the government then argued that it was necessary to have a system that frequently assessed people in order to determine if their needs had changed over time. In 2013, the then work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith told the Daily Mail that “70% of people on it [DLA] have lifetime awards, which means no one sees you ever again. It doesn’t matter if you get better or your condition worsens – it’s quite ridiculous.”
The big differences between PIP and DLA claims arise from the assessment criteria. DLA is based on an individual’s condition and the needs arising from this, while entitlement to PIP is assessed using a points-based system. Claimants are typically invited to a face-to-face assessment in a private consultation room, but are sometimes assessed in their homes. People score points according to their ability to complete a number of everyday activities, such as washing and cooking, and whether they need aids and appliances or help from another person to do so. According to Full Fact, an independent factchecking charity, between October 2013 and October 2016, 22% of DLA claimants with mental health conditions had their benefits reduced when they were reassessed for PIP, and a further 25% lost them altogether.
Many of the people I speak to say the PIP assessments do not take into account the effect their mental health conditions have on their lives. Some say that, even though they are physically capable of preparing a meal, driving a car, or dressing and washing themselves, the ability to do these things changes all the time. This is especially the case with conditions such as clinical depression or bipolar disorder, when, on some days, a person may find it difficult to get out of bed.
Daniel O’Connor, 64, from Glasgow, has led a tough life. He has severe depression and adjustment disorder, and has twice attempted to end his life. O’Connor had been receiving DLA for nearly 22 years when, this year, his application for a PIP was rejected. Since then, he has experienced financial hardship and says his condition has worsened. O’Connor says he felt as if he wasn’t being listened to at his PIP assessment and recalls telling the assessor that on some days he struggles to get out of bed because his depression is so debilitating. However, his assessor dismissed his story, citing the fact that he could drive as evidence of his ability to carry out everyday tasks. “We got to discussing a previous suicide attempt I had [made],” he says. In the final moments of the interview, the assessor asked him seven times if he was going to go out of the door, there and then, and kill himself. O’Connor adds he found himself in the position of having to placate the assessor. “It seems to me that her concerns were not about me; her concerns were about what the reflection would be on her if I did go out of the door and kill myself.”
Rejected PIP applicants have the right to appeal the decisions made by the DWP, and statistics from the Ministry of Justice show that 65% of appeals are ruled in favour of the claimant. Campaigners say this demonstrates a systemic ineptitude in the way the assessment criteria are being interpreted.
Alison Smith, 55, from Beverley in Yorkshire, cares for her husband, Mark, who has bipolar disorder. Mark “is unable to go out without someone with him or socialise”, she says. He can go for days without washing, dressing or eating. He will neglect his medication if not reminded and has self-harmed. The couple have lost other benefits, including their housing benefit, since losing PIP and they have been relying on a lump sum from Alison’s pension to get by.
Alison had a difficult time at her husband’s appointment. “The woman who did the assessment was horrible. She wouldn’t let Mark speak. When he tried to say anything, she kept saying: ‘No, I’m not interested in that – I need to go through what’s on this computer.’ They don’t look at the mental illness side of things. Mark has the [physical] ability to make a sandwich, but he doesn’t have the mental ability to do it.”
“Often, we hear from people with mental health problems who tell us that they dread the face-to-face assessments,” says Paul Spencer, policy and campaigns manager at the mental health charity Mind. Spencer adds that, as well as reforms to the Work Capability Assessment, used to determine one’s eligibility for Employment Support Allowance (ESA), “we also urgently need the government to overhaul the PIP assessment process to make sure it is fit for purpose – and delivered by people who really understand how someone’s mental health problem can affect their daily life”.
Lorna Crofta’s story illustrates this lack of understanding. Crofta, 53, from Worcester, has had severe mental health problems since childhood. She was awarded DLA for three years and then invited to apply for PIP this year. Her application was refused because she failed to attend her assessment – she had received a diagnosis of bowel cancer and the assessment was scheduled just before an operation to have a tumour removed. “I had come to a complete standstill physically, and that had an additional impact on my mental health. I hadn’t even opened my post for weeks and had gone beyond thinking in a rational manner about anything. I would not have been able to handle someone being in my house.” Crofta says she has been living in poverty all her life. Even before losing her DLA, she says, the benefit wasn’t allowing her to do much apart from securing basic subsistence. “My life is just existing between one appointment and the next. I have lost hope. I dread how much worse things will be if my appeal is turned down.”
The shadow work and pensions secretary, Debbie Abrahams, has seen first-hand some of the hardships disabled people are facing as a result of the government’s welfare reforms. “The number of cases I get, not just in my constituency but right across the country, is shameful – and shameful on the country as a whole,” she says, from her constituency office in Oldham. The system, she argues, is designed to put people off and to stop them claiming, “and, unfortunately, it’s working”. Abrahams adds that the assessors need to be held to account: “The fact that two-thirds of assessments are overturned on appeal just shows the fact that it is a warped system.”
The DWP responds: “PIP looks specifically at how someone’s life is affected by mental health, unlike the old system, which did not sufficiently recognise mental health problems.” They add that there are now more people with a mental health condition receiving the higher rates of PIP than their DLA equivalents. “PIP ensures that mental health conditions are given the same recognition as physical ones. It does this by considering how impairments affect a person’s life, rather than labelling individuals on the basis of a condition.”
In February, the DWP was advised by judges at the Tribunals Service (the branch of the Ministry of Justice that oversees tribunals and adjudications) to award more points on the mobility assessment of the claim if people suffer from “overwhelming psychological distress”. However, because of concerns that these changes would cost an extra £3.7bn by 2022, the government enacted legislation reversing the judgment: it altered the mobility criteria to exclude people who had psychological distress – specifically, psychological distress caused by following the route of a familiar or unfamiliar journey when travelling alone. The move will mean that 292,500 claimants will no longer be entitled to any mobility component, which could affect people with a wide range of conditions including learning disabilities, autism, schizophrenia, anxiety conditions, social phobias and early-stage dementia. The government argued that the judgment had “interpreted the assessment criteria for PIP in ways that are different to what was originally intended”.
In April, Valerie Grant, 73, killed herself after her severely autistic son was told he did not qualify for disability benefits. Her death came after a UN report, published in November 2016, concluded that the UK government has failed to uphold the rights of disabled people, a verdict the UN reached again this August. Areas of concern highlighted in the UN’s report are high levels of poverty for disabled people and their families and reduced standards of living as a result of multiple welfare reforms and benefit cuts. One of the welfare reforms highlighted for criticism is the criteria used to assess people for PIPs.
In response to the UN’s findings, the DWP said: “We’re disappointed that this report does not accurately reflect the evidence we gave to the UN, and fails to recognise all the progress we’ve made to empower disabled people in all aspects of their lives.” It added that the government spends over £50bn a year to support disabled people and those with health problems and that “it is encouraging that almost 600,000 disabled people have moved into work in the UK over the last four years”.
Abrahams says that Labour, if elected to government, would aim to scrap both the Work Capability Assessment, the ESA and the PIP assessment, and devise a system that doesn’t look for ways to stop someone’s support. She says: “First of all, we should recognise and value what our social security system is for, and I make it absolutely clear it should be like the NHS. It is there for everyone in their time of need and we should value it.” In the meantime, disabled people will have to continue to battle the DWP for access to benefits.
O’Connor says he has experienced financial hardship since losing his benefit, but that has been mitigated by the fact that he is approaching state pension age, and the fact that he receives money from private pensions. “I’m very lucky that I’m in a situation where I will not be made homeless, but, even if I was, I still wouldn’t give up. They could sanction me to death, but I will not be doing their job for them; I will not be killing myself.”
Philip, 41, who has multiple mental and physical health problems – including severe anxiety and depression – knows it all too well. An injury in his 30s severely damaged his left foot and he can only move on crutches.
He medically retired as a roadsweeper in 2011 and before universal credit came in he was getting by on a patchwork of disability benefits. The titles – employment and support allowance (ESA), enhanced disability premium (EDP), and severe disability premium (SDP) – sound like government jargon, but to Philip they were his lifelines.
Under “welfare reform”, lifelines can be torn away fast: this summer, Philip moved flats across south London and found himself cross into universal credit territory. Although it will not be rolled out to ESA claimants until 2019, Philip’s change in circumstance by moving house meant he was transferred onto universal credit early. What he discovered was a reality that scores of disabled people across the UK will soon be facing: neither EDP nor SDP exist under universal credit.
Do the sums and changing to universal credit means Philip is losing £40 a week. That’s a cut of more than £2,000 a year. The result is brutal. Philip can no longer afford to eat properly. Instead, he’s skipping meals. “I’m feeling physically weaker now,” he says.
Philip no longer has enough money to pay for the taxis he needs to get to his hospital appointments. “I get very anxious on public transport and don’t feel very safe,” he explains.
The financial strain doesn’t stop there. When he moved his rent was not fully paid for three weeks. He is appealing, but is now in rent arrears of over £450.
Philip’s depression has led him to attempt suicide in the past and he tells me the transfer to universal credit has made him feel suicidal again. “I’m at my wits’ end now.”
Up to half a million disabled people like Philip and their families will be financially worse off under universal credit, according to disability charities, through the removal of the disability premiums, as well as cuts to child disability payments, which could affect 100,000 children at an annual loss of £1,000. Ask the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and it states that the support given by SDP is now provided through personal independence payments, (Pip) and social care from local councils, and that “transitional protection” will be available when disabled people are moved from ESA on to universal credit in 2019. But press further, and it turns out that cash-strapped local authorities have no obligation to provide support. And there is no help for disabled people like Philip who are transferred early.
And that’s not all. Under universal credit, disabled claimants will face a controversial mandatory “health and work conversation” (HWC) in which they must provide information to a work coach about what jobs they can undertake, or have their benefits sanctioned. This will mean people who are often too ill to get out of bed forced into a jobcentre meeting. The DWP says not all disabled people will be required to do a “face to face” interview in the jobcentre when it is unreasonable to expect it, but campaign group Disabled People Against Cuts tells me it has already seen a case of a woman with a life-threatening illness and insufficient mental capacity being asked to attend an HWC.
Expecting people with mental health problems, learning difficulties, or those battling illness to navigate a complex benefit system is particularly cruel – and early signs of universal credit are worrying. A study by two councils in London last week reported long delays for payments are worsening people’s anxiety and depression. Grimly, it’s also emerged that some universal credit claimants are being denied free prescriptions, as well as dental care, because of confusion about eligibility. Philip finds all this hard to talk about (the benefit system makes him anxious), but he wants to publicise what is happening to disabled people. His words should be a warning to politicians: “Universal credit is pushing people into poverty.”
A Parliamentary committee looking at cheating claims in Paralympic sports is set to hear “explosive” evidence on Tuesday, according to one witness.
MPs will discuss the classification process after a BBC investigation uncovered claims of tactics being used to cheat the system internationally.
Michael Breen, father of Paralympian Olivia, will be among the witnesses.
“I firmly believe that the evidence will be extremely powerful, one might even use the word explosive,” he said.
The BBC investigation claimed tactics such as taping up of arms, taking cold showers in trunks and even surgery to shorten limbs had been used to get into a more favourable class.
It was announced last week that the classification rules would be revised, with effect from 1 January.
Breen, whose daughter is the T38 long jump world champion, told the BBC: “There is absolutely no question that certain athletes and certain nations have and continue to manipulate the classification system, because it’s easy to manipulate. It’s not robust, it’s not fit for purpose.”
But double Paralympic gold medallist Richard Whitehead, who retained his T42 200m title at Rio 2016, questioned the claims.
“I think you’ve got a case of a disgruntled parent. I think the allegations are just not true,” he told BBC Radio 5 live.
At Tuesday’s hearing, Paralympic figures will also be asked about the culture in sports after complaints from athletes.
Investigators have discovered GB Para-swimmers were subjected to a “climate of fear”.
Who will be giving evidence?
The Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee has been looking at the governance of sports, including football.
On Tuesday it will hear from the following witnesses regarding allegations of “cheating, abuse and interference” within Paralympic disciplines:
11.30: Michael Breen, classification campaigner and father of Paralympian Olivia Breen
12:30 Tim Hollingsworth, chief executive officer, British Paralympic Association
Analysis
Dan Roan, BBC sports editor
After so many medals and so much acclaim in recent years, this could be a highly uncomfortable day in Westminster for British Paralympic sport.
The movement’s authorities are increasingly concerned that a number of well-known British athletes could be publicly named and shamed, accused of cheating the classification system under parliamentary privilege.
At a time when the issue of athlete welfare and the human cost of the country’s pursuit of medals is under greater scrutiny than ever, any evidence that Britain has unfairly played the system could prove very damaging.
What are the claims?
A Radio 4 File on 4 special revealed lawyers for the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) are investigating whether several athletes and coaches have deliberately exaggerated disability to boost their chance of winning.
British T37 200m sprinter Bethany Woodward handed back a relay medal she won from an event in the past four years, telling the programme the inclusion of one of her team-mates was “giving us an unfair advantage”.
As there is no suggestion the athlete has done anything wrong, the BBC has chosen not to name them.
Woodward, who won an individual silver medal at London 2012, gave up her funding and walked away from the sport, claiming she had lost faith in the way the team was selected.
‘Do I fundamentally believe that something is categorically wrong? No, I don’t. It’s not endemic,” he said.
On Friday, five-time Paralympic wheelchair racing champion Hannah Cockroft told BBC Radio 5 live “humiliating” tests involving “sickening pain” are used to determine which categories Para-athletes can compete in.
“I think my worst one was I had to have electrodes attached to my spine and then electric shocks sent up and down my legs to see which nerves worked – that pain was sickening,” said Cockroft, who holds the T34 100m, 400m and 800m world and Paralympic titles.
Cockroft, who was left with brain damage after having two cardiac arrests at birth, believes it is difficult to fool the system.
“I’ve never lined up and thought someone is a cheat or a fake because there is simply no such thing. I don’t believe that anyone could go in that room and know how to cheat their classification,” she said.
What does the IPC say?
In a statement, the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) said improved performances were due to “a new generation of high-performance Para-athletes” benefitting from “improved high performance training regimes” and “not because of improper classification”.
It added: “The IPC remains deeply concerned about the well-being and welfare of all Para-athletes, and particularly about the well-being of those athletes who have been subjected to third-party allegations of improper classification.
“Although the athletes in question never have been named publicly, the athletes in question know full well that the allegations are being directed at them. Such repeated and unfounded allegations are causing undue stress and tension to these athletes.”
The IPC Athletes’ Council chair Chelsey Gotell added: “While we appreciate that athletes may have concerns regarding classification – and we are working hard with the IPC to make the system more robust – it is important that athlete concerns are substantiated by factual evidence rather than hear-say, rumour or suspicion.”
How does the classification process work?
The World Para-athletics classification system is aimed at determining eligibility and dividing competitors into appropriate categories.
Allocation – The IPC says the aim is that each group consists of athletes who have impairments that cause roughly the same amount of activity limitation.
Category – A classification panel allocates each athlete with a sport class, although some may be classified a number of times during their career.
Numbers – Classes are given a number, and each is prefixed with either a ‘T’, which stands for ‘track’, or an ‘F’ for ‘field’.
Groups: Impairments are split into groups – for example, visually impaired athletes are in the tens (T11, T12 and T13); athletes with co-ordination impairments are in the 30s (T31-38), and T42-47 covers those with limb deficiencies. The lower the number, the more severe the impairment.
The evidence is being provided as I type. You can watch it here.
Gordon Brown has revealed in a new memoir how he feared he might completely lose his eyesight during his third year in Downing Street.
The then-prime minister, who has been blind in one eye since his teens, told how he tore a retina in the other eye.
He did not tell colleagues and tried to carry on with his cabinet duties despite not being able to see properly.
He also writes about his struggles with “touchy-feely” modern politics and what he got wrong, and right, as PM.
“When I woke up in Downing Street one Monday in September (2009), I knew something was very wrong. My vision was foggy,” writes Mr Brown in My Life, Our Times.
“That morning, I was to visit the City Academy in Hackney to speak about our education reform agenda. I kept the engagement, doing all I could to disguise the fact that I could see very little – discarding the prepared notes and speaking extemporaneously.
“Straight afterwards, I was driven to the consulting room of a prominent surgeon at the Moorfields Eye Hospital in London.”
Surgeons discovered the retina in his right eye was torn in two places.
They eventually decided not to operate, writes Mr Brown, who had lost the sight in his left eye following a teenage rugby accident.
“I am grateful that the (right) retina has held to this day and I feel lucky beyond words,” he writes.
Downing Street released a statement at the time saying there had been “no change” in Mr Brown’s eyesight and his visit to the hospital had been “part of regular checks on his eyes and this check was also fine”.
Mr Brown, who took over as prime minister from Tony Blair in June 2007, without a Labour leadership contest, also writes about his regret that he could not convince voters of the need for “radical” reforms in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis.
Referring to his decision to bail out the banks and co-ordinate international recovery efforts, he says: “We won the battle – to escape recession. But we lost the war – to build something better.
“I fell short in communicating my ideas. I failed to rally the nation around the necessary fiscal stimulus and my plans for radical change.
“Banking should have been transformed, our international institutions refashioned, inequality radically reversed – and if we are to be properly equipped to face the next crisis this is still the agenda we must pursue.”
Mr Brown, who lost power in the 2010 general election to a coalition government headed by Conservative leader David Cameron, also writes about his struggles with social media and personality politics.
“The modern version of ‘connecting’ seems to increasingly include a public display of emotion, with the latter – authentic or not – seen as evidence of a sincerity required for political success,” he writes.
“In a far more touchy-feely era, our leaders speak of public issues in intensely personal ways and assume they can win votes simply by telling their electors that they ‘feel their pain’.
“For me, being conspicuously demonstrative is uncomfortable.”
He says he managed to keep his two sons out of the media spotlight and resisted pressure during his time in politics to “cultivate an image that made the personal constantly public – reticence was the rule”.
He also uses the book – to be published next month – to take a swipe at social media, saying: “During my time as an MP I never mastered the capacity to leave a good impression or sculpt my public image in 140 characters.
“Now no politician can succeed without mastering social media – and yet, in it, the prime minister becomes one among millions of voices competing to be heard.”
He says he “fully understands” the need to “lighten up to get a message across” and accepts that “in the second decade of the 21st Century, a sense of personal reserve can limit the appeal and rapport of a leader”.
But he adds: “Really, to my mind, what mattered was not what I said about myself, but simply what our government could do for our country.”
Parents struggling to cope with their violent autistic children are not being properly supported by local authorities, the National Autistic Society says.
For some, a violent outburst can be a daily occurrence.
“I’m scared of him. You live on a knife edge. You don’t know what’s coming next,” Lucy Goldsworthy told the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire programme.
She has previously been left with a split lip and bruising following her son Elliot’s violent outbursts, while her husband Ian has been left with a scratched cornea.
Twelve-year-old Elliot has autism and learning difficulties which, in his case, means he is unable to speak.
His condition requires round-the-clock care and he does not understand the effects of his actions.
Ian and Lucy say their son became violent and aggressive from the age of five.
At his current age, he is becoming increasingly difficult to control.
“If it was a toddler, having a huge tantrum, scratching and kicking you, you can manage it better,” Lucy says.
“Whereas when Elliot does it, it’s like a small man suddenly attacking you.
“He’s still only violent 5% of the time – but the consequences of that violence are getting worse and worse.”
Ian and Lucy have had to put bars across the window in Elliot’s bedroom and locks on the door to help keep him – and their other children – safe.
“You kind of get used to your child’s bedroom looking like a cell of some kind,” Ian says.
Elliot attends a special school, but the couple say they do not get enough specialist support from their local council.
“You have to get to the point where one of you is hospitalised or you’ve had to call the police out [for help to arrive],” they say.
For its part, the family’s local authority, Hertfordshire County Council, says it does provide a range of care support and is deciding if more help is needed.
One woman who wished to remain anonymous, “Sam”, says she “cried and cried” for help from her local authority to look after her teenage son.
She had hoped that one incident, which required her to have a head wound glued after he became violent, would act as a “turning point”.
“At first I got a bit of help,” she says, before claiming that the council later tried to “wash their hands” of her – providing her with 48 hours’ worth of support a year.
What services can families expect?
Assessment of the problems that may provoke challenging behaviour
A care plan outlining steps needed to manage it
Help to increase structure and minimise unpredictability
If all else fails, anti-psychotic medication can be considered
One 2011 study, of nearly 1,400 children with autism in the US, found more than half were aggressive or violent towards their families or carers.
Tim Nicholls, from the National Autistic Society, believes parents and families need more support “to help them avoid or de-escalate challenging behaviour”.
“Some examples of this would be helping them with positive behavioural strategies or respite for the young person,” he adds.
Mr Nicholls is calling on local authorities and NHS England to improve the care they provide.
“If children are not having their needs met, then they are being failed,” he says.
“We need a special educational needs and disabilities system that identifies all the needs of autistic children, then puts in place the support and the services to allow them to live the life that they and their families want to live.”
‘His nature is gentle’
Nineteen-year-old Cameron is one of 700,000 people in the UK on the autism spectrum.
He was diagnosed at the age of three.
“Sometimes you don’t know how Cameron’s going to react and it is very scary,” says his father, Doug Clements.
“The [other] children have to lock themselves in the room because they are so scared.”
At the moment, Cameron goes to a specialist centre each day.
However, life at home has become very difficult, and his parents are currently looking for a residential care home for him, run by the local authority for children and vulnerable adults, close to their own home in Surrey.
His mother, Hannah, says the family can no longer manage Cameron’s behaviour.
“It’s really upsetting, because I love him so much,” she says.
“I don’t want people to be scared of him, because his nature is gentle.
“I feel sorry for him because he’s frustrated, and he can’t tell me why or other people why.”
Hannah says in the last six years, they have had “no direction at all” from support services, but Surrey County Council said it continued to offer respite care and day support to the family.
‘Gone to bed sobbing’
NHS England says it has “set out a clear programme” for those with learning difficulties and autism to “enable more people to live in the community, with the right support, and close to home”.
However, the Local Government Association says that while “councils are working hard to make sure children with autism and other special needs get access to the support they need… they have been put in an impossible situation due to increasing demand and historic underfunding”.
Elliot Goldsworthy’s parents believe their need for support will only become greater as their son gets older.
“We’ve definitely had moments when we’ve gone to bed sobbing, and despairing at how this is our life,” says Ian.
“But you can’t wallow in it too long, because you’ve got exactly the same life the next day.”
This Commons Library briefing paper looks at the rules on reassessment of existing Employment and Support Allowance and Personal Independence Payment claimants. Starting from 29 September 2017, some ESA claimants with the most severe conditions will not have to face reassessment. All PIP claimants will however continue to be reassessed periodically.
In October 2016 the Government announced that it intended to exempt some ESA claimants with the most severe health conditions and disabilities from future reassessments.
On 29 September 2017, the Department for Work and Pensions announced the criteria for “switching off” ESA reassessments. From that date, ESA claimants in the Support Group and Universal Credit claimants with limited capability for work and work-related activity (LCWRA) attending a Work Capability Assessment will no longer need to be reassessed if they:
have a severe, lifelong disability, illness or health condition; and
are unlikely to ever be able to move into work
Claimants will be told if they will not be reassessed following their WCA.
This does not however apply to Personal Independence Payment claimants, all of whom will continue to be reassessed periodically. For the most severely disabled PIP claimants however, the interval before their claim is reviewed may be up to 10 years, and may involve a “light touch” process not requiring a further face to face assessment.
The Disability News Service (DNS) is reporting that the number of complaints about personal independence payment (PIP) assessments rose by nearly 900% in the course of a single year.
Figures obtained by MPs, and cited by DNS, show that the number of complaints went up from 142 in 2015-16 to 1,391 in 2016-17.
The number of complaints that were upheld in the same period rose from 67 to 545.
There was not a corresponding rise in the number of PIP assessments completed over the same period, suggesting either that something has changed in the way assessments are carried out or that claimants are now much more willing to make a formal complaint.
DNS have been carrying out an investigation into PIP assessments and have now heard from 250 claimants who say that their assessment reports were dishonest.
The allegations involve both Capita and Atos staff.
Virtual hearings and online hearings using ‘rapid messaging’ will become a reality for social security appeals within the next 18 months, according to HM Court and Tribunals Service (HMCTS).
Writing on their blog, they explain:
“In tribunals, people appealing social security and child benefit decisions will be able to make their application fully online, track the progress of their case by text, email or online, and, if judged appropriate, take part either in a virtual hearing, or in an online hearing with the judge able to ask questions through rapid messaging, allowing much faster decision-making in a system where delays can bring real hardship. The system will also support physical hearings for those that need them (and judges will always have discretion over the way cases should be heard).
“Similar systems will developed for other tribunals. Virtual hearings (with all parties able to attend from anywhere) are currently being technically tested for immigration and asylum case management and once testing is complete will be further developed for wider pilots, for use where judges deem it appropriate.”
HMCTS say that they will provide specialist, face-to-face help for people who cannot easily use digital services.
In an urgent, unanimous report published today, the Commons Work and Pensions Committee says Government should aim to cut the baked-in six week wait for the first payment of Universal Credit to a month:
In areas where the full service has rolled out, evidence compellingly links it to an increase in acute financial difficulty, with widespread reports of overwhelmed food banks, problem debt and steeply rising rent arrears and homelessness.
Most low-income families simply do not have the savings to see them through this extended period without resorting to desperate measures.
While increased availability of Advance Payment (AP) loans of up to half the estimated monthly award are welcome, the Committee says they are no solution to a fundamental flaw in the current design:
Universal Credit seeks to mirror the world of work, but no one in work waits six weeks for a paycheque.
The Committee calls on Government to reduce the standard waiting time for a first Universal Credit payment to one month. This would be entirely consistent with the monthly in arrears philosophy of Universal Credit.
The arguments for reducing the wait to one month are compelling:
More than half of low and middle income families have no savings, and two thirds have less than a month’s worth.
Half of people earning £10,000 or less per year are not paid monthly. Many households simply do not have the resources to get by for six weeks, or in a minority of cases far longer, without resorting to desperate measures.
The 7 waiting days at the very beginning are purely a money-saving measure. They do not mirror the world of work – as the Centre for Social Justice has pointed out, no one works the first week of a job for free – and unlike the previous, standard benefit waiting days, they also leave claimants without housing costs or child benefit for the period.
The Advance Payments put forward by Government to mitigate some of the unwelcome consequences of the current design of Universal Credit, but do nothing to address their underlying foundations.
Advance Payments are loans, repayable in addition to other deductions such as rent arrears which can be up to 40% of the standard Universal Credit allowance. This will be difficult or impossible for some claimants to afford.
Rt Hon Frank Field MP, Chair of the Committee, said:
“The baked in six week wait is cruel. No one can give us any real justification for it. Such a long wait bears no relation to anyone’s working life and the terrible hardship it has been proven to cause actually makes it more difficult for people to find work.
“It is not too late for the Government to avert a Christmas disaster. They must act now.
“This urgent recommendation, of cutting that six-week wait, is the first step from the Committee in what I hope will be a series of reports on the Government’s ailing flagship welfare policy.”
Heidi Allen MP, Member of the Committee, said:
“Despite the clear support for Universal Credit, there is cross-party recognition that the 6 week wait does not honour the original intentions of the system.
“To truly represent the world of work, the payment cycle must mirror how the majority of people are paid i.e. monthly. Universal credit will only be the success it deserves to be if it works with claimants to find work, and not against them.”
Anyone who’s watched BBC1’s Casualty over the last few weeks will know that fan favourite Connie Beauchamp has recentlybeendiagnosedwith a heart tumour. The show has not yet revealed whether the tumour is malignant but it is likely to be.
Heart tumours, malignant or not, are extremely rare. They are so rare that they are almost unheard of. They are so rare that I would never have expected to see them covered on a soap opera, even if it is set in a hospital. However, they are a possibility and they definitely need, and deserve, media coverage. Media coverage, especially coverage from a TV institution like Casualty, will make a large audience aware of this extremely rare, but extremely serious, condition.
If Connie Beauchamp’s storyline prolongs even one patient’s life through early diagnosis, it will have done something amazing. If Connie Beauchamp’s storyline makes even one family aware of the possibility of a heart tumour when someone they love shows symptoms, it will have done something great.
Casualty deserves very high praise for this unusual, unexpected and original storyline. I can’t thank them enough and will be following it with great interest.
Labour MP Jared O’Mara has quit the Commons equality committee over online homophobic comments he made before being elected to parliament.
Mr O’Mara also made misogynistic remarks, joked about having an orgy with members of Girls Aloud and posted degrading comments about fat people.
The Sheffield Hallam MP, 36, was elected in June, unseating ex-deputy prime minister Nick Clegg.
Mr O’Mara resigned from the Women and Equalities Committee after apologising.
In posts made on the Drowned in Sound music website in 2004, Mr O’Mara claimed singer Michelle McManus only won Pop Idol “because she was fat” and said it would be funny if jazz star Jamie Cullum was “sodomised with his own piano”.
‘Horrendous and vile’
The posts were first reported by the Guido Fawkes website, which has since revealed that two years earlier Mr O’Mara made homophobic remarks on an internet forum.
The MP has also apologised for these comments and said he was “deeply ashamed” of his actions.
The Labour leadership described Mr O’Mara’s online remarks as “horrendous” and “vile” but sources said he would not be suspended from the parliamentary party, BBC political correspondent Chris Mason reported.
Mr Mason said he understood Mr O’Mara addressed his colleagues at a meeting of Labour MPs and made “a full and very personal apology” for his remarks.
Lib Dem peer Lord Scriven, former leader of Sheffield Council, said: “It seems like a nasty pattern of sexist language and misogyny is developing from the Labour MP for Sheffield Hallam.
“He clearly isn’t fit to sit on the Women and Equalities Committee. He must stand down from that committee immediately and if he doesn’t, Jeremy Corbyn must take action to remove him.”
Stella Creasy, Labour MP for Walthamstow, added she had asked for a meeting with Mr O’Mara to discuss his comments.
‘Change their views’
However Wes Streeting, Labour MP for Ilford North, who was at the meeting earlier, said: “He offered what seemed to be a heartfelt and genuine apology and admitted that these are views he once held, which took guts.
“The battle for equality is a battle for hearts and minds and that must surely mean that people are allowed to change their views and therefore must also be offered a second chance.
“I hope I don’t end up eating my words and that he demonstrates his commitment to equality as a new MP. I think we owe him that chance.”
In a statement, Mr O’Mara said he had been “wrong to make” the comments.
“I understand why they are offensive and deeply apologise for my use of such unacceptable language.”
“I made the comments as a young man, at a particularly difficult time in my life, but that is no excuse.”
Before his resignation from the committee, LGBT Labour said: “Whilst we recognise that these comments were made some time ago, that doesn’t excuse such ignorance and bigotry.
“We expect a full and public apology from Mr O’Mara and ask that he meets with members of the LGBT Labour committee in order to understand the inequality many LGBT people face.”
Disabled people are “losing out” on jobs because of a government support scheme that is “no longer fit for purpose”, campaigners say.
Access to Work – which gives workplace support to disabled people – is beset by errors, with many having support cut, charity Inclusion London said.
One deaf, leading artistic director said having her funds capped would mean she could no longer work full time.
The government said it was “committed to supporting disabled people” in work.
‘It gave me confidence’
Access to Work is a government programme aimed at helping disabled people and those with physical and mental health conditions that make it difficult to work.
By providing grants – such as to help people with learning disabilities understand written information, or transport for those with physical impairments to attend meetings – it aims to enable people to find or stay in employment.
According to government figures, £103.9m was spent on the scheme in 2016-17, helping about 25,000 people across England, Scotland and Wales.
Jenny Sealey, chief executive at Graeae Theatre and co-artistic director of the London Paralympics opening ceremony, told the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire programme she had relied on the support – which enabled her to pay for sign language interpreters – to get to the top of her field.
“Because I’ve had Access to Work I’ve become professional, I’ve learnt my trade, I’ve learnt how to cope in big meetings,” she said.
“It gave me the confidence to say, ‘I want to be co-artistic director at the Paralympics opening ceremony’.”
‘Terrified’ of the future
A 2004 government review suggested for every £1 of money spent on Access to Work, £1.48 was generated for the Treasury.
But since 2015, new claimants have had the money they can receive each year capped at 1.5 times the average salary – around £41,000.
From April 2017, this will affect existing claimants too.
The report estimates 90% of those affected by the cap will be deaf people.
Ms Sealey said having her support capped will mean no longer being able to work full time.
“[At] the thought of having to cut my hours, I can feel me – Jenny – shrinking, becoming this small person, feeling quite terrified of what my future is.
“I can’t believe this is going to happen, it makes me feel quite sick.”
The government says by capping the amount a claimant can receive, the scheme can reach as many people as possible.
Ellen Clifford, the author of a new report into the scheme for Inclusion London, said the scheme had enabled disabled people to “not only get jobs, but to have a choice of jobs – to go into the same range of professions as non-disabled people”.
One sign language interpreter said it had allowed deaf and disabled people to “smash the glass ceiling”.
But Ms Clifford said in recent years that they needed to reduce the amount of support they were getting.
“There was a noticeable increase in hostile attitudes from advisers – accusations that people were a burden on the taxpayer.”
Ms Clifford said there was also a “disproportionate impact on deaf customers”, with call centres “ill-equipped to deal with non-hearing customers”.
She added that the level of administrative errors being made was “making the scheme unworkable for people”.
One deaf woman who spoke to the programme, Geraldine O’Halloran, said her budget had been cut twice in 2017 because of administrative errors.
A spokeswoman from the Department for Work and Pensions said it was “committed to supporting disabled people to get into employment or keep their jobs.
“Last year 25,000 people had their request approved by Access to Work, an increase of 8% from 2015-16.”
On Saturday, Same Difference was proudly live Tweeting from a day conference on disability and visual art, organised by the people behind UK Disability History Month. Our Tweets are collected below.
Proud to be live Tweeting from Disability & Art day conference for @RRwoi#ukdhm
I am very sad to have heard yesterday of the recent death of Sir Bert Massie. We never met in person but were Facebook friends for some time. RIP Sir, thank you for all your hard work for disability rights before and during my lifetime, and for your Facebook friendship.
AFTER contracting polio at three months old, Sir Bert Massie spent his life fighting for discrimination against disability to be outlawed and making the world a more accessible place for wheelchair users and those with long-term physical or mental impairment.
His drive for change came from both “a personal need and an appreciation of what was wrong”.
During the 1960s he explained that he often used to go to restaurants and “people would say: ‘We don’t serve wheelchairs’.
“And I would say: ‘Well, that’s okay, I don’t eat wheelchairs’.”
It was a typically humorous response from the fiercely proud Liverpudlian but he was the first to admit life could often be a battle.
Sir Bert turned out to be a “great champion of the possible”.
He was a leading light of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 – now replaced by the Equality Act 2010 – which makes it unlawful to discriminate against people in respect of their disabilities.
The son of Herbert and Lucy Massie, young Bert spent the first five years of his life at Liverpool’s Alder Hey Children’s Hospital.
He then moved to the Children’s School of Rest and Recovery and Sandfield Park Special School at the age of 11.
As disabled students were not expected to study for O-levels, he left school without qualifications.
Sir Bert Massie spent his life fighting for discrimination against disability to be outlawed His first job was operating a lift but having been told that he was unemployable he was concerned other wheelchair users were facing the same discrimination and joined the Liverpool Association for the Disabled.
He was unable to study for A-levels in his home city because none of the night schools had an accessible entrance.
Instead, he attended a specialist college in Coventry and returned to take a degree at Liverpool Polytechnic.
After obtaining a postgraduate diploma in social work from Manchester Polytechnic he joined the Royal Association for Disability and Rehabilitation (Radar) in London from 1978 to 1999, becoming chief executive in 1990.
Sir Bert served as chairman of the Disability Rights Commission from 2000 to 2007 and was founding commissioner of its successor, the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
He was awarded the OBE in 1984, CBE in 2000 and a knighthood for “services to disabled people” in 2007.
Ambulances were white when Damon lost his sight over 30 years ago and Lucy’s mental image of her sister, Alice, hasn’t changed since she went blind in 2013.
Having been born blind, Emma has no real interest in what colour represents.
The three blind journalists take a light-hearted look at what colour does and doesn’t mean to them with the help of token sighted person Beth.
It’s remarkable how much pressure it took to achieve this concession. Indeed, from the beginning, the response to news that universal credit claimants are being charged up to 55p a minute to call the government helpline has had an air of “let them eat cake” about it.
New figures suggest that benefit recipients could be spending over £50m a year calling the DWP helpline but until Gauke’s announcement the prime minister’s spokesman had simply stated that anyone worried about the cost could ask for a call back. Some commentators, meanwhile, point out that a call costs only 9p a minute on a landline.
That many families struggling on low incomes can’t afford to have a landline in the first place has been widely ignored (government figures show the helpline received 31.8m calls from mobiles last year). So has the fact that people relying on benefits – at the mercy of the DWP – have little power to get a government worker to call them back.
At a time when policies continue to target the most marginalised members of society, we are seeing this attitude more and more. It’s the same thinking that responds to a mum scraping by on poverty wages as a zero-hours cleaner by asking: why can’t you just get another job? Or that points to hardship payment as a solution to a Parkinson’s patient having his benefit sanctioned but ignores the fact that, without his benefits, he can’t afford the bus fare to the jobcentre to fill out the forms.
It’s inequality washed out – a version of current events told from a position of blissful ignorance. This outlook fails to recognise that the most basic things – being believed by someone in authority, or having enough change for a phone call and a meal for your kids – come from a place of privilege.
It projects the standards of that privilege on to people – the working class, ethnic minorities, benefit claimants – who have never had it. It assumes that, despite all the evidence to the contrary, the game is fair for every player. In fact, what we have is a system that pushes people into debt through a faulty benefits system and then charges them to ask for help.
The politicians cutting social security by billions have not filled out a 42-page form for a disability benefit that they need to keep the heating topped up. The media commentators downplaying concern over the UC phone charges have never been looked down at by jobcentre staff nor expected to wait for six weeks for their only income.
This is where the effects of the narrowness of the British political class – white, wealthy, non-disabled and male – come home to roost. Experiencing a situation first-hand isn’t a prerequisite for empathy, of course, and there are many diligent journalists and politicians. But overall, the disconnect is striking: the very people responsible for shaping social and economic policy in this country often have no understanding of what it is to live at the sharp end of it.
This doesn’t only lead to a failure to comprehend the impact of something like universal credit; it creates a state of disbelief around the reality experienced by certain sections of society. Disabled people, for example, have been reporting grave problems with benefit assessors for years, but it’s only this month MPs are launching an inquiry into alleged widespread dishonesty in the system.
In a different way, the mocking of Laura Pidcock MP – still going on, weeks after her comments about viewing Tories as “the enemy” – has the unpleasant undertone of rounding on the outsider; belittling a working-class, northern woman who articulated a solidarity with her community that those untouched by austerity can’t understand.
It’s in part why support for current Labour party policies, or the radical extension of universal services, is often greeted with bewilderment – despite the fact they chime with the British public’s support for greater levels of state intervention. It’s easy to dismiss hopes for change as “far-fetched” when you’ve never struggled to find your next meal or pay the rent.
The appointment of Marsha De Cordova as the new shadow disabilities minister – a former disability charity and union worker who is registered blind – is a small sign of what it means to have a representative politics: where, say, in contrast to paternalism from non-disabled ministers, someone in power can speak about the impact of disability cuts from experience. This has to be the way forward. As social security cuts, squeezed wages, and Brexit uncertainty hit, it’s the poorest and disabled citizens who are going to be in the firing line. The need for a political class that grasps the damage being done has never been greater.
A Universal Credit (UC) case manager has confessed to the Independent that DWP staff “cruelly close claims” of “tens of thousands of very vulnerable people” and that threats of suicide are a “frequent occurrence”.
The case manager, using a pseudonym, said that lack knowledge about UC regulations by DWP staff “can have an especially devastating impact on care leavers, the disabled and those with mental; health conditions”. He explained that it is often left to charities and support workers to explain the regulations to DWP case managers.
Amongst the allegations made by the claims manager:
Full-time case managers on average handle in the region of 300 claims each. As a result of the overwhelming caseload, many crucial tasks are not completed “until claimants contact us when their payments are inevitably paid incorrectly or not at all”.
If a case manager goes on holiday, their claimants are “completely neglected” as staff are told only to send out payments for people they manage themselves.
DWP staff are told that “claimants are entirely responsible for their own claim”. So the system only alerts staff after a deadline has been missed “allowing us to cruelly close claims and stop that person receiving any money. Tens of thousands of very vulnerable people have their lifeline switched off with a click.”
Claimants who state that they are facing eviction are “a penny a dozen. We are told that legal proceedings can take months so a claimant is ‘never really facing eviction’. That’s how we’re told to justify it.”
Staff are well-trained to deal with threats of suicide “simply because it’s such a frequent occurrence”.
The Commons Select Committee on Work and Pensions would like to hear from you if you have had an assessment, or are waiting for an assessment, for PIP or ESA.
So far over 500 people have posted their comments on the parliament website about their experience of PIP and ESA assessments.
We’re sure that there are many more claimants who could help Frank Field and his committee understand just how bad the system is.
The committee wants to know:
Did you feel that the right decision on your entitlement to ESA/PIP was reached as a result of your initial assessment?
If not—what do you feel were the reasons for this?
If you have experience of Mandatory Reconsideration, did you find this stage effective and useful? How might it be improved?
Overall, how “claimant-friendly” did you find the assessment process?
What steps would you recommend taking to improve it?
New details have emerged of the “climate of fear” GB Para-swimmers were subjected to by their former head coach.
Among the findings of a confidential final report obtained by BBC Sport, investigators found Rob Greenwood inappropriately disclosed an athlete’s medical information, and banned swimmers from leaving hotels “as punishment”.
Paralympians were left “visibly distressed” when recounting their experiences to the safeguarding experts looking into allegations of bullying.
It was also concluded that “there was a lack of nurturing, empathy and appreciation for athletes’ general well-being”.
The governing body released a statement summarising the findings of the investigation, but the BBC can now reveal the full details of the heavily redacted final report.
Greenwood left his job before the investigation began, and it is not known whether he disputes the allegations.
When contacted by the BBC, he declined to comment.
The report is heavily redacted to protect individuals’ identities, but the BBC can reveal one member of staff – understood to be Greenwood – was said to have:
“acted in an intimidating manner towards athletes”
“used derogatory terms to describe athletes owing to their disability”
“inappropriately disclosed medical information of a Para-swimmer”
“asked an athlete to perform a task they were unable to do due to their disability”
banned athletes from leaving hotels and confined them to a resort “as a punishment… leaving them unsupervised and unattended whilst abroad or on a training camp”.
This, despite investigators highlighting the young age of some athletes, and a “wide range of often complex medical conditions and disabilities”. The report notes many athletes had no experience of living or travelling independently.
It added that “when recounting their experiences… in the squad under the tutelage” of an unnamed member of staff – understood to be Greenwood – “a number of athletes became visibly distressed. Their recollection was vivid and the impact on them palpable”.
According to the report, “there is evidence to show that [Greenwood] used inappropriate language to describe the physical disabilities of athletes which at best is unprofessional. Treating individuals with dignity is the very least skill/quality that you would expect to find in an elite level Paralympic coach”.
It also noted that the British Athletes’ Commission, which was representing the swimmers, advised that some of the complainants would only talk to a female investigator.
Greenwood has not responded to a request for comment in light of the latest revelations.
British Swimming said last week that a second unnamed member of staff – understood to be National Performance Director Chris Furber – had been disciplined after his management and communication was criticised and found to have showed a “lack of empathy”.
British Swimming said he “acknowledged mistakes had been made” and he remains in post at the Manchester-based organisation.
He is not accused of abuse or discrimination, and when contacted by the BBC he also declined to comment.
According to the final report, Furber;
“had the benefit of previous experience in managing individuals with disability. He may have felt more accomplished in pushing the boundaries of challenging athletes and encouraged [Greenwood] to do so. Whilst that was a wholly appropriate objective the methodology was flawed”
“demonstrated a lack of empathy towards athletes, particularly if they did not perform well or were unwell”
“failed to ensure enough management control was exercised over methods of training particularly the use of ‘pressure sets'”
Furber has not responded to a request for comment in light of the latest revelations.
According to the investigators, it was suggested to them by members of staff that “the complaints made by athletes have been motivated by retribution for de-selection. In addition it is intimated that because the athletes have complained ‘en masse’ there has been an element of collusion prior to reporting their concerns”.
However the experts say they are “not minded to conclude that either of these assertions were the simple driving factor for athletes making a complaint”, making the point that several complainants remained part of the squad.
The investigators said the timing of the complaints after the Rio 2016 Paralympics “seems logical and wholly understandable”. They believed that before a Games “an athlete will mentally put aside and be prepared to endure any level of negative treatment to focus on achieving their dream”.
In March, BBC Sport revealed Britain’s Para-swimming squad – which includes some of the country’s youngest and most vulnerable athletes – had become embroiled in a bullying controversy after multiple complaints against a coach.
In February, an independent investigation into the allegations began, and 13 athletes and 10 members of staff were interviewed.
British Swimming says it has committed to a robust action plan in a bid to overhaul its culture.
Figures from police forces across the UK show there were 450 incidents reported last year, up from 181 in 2014-15, 5 live Investigates found.
Families with disabled children described being targeted online and verbally abused in the street.
The Home Office said the rise was due to better reporting and more victims willing to come forward.
‘They wished she was dead’
Bethan Germon’s 23-month-old daughter Lydia has hydrocephalus, or water on the brain, which causes her head to swell.
It means at one point Lydia’s head was double its natural size. She also has cerebral palsy and is fed through a tube.
“You see a really ugly side of people online to the point where they say they wish she was dead or why don’t we kill her,” Bethan said.
“The online commenting has easily been the worst and my husband has actually made sure that I come offline for a couple of days when things have been said.
“He really does try to protect me as much as he can.”
The 29-year-old from Swansea said that while the family was most regularly targeted through social media, abuse was also doled out in the street.
“Some of my friends have had the word cabbage used against their children.
“This isn’t unusual for us.”
A disability hate crime is defined as anything from online abuse to physical violence in which the victim was targeted because of their disability.
5 live Investigates sent Freedom of Information requests to all 45 police forces in the UK, to find out how often these incidents were happening, and 29 of them provided full responses.
Overall the number of disability hate crimes increased by 101%, from 1,531 in 2014-15, to 3,079 in 2016-17.
But the crimes against children increased at an even greater rate.
The incidents reported to police range from verbal and online abuse to arson and even violent, physical attacks.
Prosecutions rising
Amanda Batten of the Disabled Children’s Partnership said the findings echo a new survey it carried out of nearly 2,700 parents of disabled children which revealed hate crime and abuse was commonplace.
“Families often feel like they can’t go into busy public spaces or post images onto social media for fear of being publicly shamed or having to be submitted to people telling them that their child must lack quality of life because of their disability.
“The idea that so many parents and children with a disability are facing such a lack of support and outright abuse from the general public is truly heart breaking.”
The Crown Prosecution Service for England and Wales has seen year on year rises in prosecutions and convictions for disability hate crime.
A Home Office spokesman said: “All forms of hate crime are completely unacceptable and the UK has some of the strongest laws in the world to tackle it.
“Our hate crime action plan has improved the response of law enforcement and the criminal justice system to these horrendous attacks.
“We are still concerned that disability hate crime is significantly under-reported by victims, and that is why the government is working with community groups to raise awareness of how to report it amongst, disabled people, their carers and families.”
5 live Investigates: Hate Crimes against Disabled Children is broadcast on Sunday 15 October at 11:00 BST. If you missed it you can catch up on the iPlayer.
Quiet hours, reduced background noise and provision for customers to use private rooms
Staff trained on how to better understand and serve autistic customers
Information pack aims to give autistic customers and their families a preview of branch life
Nationwide Building Society is trialling autism friendly hours in branches to make the experience as comfortable and convenient as possible.
Autism is a lifelong developmental disability that affects how people perceive the world and interact with others. Designated quiet periods, reduced background noise and greater availability of office space are to be offered to create a more welcoming environment for autistic people. In addition, information about what to expect at a branch will also be sent to relevant customers so that they are prepared.
The initiative, which is being piloted in Worcestershire, is supported by the National Autistic Society and will be rolled out across the Society’s entire branch network if successful. The trial follows an extensive training programme for all frontline staff on how to support members with mental capacity needs, such as dementia through its dedicated Specialist Support Service.
In the UK around one in 100 people are on the autistic spectrum, equating to around 700,000 people and affecting some 3 million family members. And with more than 15 million members, the Society recognises many of its customers will be affected by the condition, either personally or through friends or family.
Autistic people can get overloaded by everything around them. It’s like all the senses are firing at once, like there’s no filter, like they’re getting too much information. And that makes the world a terrifying, isolating place. But it doesn’t have to be like this. Small changes can help to reduce the overload.
Taking into account the difficulties experienced by autistic people, a range of approaches will be adopted in participating branches. These include:
Publication of quiet times for each branch so there is less footfall and background noise, meaning less need to queue – something that can be an issue for someone on the autism spectrum.
Rooms will be made available in case a customer or their child find the experience overwhelming.
Noise will be reduced as much as possible for those who experience sensory overload.
Reducing fluorescent or harsh lighting as this can hurt the eyes of someone on the autism spectrum.
Training for staff to enable them to support autistic members and their families at any time, not just in the dedicated quiet periods.
While the hours are designed to support autistic members and their families, Nationwide hopes they will also be of use to other members who may prefer to conduct their banking needs at a quieter time such as those with head injuries or partial hearing loss.
Mandy Griffin, Director of Membership Propositions at Nationwide Building Society, said: “Autism is very much a hidden disability and often you will not know if someone is autistic. By making a few adjustments in our branches, we can make them a less daunting space for our autistic members and their families. We are also looking to provide more detail online to allow members to plan their visit and know what to expect when visiting a branch, something that is important to many autistic members.”
Mark Lever, Chief Executive at the National Autistic Society, said: “We are delighted that Nationwide Building Society is introducing regular autism friendly hours in its branches. We know that as many as 64% of autistic people avoid going to shops and businesses due to feeling overwhelmed by noise, environment and because staff don’t understand their autism. I am confident that many people will feel relief that Nationwide is offering this crucial initiative.
“In early October, we organised the first UK-wide week of Autism Hours with nearly 5,000 shops and businesses across the country. We hope that more organisations, including other financial services providers, will follow the example set by Nationwide and do their bit to help make sure autistic people and their families have the same opportunities as everyone else.”
Every month 60,000 ill and disabled people have their needs assessed for benefits. Some are so worried about the process that they are using mobile phones to secretly record those interviews, critics say. But using that evidence to overturn a decision is not straightforward.
In 2015, Nev Cartwright sat down with his specialist at a hospital in Leeds. He was told his hacking cough and breathing difficulties were caused by a tumour in his left lung. He was 45.
Since then he has had three operations and a lung removed. Nev was awarded the highest rate of Disability Living Allowance (DLA) – a benefit meant to pay for the extra costs of his condition.
But a year later he received a letter saying the DLA was being replaced by a new benefit, the Personal Independence Payment, and his needs would have to be reassessed by a private company.
The night before his assessment he watched a documentary which questioned how they were being conducted.
“I was really nervous about it and made the decision to audio record the interview covertly. It was a safeguard, an accurate record of what had taken place,” he says.
‘Completely altered’
The face-to-face assessment is typically an interview with a health professional, such as a nurse or paramedic, lasting between 30 and 90 minutes. It can also include basic medical tests and a physical examination.
The claimant is assessed depending on their ability to complete day-to-day tasks. That report is sent to an official at the DWP who will then decide the final level of disability benefit that person is awarded.
But things did not go as planned. Nev says he had misgivings from the start but it was only later, when he saw the assessor’s final report, that he realised something was seriously wrong.
“Some details discussed in the interview were not in the report and others were completely altered,” he says.
“She said she’d done a physical examination of my mobility. It was very evident on the audio recording, that she never did that at all.”
On his phone recording you can clearly hear the assessor carrying out a peak test to measure his lung function, and reading out the data.
But in the final report, his last reading appears to have doubled from 150 L/min to 300 L/min, making him seem better than he actually was.
“I totally agree that anyone entitled to benefits should have their needs assessed,” he says. “But everyone deserves just and fair treatment.”
Tribunal appeal
After his interview Nev had his disability payments cut and had to return the car paid for by the mobility element of his benefits.
He wrote to the DWP and told them about his recording, sending them a written transcript put together by an independent firm.
Under government rules, secret or covert recording like this is banned. If it is spotted, the claimant is told to stop. If they refuse it is likely that their benefit application will be rejected.
The government tried to get his recording thrown out before his appeal at tribunal.
But exceptionally, in his case the judge agreed a transcript could be entered into evidence. He went on to win his case and his car was eventually returned.
“I’ve wasted 12 months of my life in an unfair fight with a government department and the people who work for it,” he said.
The private company which carried out his assessment says its “high standards were not met on this occasion” and it has now changed the way it gathers evidence in cases like this.
Recording pressure
Critics of the assessment process say formal audio recording of all PIP interviews should be mandatory and available to both sides.
“It would remove the distrust and give so much transparency to everyone,” said Tony Lea, lead welfare rights officer at Benefit Resolutions, a disability advocacy service which has been campaigning for a rule change.
As things stand the official rules are complex.
A claimant does have the right to ask for a PIP interview to be formally taped and used as evidence, but unlike other disability benefits like ESA, they have to provide their own equipment.
This must be a secure, tamper-proof double recorder which can cost as much as £1,500. A mobile phone, digital recorder or dictaphone does not meet the requirements.
In March, a major independent review of the PIP system commissioned by the government recommended switching to compulsory audio recordings with an opt-out for people who do not want it.
The government says it is “considering the results” of a pilot of recording in the West Midlands.
A spokesman for the DWP said: “Anyone is free to record their face-to-face consultation, but it must be done in a way that best protects both claimants and assessors.”
Nev says his experience shows that some vulnerable people need more protection.
“I should probably be more diplomatic but I think the whole system is a mess,” he adds.
“The importance for me of getting that audio recording into evidence was the potential to help other people in the future.”
An independent inquiry into complaints of bullying made by 13 Para-swimmers found they and their families faced “unacceptable behaviours”.
In an exclusive interview, Carson Russell, whose daughter Hannah, 21, was among the athletes who complained, said it had been a “very challenging” time.
He said solutions must now be found.
“It is disappointing when you have to listen to your daughter on the end of the phone who is upset and fearful at the way she’s being managed, and that is a big concern,” he told BBC Sport’s Patrick Nathanson.
“I am aware that other families have been through a lot of turmoil, a lot of distress over the last two or three years. It’s very challenging for parents and athletes who might be in a new environment for them so they’re unsure what best practice looks like.
“As a parent, you want you child to be in a rewarding environment, that’s how you get the best out of athletes – but if they’re pushed too far, that can slide away, and I believe that’s what’s happened, and that then did become a climate of fear that people couldn’t operate in properly.”
British swimming’s governing body said an unnamed member of staff – understood to be former head coach Rob Greenwood – was found to have been “communicating with athletes in an abusive manner, as well as using derogatory terms to describe athletes”.
Greenwood left his job before the investigation began, and it is not known whether he disputes the allegations.
When contacted by the BBC, he declined to comment.
A second unnamed member of staff – understood to be national performance director Chris Furber – whose management and communication was criticised and was found to have showed a “lack of empathy” has faced disciplinary action, but remains in post at the Manchester-based organisation.
He is not accused of abuse or discrimination. When contacted by the BBC he declined to comment.
“In the pursuit of excellence, we recognise there have been failings in the culture and communication within British Para-swimming” said Maurice Watkins, chairman of the national governing body.
‘The most important thing is to find solutions’
Carson Russell said striving for medals must be balanced with the welfare and safety of athletes.
“The pursuit of medals is integral to athletes getting up every day, driving themselves forward – it’s what elite sport is all about,” he said.
“Getting that balance right is really important, but you can strive for world-class performances in an environment where you are looking after athletes and their welfare comes first.”
He acknowledged British Swimming had carried out a “thorough investigation” and added it was “right and good that they have made some recommendations”.
He said: “The important thing is you have to be careful of throwing sticks and highlighting problems all the time. The most important thing is to find solutions.
“There are some recommendations, but the caveat to that is that those have to be delivered.”
Russell said his daughter was willing to “draw a line in the sand” and was focused on securing a place at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics.
“Unfortunately for my daughter she did have to cope with stresses and things that weren’t great for her,” he said. “But becoming a resilient athlete, being able to bounce back, that’s part of elite sport as well.
“What’s gone has gone, let’s make sure we learn from that.
“There’s some new people and coaches involved in British Para-swimming and she’s working with them. Her focus is purely on Tokyo 2020 and what she needs to do to try and get selected for that.”
I’m standing in line waiting to get into a nightclub, bumping shoulders with people who are already having a good time. As I reach the front, a bouncer looks me up and down. Without a word, he places his hand on my shoulder and pushes me forward. I’m pinballed from security guard to security guard, fully expecting to be led directly into the club. Instead, I’m guided out of the queue, confused as to why I now find myself standing behind the metal barriers.
“What’s going on?” I mean, I’ve had a few drinks but I’m certainly not drunk.
He asks me to blow into a breathalyser, and we wait a few moments. All clear.
“Are you OK?” he asks me plainly.
“Yes?”
Why wouldn’t I be? And then the penny drops. The first bouncer must have thought I was off-my-face drunk, simply because my eyes weren’t looking in one particular direction.
The thing is, I’m visually impaired, but I don’t necessarily need a cane. What follows is my desperate vomit of different terms for blindness, trying to prove my innocence.
“I’m visually impaired? Legally blind? I’m registered blind … Jesus! I can’t see properly!”
But it is all too late. A fun night out had been soured by one tiny assumption and a judge and jury who had decided to put me on trial because I didn’t look them in the eye.
This isn’t the first time this has happened and it certainly won’t be the last. But given that today is World Sight Day, I thought I’d shine a light on what people with vision impairments go through on a daily basis.
Blindness and visual impairments are severely misunderstood. What people presume is that if you’re blind, you can’t see anything and you’re either going to be relying on a dog or swinging a stick about. If you’ve got neither … then hey, you’re not blind.
This is entirely incorrect. People who are registered blind are statistically more likely to be partially sighted than completely blind. In reality, only a very small portion of people have no sight at all. Despite this, awareness regarding legal blindness is practically non-existent. Two million people are registered blind or partially sighted in the UK and, shocking as it is, we are actually able to participate in society.
According to a report by the Royal National Institute for the Blind (RNIB) almost half of blind and partially sighted people feel moderately or completely cut off from people or things around them, leading to a marked rise in the risk of depression among people with sight loss. That’s why the ignorance surrounding vision impairments needs to be addressed. If a night out is a way for a visually impaired person to enjoy themselves, shutting them out because they don’t carry a stick is a sure way to keep us cut off from society.
There often seems to be a misconception that the only thing blind people do is … be blind. We don’t just sit at home decked out in our blind garb, hovelled up in our pyjamas and dropping curry down our shirts. It’s detrimental to our overall identity to assume that if a vision-impaired person says that they’re going to work, they must be going to the RNIB. People with varying capabilities of sight are able to lead lives that don’t revolve around blindness. Yes, we might have keen interests in issues surrounding blindness or want to rally around in support, but that doesn’t mean we don’t want to get out to a nightclub now and again. It’s not only able-bodied people who can have fun.
I can appreciate that it’s difficult to really know a person’s situation, but making face-value assumptions, whether they’re a product of society or not, isn’t going to help anyone. We do exist in the outside world, even if we aren’t holding a cane. Like most things, blindness exists on a scale and what you know about one blind person certainly isn’t going to apply to another.
Ben Stokes has apologised to Katie Price and her disabled son Harvey for a video that showed the England player imitating a TV clip of the youngster.
The apology came on the same day Stokes lost personal sponsor New Balance following his recent arrest over an incident near a Bristol nightclub.
The video emerged following his arrest in September. TV personality Price has called Stokes’ behaviour “disgusting”.
“I foolishly attempted to copy the clip,” Stokes tweeted on Wednesday.
“I should never have done this and I am so sorry.”
The 26-year-old England all-rounder and Test vice-captain added: “It was absolutely not my intention to offend Harvey, Katie or anybody else.
“I have written to both Harvey and Katie to say sorry and prior to this offered to meet in person at the end of last month with a view to also getting behind their petition about online bullying. I do hope I can put this right.”
British Swimming has apologised to Paralympic athletes after it was found that a former head coach “created a climate of fear”.
It said an independent inquiry into complaints of bullying from 13 Para-swimmers found they and their families faced “unacceptable behaviours”.
The governing body said the unnamed member of staff – understood to be ex-head coach Rob Greenwood – was found to have been “communicating with athletes in an abusive manner, as well as using derogatory terms to describe athletes”.
Greenwood left his job before the investigation began, and it is not known whether he disputes the allegations.
When contacted by the BBC he declined to comment.
A second member of staff, whose management and communication was criticised and who “acknowledged mistakes”, has faced disciplinary action, but remains in post at the Manchester-based organisation.
“In the pursuit of excellence, we recognise there have been failings in the culture and communication within British Para-swimming” said the national governing body’s chairman Maurice Watkins.
Under Greenwood’s leadership, the country’s Para-swimmers became the most successful British team at last year’s Rio Paralympics, winning 47 medals – including 16 golds – and setting eight world records. Greenwood took up the position in 2013 and was named Sport Coach UK’s ‘High Performance Coach of the Year’ in 2016.
The programme received £11m of public funding from UK Sport in the four-year cycle leading up to the Rio Games.
‘We were left broken-hearted’
One of the athletes who represented ParalympicsGB in Rio and who made a complaint, wanted to remain anonymous but told BBC Sport: “It’s good that it has now been recognised, but it also feels as if nothing has really happened. I don’t have much confidence things will really change.
She says that she saw athletes being “screamed at” and “verbally abused and bullied” and “swimmers broken-hearted, crying their eyes out, and completely destroyed as a result of what had been said to them”.
“These members of staff would talk down to the swimmers, make us feel pathetic and useless. We were traumatised and belittled. It began a year before Rio and carried on constantly,” she added.
“I didn’t suffer as much as some of the others. We won plenty of medals, but they took it too far. If we’d had less pressure and stress and targets, we’d have been happier and won even more.”
BBC Sport has learned that the situation was deemed so serious that athletes were offered free therapy at the request of the British Athletes’ Commission, to help them deal with the strain of the investigation.
Background
In March, BBC Sport revealed that Britain’s Para-swimming squad – which includes some of the country’s youngest and most vulnerable athletes – had become embroiled in a bullying controversy after multiple complaints against a coach.
British Swimming says that “after an initial investigation by a law firm concluded there was prima facie evidence which warranted further inquiries, the matter was referred by the British Athletes Commission (BAC) to the governing body in December 2016”.
In February, an independent investigation into the allegations was launched, and 13 athletes and 10 members of staff were interviewed.
‘Climate of fear’
“As regards the one member of staff who has left, it was found that he had created a climate of fear for some athletes in the British Para-swimming programme and there had also been breaches of the staff code by communicating with athletes in an abusive manner, as well as using derogatory terms to describe athletes,” British Swimming said.
“As for the second member of staff, it was found that athletes were not managed to the appropriate level, there was failure to ensure management control and lack of empathy was shown towards athletes.
“Communication with both athletes and their parents/guardians was also found to need improvement. The member of staff acknowledged mistakes had been made.”
Apology
“On behalf of British Swimming I want to apologise to the athletes and their families who have faced unacceptable behaviours and comments” said Watkins.
“I have written to those athletes and their families who I understand have been affected by this.
“In the pursuit of excellence, we recognise there have been failings in the culture and communication within British Para-swimming. We are correcting that, recognising the need to ensure strong athlete welfare in our sport.”
British Swimming says it has committed to “a robust action plan… to make sure transparent procedures are followed and adhered to… and a closer working relationship with the BAC.”
It said it is reviewing the staff code of conduct, safeguarding policies and the whistleblowing policy “to ensure they continue to be fit for purpose and widely communicated”.
“Our goal continues to be medal-producing performances, consistent with medal targets, in a positive culture,” it said.
Athlete welfare in the spotlight
With a third of governing bodies having been drawn into athlete welfare complaints in recent months, this latest scandal will heighten fears that medal success and UK Sport’s ‘no-compromise’ funding strategy has come at the expense of duty of care.
In June, a report into claims of bullying at British Cycling found a lack of good governance, heard there was “a culture of fear” and criticised UK Sport for missing crucial warning signs.
BBC Sport revealed a senior coach working with Great Britain’s Winter Olympic bobsleigh squad has been accused of racism amid multiple complaints over a “toxic atmosphere” in the sport.
The BBC also revealed that police had reopened an investigation into a senior Archery GB coach having been suspended following a complaint to police over an alleged incident involving a young female Para-athlete.
UK Sport meanwhile has promised a “root and branch review” of culture in high-performance programmes, and appointed a new head of integrity, with chair Dame Katherine Grainger saying that athlete welfare is “a huge concern”.
‘Cultural failings’
Tim Hollingsworth, chief executive of the British Paralympic Association, said: “The health and wellbeing of athletes and indeed those involved in sport at any level is always of paramount importance.
“There is no place in Paralympic sport for the kind of cultural failings detailed in this independent report for British Swimming and we commend the governing body for their response to it and the action plan they have initiated.
“ParalympicsGB athletes are some of the most inspiring role models in public life and there are no circumstances in which this kind of conduct is acceptable.
“We would encourage athletes to challenge this behaviour wherever and whenever it arises and – as is happening across the system – all organisations and governing bodies to look at their culture and their processes to make sure they are as good as they can be and should be.”
Eleven-time Paralympic gold medallist Baroness Grey-Thompson, who has conducted a major government-commissioned report into duty of care in sport, said: “It should never be underestimated how hard it was for those on the programme to step forward and raise their concerns.
“As we’ve seen across a number of sports, the culture and system is not protecting its athletes in the way it should.
“Once again this shows that duty of care has to be a high priority within any sport pathway. It has to be at the heart of every programme. I don’t believe providing this support will be detrimental to the aspirations of any team. I hope the governing body will be able to create a positive environment around the squad for the future.”
The criteria that the DWP are using to decide which claimants will no longer have to have repeat work capability assessments (WCAs) in order to continue receiving employment and support allowance (ESA) or universal credit have now been published. They show that many claimants with mental health conditions will not be considered, even though they are in the support group.
Substantial risk Last week the government announced that claimants who have to attend a WCA from 29 September 2017 will not have to have repeat assessments if they meet certain, at that time undisclosed, criteria.
However, Disability Rights UK, who took part in the consultation on the changes, have published copies of the guidance on their website.
The documents make it clear that claimants who are placed in the support group because their mental health condition means that there would be a substantial risk to themselves or someone else if they were not placed there, will not be considered for exemption from further medicals.
This is in spite of the fact that the substantial risk regulations are a very common ground for claimants with mental health conditions being placed in the support group.
Detailed criteria Instead, claimants can only be considered if they are in the support group because of one of the “functional descriptors” due to either a physical or mental health condition. These are are:
Mobilising 50m
Transfer independently
Reaching
Picking up and/or moving
Manual dexterity
Making yourself understood
Understanding communication
Weekly incontinence
Learning tasks
Awareness of hazards
Personal actions
Coping with change
Engaging socially
Appropriateness of behaviour
Unable to eat / drink / chew / swallow / convey food or drink
Claimants will also need to show that all of the following apply:
Their condition will last for the rest of their lives.
The effect of their condition means that they will always meet at least one of the support group descriptors above. The DWP say that conditions which might qualify, include: “Motor Neurone Disease (MND), severe and progressive forms of MS, Parkinson’s, all dementias, all chromosomal conditions, Huntington’s, severe irreversible cardiorespiratory failure, severe acquired brain injury …this list is not exhaustive” . The DWP also say that conditions which might not meet the criteriainclude “recently diagnosed relapsing non-progressive forms of MS or some people with less severe mental health conditions with periods of reasonable function”.
There is no realistic prospect of recovery, such as a transplant.
They have been diagnosed with an unambiguous medically recognised condition. This can include conditions such as ME/CFS and fibromyalgia.
No appeal A health professional will make a recommendation as to whether a claimant meets the criteria for being exempt from further WCAs. A DWP decision make will make the final decision.
There is no right of appeal against a decision not to exempt a claimant from further WCAs
A press release, that we publish with this discussion , on how sex robots can help disabled people, in mind. Thoughts welcome, as always.
Dennis Hof, owner of the Moonlite Bunny Ranch and six other legal brothels throughout the state of Nevada, has announced that he is exploring and embracing advances in sex technology that could lead to sexbots available at the Bunny Ranch as early as 2019, working side by side with human sex workers.
“I’ve always been an innovator in the sex space,” Hof said. “When I took legal prostitution out of the shadows and into the limelight with my reality TV series Cathouse, and reimagined Nevada’s legal brothels as lavish sex tourism destinations for men, women, and couples from all walks of life, I changed the culture of legal prostitution for the better, and was very successful doing it.”
“The next great innovations in our industry will not only be cultural, but also technological,” Hof said. “Sex robots are here to stay, and the technology is further along than most people think. I want the Bunny Ranch to be a testbed for this cutting edge sex tech — and if our clients like them, Bunny-Bots will be a part of the experience offered at my brothels going into the next decade.”
If the technology continues to advance at the current rate, Hof says that the robots available at the Bunny Ranch could be more than merely amped-up sex toys.
“The companies I’m in discussions with are constantly perfecting their sex robots to be the most physically satisfying sex partners on the market, but it’s the advancements they’ve made in Artificial Intelligence that may truly change the game in the upcoming decades,” Hof said.
“The ‘Girlfriend Experience,’ where a client and sex worker share conversation and intimacy in addition to great sex, is the most requested session at the Bunny Ranch,” Hof said. “A few tech companies are already experimenting with artificially intelligent and interactive sex robot applications, so upcoming generations of sex robots just might be able to connect with Bunny Ranch clients on this intimate level and satisfy the emotional needs of brothel customers.”
Some working girls at the Bunny Ranch disagree with Hof’s assessment.
“It’s insulting,” says Tiara Tae, a popular working girl at the Bunny Ranch who dislikes the idea of introducing the newest technology into the world’s oldest profession.
“You can’t program a robot to sympathize with every client’s unique psychological situation or to sense what a customer subconsciously needs sexually and emotionally. The experience we offer is not a simulation of intimacy and empathy, it’s genuine.”
“I’m not thrilled about the prospect of sharing the stage with an appliance,” Tae said. “It’s challenging enough competing with dozens of other working girls, now I have to compete with the Terminator too?”
Tae believes that introducing sex robots into brothels may cause working girls to go on strike.
“We have never gone on strike before, but I can see working girls standing up against sex robot ‘automation’ of our very human industry if this happens,” Tae said.
Not all sex workers at Hof’s brothels are opposed to the idea of sex robots joining the Bunny Ranch lineup. Alice Little, the top earner of Hof’s pool of over 500 working girls, has a different perspective.
“I don’t see sex robots as my competition, as much as a tool that I can use to augment my client’s experience.” Little said.
“We work with a lot of adult virgins with extreme levels of shyness and very limited sexual experience,” Little said. “Many of these virgins are very nervous when they’re with a woman for the first time, and could benefit from having a transitional sexbot to ease them into intercourse with a human woman.”
“Also, how cool would it be to have a threesome with a robot!” Little said.
Currently, Hof splits all revenue 50/50 with the working girls at the Bunny Ranch, so the financial advantage of having non-human sex workers “on staff” are not lost on the brothel owner.
“We’re still in the early stages of estimating the potential financial impact of robo-prostitution,” Hof said. “But if the future unfolds as we expect, sex robots may do for the Bunny Ranch what the iPhone did for Apple.”
This report from Disability Campaigner Gail Ward is a must read for all benefit claimants and those claiming ‘in work’ benefits claimed by millions in the UK. It has plenty of references and downloads contained within the document and it will alarm many, it should, as this government is targeting the poorest in society at the expense of saving the rich. Some of those already transferred will know the horrors already highlighted recently by Citizens Advice (CAB),but the majority do not. This blog doesn’t have the capacity to embed the entire report to enable reading online ,but you can download it from the link below in the hope that this will help many prepare for the next onslaught by this barbaric government whose sole purpose is to hound claimants, and save money for the state putting profit before people. If you thought WCA (ESA) was bad this will make it…
They’re talked about a lot at the moment, but can “sex robots” help disabled people?
Also on this BBC Ouch show, the disabled teen punk who left home to find an independent life for herself in the less-accessible 80s. And the action movie where sign language is a super-power.
A press release, published slightly late, but the programme is still available on Iplayer.
In a first for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, BBC Ouch! brought together seven performers with disabilities or mental health difficulties to share their most awkward momentswith a live Festival audience.
The night’s performances can be seen tonight in a 30 minute special featuring four of the acts on BBC News Channel at 2130. An hour-long version featuring all seven performers is available now on BBC iPlayer.
BBC Ouch! provided a platform for the performers to share stories about the moments that have made them laugh and cringe. Featuring a mix of professionals and non-professionals – some of whom had never performed before – the show gives a frank and sometimes darkly comic glimpse into the day-to-day reality of living with a disability or mental health difficulty.
Ouch! Storytelling Live: Awkward Moments was compered by London-based Danish comedian Sofie Hagen and headlined by Lost Voice Guy Lee Ridley, who has cerebral palsy and speaks through a computer.
Among the acts performing personal monologues were: Frank Burton, who uses Al Pacino film titles to stop his seizures; Angela Clarke, whose easily-popping bones made for a less-than-relaxing spa experience; and Abbi Brown, a wheelchair user, who enjoys shocking nuns with a rather unusual party trick!
The Ouch! team were inundated with auditions from aspiring raconteurs with a disability and a funny story to tell after they sent out an open call on social media for people to be part of the show. The team struggled to narrow the line-up down to the final six who joined headliner Lee Ridley, and say they’ve got lots of good stories left over that could find their way into future shows.
This event was BBC Ouch!’s first Edinburgh Fringe comedy outing and followed a successful forerunner, in which another group of performers took over a London comedy club to talk hilariously about sex and relationships.
Sofie Hagen hosted both nights and says:
“This show features real people talking honestly about their lives, allowing us all to hear stories from people who are so rarely represented – it’s an incredible show to be a part of. If this show existed when I was a teenager who experienced severe depression, it would have made me feel less alone and more understood and that is priceless.”
Damon Rose, Editor of Ouch, says:
“Storytelling nights have become quite popular and I’ve always thought that having disabled people or people with mental health difficulties at the front, under the spotlight, engaging with the crowd, and telling their own unfiltered stories puts everybody on a level. I find it very engaging and authentic. What we found is that our contributors don’t tend to use the regular clichés of braveness, inspiration and ‘see the person not the disability’. They avoid the spin and worthiness and like to represent themselves in many different ways. We see the people, we hear their stories and it all seems more three dimensional.”
DAWN Charitable Trust cordially invites you to join us in celebration of its Silver Jubilee Gala at Winston Churchill Hall, Pinn Way, Ruislip, HA4 7QL, on 15th October 2017 from 3:00 pm with a colourful programme of classical and folk dances, Bollywood songs, drama and a Rang-e-Mehfil followed by a raffle and dinner.
DAWN is a mental health and social wellbeing support charity formed with a mission to alleviate isolation, poverty and distress in society.
More information on our work and engagement with the community can be found by visiting our website: www.dawncharitabletrust.com; Facebook: dawn community trust; Twitter: yakeendawn.
Although our main focus has been on catering to the needs of ethnic minorities – particularly Asian women, we are open to all faiths, backgrounds and genders and do indeed have clients from the wider community accessing our services.
Tickets may be reserved by calling Dawn on 020 8427 6706 and picked up from our office or at the reception desk at the venue. Payment can be made online on: Dawn Project Account: No: 47364696; Sort Code: 60-10-10.
I couldn’t believe that Thursday had arrived so quickly. I had spent all week covering the Conservative Party Conference and to say that I was tired is an understatement, but people still need help.
I was met at the cafe by a lady that we had helped a while ago. Her life is back on track now and she is doing well. She likes to come and have a chat with me, and I like it to. I regard her as a friend and we sat and put the world to rights.
I arrived at the Jobcentre and set everything up. Thank goodness I wasn’t on my own this week, last week was awful. People soon arrived, arriving at the Jobcentre for appointments many needing food parcels.
The weather is getting cold now, although it wasn’t raining. My thoughts go out to everyone living on the streets.
Johnathan Cavendish has produced Breathe, the beautiful, true love story of a polio survivor and his wife. The couple are Cavendish’s own parents, Robin and Diana. Cavendish himself described the project as a ‘labour of love’ in his introduction to a screening in central London, as part of the London Film Festival 2017.
Robin Cavendish, (Andrew Garfield) the central character, is a strikingly normal young man who loves playing sport. During a game of cricket he spots Diana (Claire Foy.) Love at first sight leads to marriage. He takes her to live a life of luxury in Kenya, where he is a tea broker.
Romance, humour and even a pinch of feminism follow as much to the surprise of Robin’s many friends, Diana accompanies him on his trips to ‘broke’ tea and claims to want to know about his business- something women in 1950s Africa clearly didn’t do. As one wife puts it “God gave men jobs to do so women could have a little time to themselves.”
Fittingly, life changes for Cavendish while he is playing sport. He collapses soon after losing a set of tennis to a friend for the first time ever. He keeps calm, carries on and laughs it off, saying only “Now I know how it has felt to be you all these years!”
However, that night, no one is laughing when he ends up in hospital, paralysed irreversibly by polio. After the birth of their baby, Johnathan, the Cavendishes return to England, where Robin is given a tragic life expectancy of a few months and told to spend it on a hospital ward for polio patients. There he meets fellow patient and lifelong friend, Paddy.
With the support of an understanding doctor, Robin leaves the hospital and goes home to Diana and Johnathan. He spends the rest of his life on a ventilator, but with the love and support of his family and his many true friends, he lives a full life.
He helps design a wheelchair which has his ventilator attached to it, and becomes an activist for the rights of severely disabled people. To the shock of doctors, he even eventually gets Paddy and some other patients out of the hospital.
The wheelchair helps him travel the world- to Spain with his family, where the ventilator breaks down in the middle of nowhere and Robin reacts with characteristic humour, sending a friend to phone the chair’s inventor and requesting that he bring back food and wine- and to Germany, where he visits a chilling polio hospital and gives a very moving speech about why he chose to live, even when he wanted to die.
Diana’s true love for her husband is never in doubt, even when, at the end, he decides it is time for him to die. She movingly says “Never, ever, say you did it for me.” In his final moments, she movingly thanks him for choosing to live for as long as he did.
As a hopeless romantic who has been disabled by Cerebral Palsy since birth, I love movies that show their audiences that disabled people can stay in love after becoming disabled. However, my lifelong disability also means that I am personally strongly against Assisted Suicide. So, while I loved Breathe and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys a good love story, I would have loved it even more, and recommended it more highly, if Robin Cavendish had only chosen to live a little longer, until his life ended naturally.
Last month we revealed that repeat WCAs – the assessment system that decides eligibility for employment and support allowance (ESA) – were at their highest ever level and now outnumber WCAs for new claims.
However, the DWP have now announced that from 29 September some claimants who have to undergo a WCA may be told that they will be exempt from any further repeat assessments.
This only applies to claimants who are in the support group of ESA or who have limited capability for work-related activity for UC.
You will also have to have a severe, lifelong disability, illness or health condition.
And you must be unlikely to ever be able to move into work.
DWP minister David Gauke claimed in a speech yesterday that:
“After early tests of this approach, it has now been implemented and I can tell you that around twice as many people are expected to benefit from this reform than were originally thought.”
Unfortunately, as yet, we have no idea of how many people they originally thought would benefit.
Nor has the DWP made public the guidance – if any exists – that health professionals will be using to help them decide whether to recommend exemption from repeat assessments.
But you can be sure we’re trying to get hold of it.
MANY THANKS TO BENEFITS AND WORK FOR THIS.
Created: 03 October 2017The sanctions rate for universal credit (UC) claimants is three times higher than it is for jobseekers allowance (JSA) claimants, according to the latest report by sanctions expert Dr David Webster of the University of Glasgow.
According to a review of benefits sanctions statistics published last month by Dr Webster, the sanctions rate for JSA claimants is 2.5% per month. But for UC the rate rockets to 7.4% per month.
The rate for employment and support allowance (ESA) sanctions is much lower, at 0.32% per month.
However, the length of ESA sanctions is very concerning.
25% of ESA sanctions lasted for more than 3 months. And a shocking 16% of sick and disabled ESA claimants were sanctioned for more than 6 months, a rate that is far higher than for UC according to Dr Webster. The harshness of…
Video games can get a pretty raw deal in the news. At worst, we see stories claiming links between playing violent games and some of the worst aspects of humanity, or that games are robbing children of time spent in nature. At best, we hear news stories where games are regarded with a certain distain; something to be smirked at, and not taken seriously. But these sorts of stories completely miss the varied, rich and nuanced experiences that playing games can afford.
But playing video games isn’t always a trivial endeavour. For many children and adults with disabilities, simply being able to pick up a controller and coordinate fine motor movements can be a difficult, even impossible task. SpecialEffect is a charity based in Oxfordshire that tries to help people get back into the game.
‘I’m a parent of a young child who’s been helped by the charity. I know as a parent there are situations where you can’t play real games with your kids, but you can play video games, so confidence, self-esteem, all those kinds of things are really helped’ says Nick Streeter. Nick is part of the team that’s on a massive fundraising push for the charity today. One Special Day sees the likes of mobile developers like Rovio and Super Cell, and other games houses like EA and Sega donating 100% of their UK profits today to SpecialEffect. The charity’s hope is to raise over £100,000 to go towards the costs of sending specialist healthcare professionals across the country to assess gamers for their needs.
‘The money raised is to keep our services going and recruit more people,’ explains Nick. ‘It puts petrol in our cars to go out and visit people – say, a gamer in Cumbria with a spinal injury. It keeps the door open for them.’ The kinds of equipment that SpecialEffect supply can be anything from a simple switch, to a full eye-tracking system that can cost thousands of pounds. The equipment allows people to manipulate games controllers through ways other than using their hands – it might mean a chin-operated joystick controller, or action buttons that can be pressed using shoulder movements. A key aspect about the charity is that it isn’t about just dropping kit off for people and leaving them to it – instead, the team provides lifelong support. ‘The kit is given out on a long-term loan, and we support people for as long as they need’ explains Nick.
One Special Day is now in its second year. The idea originally came about through conversations with a mobile developer. ‘He said, “I’ve seen what ICAP [a hedge fund] do – on one day a year, they donate all of their worldwide profits to charity. You know what, why can’t the games industry do the same?”’ says Nick. The games development community has been amazingly supportive – over 30 companies are donating their UK profits today, the association for UK interactive entertainment (UKIE) are organising bake sales and Marioke events, and Twitch is hosting a livestream from 2pm, where some of the gamers will be using the technology that SpecialEffect supply to showcase how it works, and how easy it is to use.
SpecialEffect isn’t a campaigning charity – they’re simply acknowledging that gaming is a big part of culture and people’s lives, and trying to help people who want to play get back into it. ‘For kids who can’t go and have a kickaround with a ball outside, it means they can play FIFA and do really well,’ says Nick. ‘It’s a really positive thing, it’s about quality of life.’
So for today only, any in-game purchases made in games supporting the event will go straight to the charity. You can find a list of the supporting developers here. I asked Nick what the plans were for the future of One Special Day. ‘We’re going to take stock afterwards, and see how things went,’ he explains. ‘But for me, we need to find a way to thank people properly – gamers, livestreamers, developers – and show them what actual difference their money is making.’
In the last Parliament the Committee held an urgent one-off evidence session in the wake of the announcement of Government plans to restrict the number of people who qualify for PIP, a move which would limit the cost of PIP by £3.7 billion. Evidence taken then revealed worrying disparities between the applicants’ recall of the assessment process and the final report produced to enable DWP to make a decision. The Committee also heard concerns about the contractor assessors’ ability to understand and properly assess a wide range of physical and mental health conditions, and about the dignity and conduct of the assessment process. The latest data shows that claimants are successful in appealing against their decision in 65% of cases, for both PIP and ESA, and that there has been an 29% increase in such appeals being registered since this time last year.
Given high ratesof overturn at appeal, the Committee invites evidence on the effectiveness of assessment processes used to determine eligibility for these benefits, and the experience of applicants going through it. The Committee is interested in receiving recommendations for change both on the assessment process for each benefit individually, and on common lessons that can be learned from the two processes.
Frank Field MP, Chair of the Committee, said: “The truly amazing rate of overturned ESA and PIP decisions seems to point to something being fundamentally wrong with the initial assessment and Mandatory Reconsideration stages. Quite apart from the human cost this represents – the distress and difficulty for applicants trying to get help with daily living or getting into work – it looks to be wasteful, inefficient, and a huge cost to taxpayers.
“We would like to hear from claimants – and assessors – about whether and where the system works, or is failing, and how it might be fixed.”
In particular, the Committee would welcome evidence on the following points, by 10 November 2017:
Assessors and assessments:
Do contractor assessors possess sufficient expertise to carry out assessments for people with a wide range of health conditions?
Is DWP quality control for contractors sufficient and effective?
Should the options for reforming the Work Capability Assessment mooted in the Government’s Improving Lives green paper be taken forward?
What examples of best practice in assessing eligibility for benefits are available internationally, and how transferrable are they to ESA and/or PIP?
Mandatory Reconsideration and appeal:
Why do claimants seek to overturn initial assessment outcomes for ESA and/or PIP?
Why are levels of disputed decisions higher for PIP than for ESA?
Is the MR process working well for claimants of ESA and/or PIP?
What accounts for the rate of overturned decisions at appeal for PIP and/or ESA?
Are there lessons that could be learned from the ESA MR and appeal process for PIP and vice-versa?
What changes could be made earlier in the process to ensure fewer claimants feel they need to appeal?
Claimant experiences:
Do prospective claimants currently understand the purpose of the assessment?
How could claimants be helped to better understand the assessment process?
Are some groups of claimants particularly likely to encounter problems with their assessments – and if so, how can this be addressed?
Should the assessment processes for PIP and ESA be more closely integrated? How else might the processes be streamlined for claimants?
An easy read version of these terms of reference is available on our website, and we encourage people to join the discussion on our web forum, whether you would like to submit evidence to the inquiry or not. /ENDS
Drake Music, a charity which helps disabled people access music, developed a customised airharp, which enabled Hannah to play an instrument for the first time.
“It’s surreal to think that someone like me can play,” said Hannah.
“People just look and see a lot of physical barriers they can’t see beyond that.
“I like to do what’s not expected of me as a disabled young woman.”
A benefits assessor who was caught on film mocking disabled claimants of personal independence payments and suggesting they were liars has been found guilty of misconduct by a professional standards tribunal.
Alan Barham, a paramedic who carried out PIP assessments for Capita in Northampton, brought his profession into disrepute and undermined public confidence in the integrity of the PIP assessment process, a health and care professions disciplinary panel found.
It issued a five-year caution order, meaning any prospective employer will have access to details of the case on an online professional register for that period.
Barham was covertly filmed by a Channel 4 undercover journalist. Footage showed him boasting that he would largely complete assessment forms before meeting the claimant, and afterwards would often disregard the evidence they gave during their assessment.
He told the reporter he would “completely dismiss” claimants’ explanations for why they needed disability benefit, and rely instead on his own “informal observations” to “catch them out”.
The disciplinary panel said his comments about catching out claimants “portrayed him as holding the view that many claimants were liars, which was totally at odds with an independent assessment process into whether a claim was valid or not”.
Barham also mocked a disabled claimant, telling the undercover reporter that her disability was “being fat”.
“She asks for help to wipe her arse because she’s too fucking fat to do it herself,” he said.
The Health and Care Professions Council summoned Barham to the tribunal after several members of the public filed complaints about his conduct following the broadcast of the Channel 4 Dispatches programme in April 2016.
PIP assessments, which determine a claimant’s eligibility for financial help, have proved controversial. Critics argue that the process is crude and inaccurate, and many assessors are not properly qualified. About 65% of appeals against a PIP assessment decision are successful.
Formerly known as disability living allowance, PIP is awarded to help people with the extra costs of living with a disability or chronic ill health. It is worth between £22 and £141.10 a week, depending on the severity of the condition.
In coming to a verdict of misconduct, the disciplinary panel said: “The impact of [Barham’s] portrayal in the programme was that the public saw a disability assessor who lacked empathy and respect for the vulnerable claimants he was assessing, and who did not act in their best interests.
“In the panel’s view, it is paramount that the public is able to trust the integrity of the PIP assessment process. Individual claimants as well as the general public need to have confidence that the disability assessors carry out the PIP assessments in a fair and sensitive manner, respecting the dignity of the claimants and having regard to the sensitive nature of the personal and medical information provided.”
Barham told the panel that at the time he was filmed by Dispatches, he had become arrogant and big-headed. He had been lauded by Capita for the high percentage of excellent reports he produced and was well paid. He had allowed all this to “go to his head”.
He joined Capita in 2014 after 11 years in the ambulance service as an emergency medical technician and paramedic. He was dismissed by Capita after the programme aired.
The panel said that although Barham’s behaviour was not sufficient to warrant being struck off the professional register, and this was an isolated incident for which he had shown remorse, taking no action would have sent out the wrong message to the public.
Although the caution order will not prevent Barham from practising as a paramedic, the panel said it did not regard it as a lenient sanction, because it would negatively affect his employability and reputation.
Just over a year ago Lesley and Neal Davison received a phone call telling them their daughter was about to be sectioned.
She’d tried to kill herself.
For years Megan had been keeping a secret. She had an eating disorder. But she hid it so well, nobody in her family ever realised.
On 4 August, aged 27, she hanged herself and left a six-page suicide note.
Megan had diabulimia.
The term refers to the combined impact of type 1 diabetes with an eating disorder.
The condition is not yet medically recognised.
“She left us a very detailed note and she felt there was no hope for her, that there was nothing in place to help people with her condition,” her mum Lesley tells Newsbeat.
“In the absence of the help she needed, she couldn’t see any way of carrying on.”
Type 1 diabetes is an irreversible autoimmune disease which requires constant care.
Every time a patient eats carbohydrates they must also inject insulin.
They must check their blood sugar levels frequently. People with type 1 diabetes need insulin to stay alive.
Diabulimia refers to diabetic people who deliberately take too little insulin in order to lose weight.
Doing this can be incredibly dangerous.
“The one thing that not taking your insulin does, is you lose weight – you have an ideal tool,” explains Lesley.
She says that “Megan sometimes looked a bit thin but there was never anything that would indicate anything extreme”.
Experts say there are potentially thousands like Megan who are seemingly living a “normal” life but hiding their illness.
The leading type 1 diabetes charity JDRF estimates 60,000 15 to 30-year-olds are living with T1 in the UK.
Professor Khalida Ismail is lead psychiatrist for diabetes at King’s Health Partners, London.
“You can look quite well and have a normal body size,” she tells Newsbeat.
“And yet because you’re restricting insulin, you are running very high blood sugars and you are increasing your risk of diabetes complications.”
She explains that this can include damage to the eyes, kidneys and nerve endings.
After Megan’s death her family found there was an “inner circle” who knew more about her illness, including three friends and her boyfriend of six years.
“Like the loyal boyfriend, I was sworn to secrecy,” Andy tells Newsbeat.
In her note Megan talks of her treatment in an eating disorder inpatient unit.
She describes managing her own insulin because “not one member of staff on the ward was even trained to administer insulin let alone understand it”.
“They gave me back my insulin because they couldn’t figure out the doses.
“It’s the equivalent of giving an alcoholic vodka or giving a bulimic a bottle of laxatives.”
Her parents want Megan’s story to be known to help other families.
“The information they’re getting is just wrong for them,” says Lesley.
“It might be the best that’s available for the moment but it isn’t anywhere near good enough.”
She adds that Megan “needed something that was specific” to the condition and “not a sort of ad hoc of pieces that didn’t really do the job”.
DWED (Diabetics With Eating Disorders) campaigns for the omission of insulin for weight loss to be recognised as a mental illness.
Founder Jacqueline Allan says diabulimia is still not viewed in the right way.
“The second you stop taking your insulin you’re in the same amount of danger, regardless of your weight.”
Prof Ismail agrees and says psychiatrists need to “wake up” to diabulimia.
“The condition is very hidden,” she says. “Diabetes teams don’t know how to talk to patients about it.
“Eating disorder teams only see the extreme cases.”
She wants diabulimia to be recognised formally.
“Once psychiatrists start talking about it, debating it, awareness will grow.”
Megan’s dad Neal says they knew so little they would have been in “no-man’s land” without the letter.
“I honestly don’t know how we would have coped with it.”
“She didn’t want us upset,” adds Lesley. “And yet you end up devastated because nobody has been able to help her.”
Tim Kendall, NHS England’s national clinical director for mental health, tells Newsbeat that “people are waking up to it”.
“I was involved in producing the NICE guidelines on eating disorders and we devoted a whole section on how you manage people who’ve got diabetes and an eating disorder.
“We’re now disseminating that around the country. We have been asleep, no doubt, but we are waking up.”
NHS England says it’s integrating psychological services with physical health, including placing 3,000 new mental health therapists in GP practices.
Slightly later than we thought, Same Difference has returned. There will be light posting for the next three days and full service will resume from Monday.
Readers, Same Difference must take a break for a short time. We will return with light posting from 21st September and full service will resume from 25th September.
Join Eleanor Oldroyd as she visits Belgian wheelchair racer Marieke Vervoort in Brussels for a second time. Eleanor talks to Marieke about her health, finds out what she has been up to, and what happened when Marieke discussed euthanasia with journalist and wheelchair user, Mik Scarlet.
The Winter Paralympics begin in South Korea on 8 March, 2018.
The IPC will conduct another review in November after the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) Foundation board meeting and two scenarios are possible.
The ban could be lifted, in which case Russian athletes who have qualified would be free to compete for their country at the 2018 Games, or the ban could be continued.
In the case of the ban being continued – it would be up to the newly elected IPC governing board, with a new president to be elected on Friday, to decide whether select athletes could compete at the Winter Paralympics as neutral athletes.
In the interim period, Russian athletes can compete as neutrals in qualification events across four sports – alpine skiing, biathlon, cross-country skiing and snowboard.
In December 2016, the IPC created an independent taskforce which has set the Russian Paralympic Committee (RPC) a number of conditions that must be met before their athletes can return to competitive disability sport events run by the IPC.
In an update to the IPC governing board on Sunday, 3 September, the taskforce highlighted that seven key measures still need to be met before it is able to recommend the reinstatement of the RPC.
The seven key measures are:
The finalisation of the RPC Anti-Doping Rules, to be approved by the taskforce.
The approval of the RPC’s constitution by the IPC membership department.
Completion of all budget-related aspects of the reinstatement criteria.
The provision and confirmation of certain additional information by the RPC regarding personnel and governance (reinstatement criteria 10 and 14.2), as specified by the taskforce.
The provision of further information relating to the composition of the RPC board, to be defined by the taskforce (reinstatement criterion 12).
The full reinstatement of the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (Rusada) by the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada).
The provision of an official response specifically and adequately addressing the findings made by Professor McLaren.
Outgoing IPC president Sir Philip Craven said both the IPC governing board and IPC taskforce were “impressed and encouraged” by the progress the Russian Paralympic Committee had made in meeting the reinstatement criteria since May.
But the chair of the IPC taskforce, Andy Parkinson added that there were still “major concerns” regarding the provision of an official response from the Russian authorities that adequately addresses the findings in the initial McLaren report.
Lottie Dolls becomes the first global toy brand to back the viral #ToyLikeMe campaign with the release of the world’s first fashion doll with a cochlear implant!
“There are 150 million deaf and disabled children worldwide who have been waiting for positive toy box representation. Thanks to Lottie dolls, change is finally coming,” says #ToyLikeMe founder Rebecca Atkinson who
wears hearing aids herself. “When I was growing up in the 80s, I never saw any deaf characters in toys, books or on TV. What does this say to kids? This Mia doll is my childhood dream come true. I’m so happy, I’m like a kid at Christmas! I hope it will help many deaf children grow positive self esteem to see their experiences included by the mainstream toy industry.”
The Lottie Mia photographer doll has a body based on an average nine-year-old girl. She doesn’t wear makeup, high heels or jewellery, but she does have long glossy hair to style, a cool camera and a COCHLEAR IMPLANT! The
groundbreaking doll has been created in response to the #ToyLikeMe campaign and is the first to carry the official
Loved by #ToyLikeMe endorsement.
Psychologist Dr Sian Jones from Goldsmiths, University of London has studied the effects of playing with toys with disabilities on the attitudes of non-disabled children and has found that, as well has helping grow positive self esteem for deaf and disabled children, toys like the Lottie Mia doll can help non-disabled children grow more open minds too. Interviewing hundreds of children, she found that after playing with toys like the Mia doll, children were more open to forming friendships with peers with disability and difference.
“This kind of incidental toy box representation from a brand like Lottie speaks volumes about inclusion,” says Atkinson, “It can really help change the attitudes of a generation.”
The DWP has lost its fight at the upper tribunal to prevent employment and support allowance (ESA) claimants going to appeal where the claimant is late applying for a mandatory reconsideration. The decision will also apply to all other social security benefits.
There is a one month time limit to apply for a mandatory reconsideration. The DWP can extend this time limit up to a total of 13 months where they judge that the claimant had good cause to be late.
For example, the claimant may have a mental health condition which made it difficult for them to deal with official correspondence and have been unable to get help until too late.
The DWP have been refusing to allow claimants access to the tribunal service where they are outside the one month time limit for mandatory reconsiderations. By refusing to issue a mandatory reconsideration notice the DWP can effectively block any appeal.
This means that the DWP can be completely arbitrary and unfair in decisions about whether a claimant has good cause and the claimant has no way of challenging this.
Two claimants who had initially been refused a mandatory reconsideration challenged the refusal to prevent them appealing to a tribunal and began proceedings for judicial review. At this point the DWP backed down and allowed their cases to proceed.
However, a panel of three upper tribunal judges held that the initial refusal was absolutely wrong and that claimants should have a right to apply to a tribunal, even when the DWP considers they have no good cause for their late request. It will then be for the tribunal to decide whether to allow the appeal to go ahead.
The DWP is fighting to prevent disclosure of a report that shows how well Maximus is managing to carry out its work capability assessment contract, for fear it would damage the company’s reputation.
A request for a copy of the outcome report, which would give a breakdown of Maximus’ performance at each assessment centre has been ordered to be released by the Information Commissioner.
However, the DWP are refusing to publish it and are now taking the case to an information tribunal.
The report goes all the way back to 2011, covering the performance of both Atos and Maximus.
The DWP claim that if the information was published it could ‘give a perception of under-performance’ which could ‘damage the reputation and standing of the companies involved’.
The DWP are thus claiming that the data is exempt from disclosure because publishing it could damage the commercial interests of both Maximus and Atos, as well as the DWP itself.
We’ll keep readers posted about the result of the information tribunal hearing.
HMRC is pursuing providers for six years of wages after the government reversed its decision that “sleep-in support” – where carers are present overnight but rarely called upon – is exempt from minimum pay legislation.
It means all organisations – from Mencap at one end of the scale to family-led businesses at the other, which together provide sleep-in support care for 178,000 people with learning disabilities – are at risk of insolvency, the charity says.
Enforcement action to claim the money deemed to be owed was stayed in July after pleas from providers, but it is due to resume on 2 October.
Mencap says the sector will be thrown into chaos if that happens without a government commitment to cover the back-pay bill.
Derek Lewis, the charity’s chair, said: “There would be, for a substantial period of time, chaos in the sector and the people who would suffer are people with learning disabilities, their families who would be subjected to great stress and the staff who care for them, many of whom would become redundant.”
When the national minimum wage – since replaced by the “national living wage” for workers over 24 – was introduced in 1999, time spent asleep by care workers in such circumstances was exempted in government guidance.
Instead workers were paid a flat on-call allowance, only being paid the minimum wage if their services were required during night. But after two individuals won employment tribunals claiming they were entitled to the minimum wage for the entire night, the government changed its advice saying the legislation did apply to sleep-in support.
Such care is commissioned and paid for by local authorities but HMRC has gone after the providers for the back payments with councils unwilling to foot the bill.
Mencap, one of the largest providers of sleep-in care, says it faces a £20m bill for the past six years, which will exhaust its reserves of £19.6m.
“Funding back pay would require highly damaging actions to sell assets, cut programmes and cancel investment,” Lewis said.
“Our plans to improve the lives of those with learning disabilities could be set back by a decade or more, as we struggle to repair the financial damage that would be caused by this liability.”
He said most of the reserves come from donors who did not envisage their money being used for such a purpose and would likely be put off giving in the future.
Mencap’s chief executive, Jan Tregelles, described it as “the worst crisis in our 70 years” and warned that it was the NHS “already about to face one of its toughest winters, that will have to pick-up the pieces”.
Celebrities including Jodie Whittaker, Joanna Lumley and Kit Harrington have joined the charity’s campaign for the government to intervene.
Research suggests the cost to the sector could total £400m. Smaller providers that are not incorporated could even face having to make back payments out of their own pockets. Many are unwilling to speak openly for fear of drawing HMRC’s attention.
One chief executive of a medium-sized provider in the West Midlands, said the organisation employs 300 people, delivering 1,100 hours of support and 27 sleep-ins every day.
He estimates its back-pay liability to be £1.5m compared with reserves of £1.4m, which include two care homes. “We would have to stop trading straight away, our contracts with local authorities would be toxic,” he said.
A Department of Health spokesman referred the Guardian to a previous statement by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, which said the government has “worked closely with the sector in response to concerns”.
The DWP is refusing to release training materials which would potentially highlight difference between the way that Atos and Capita carry out PIP assessments, Benefits and Work can reveal.
Back in June Benefits and Work made a Freedom of Information Act request for training and guidance materials issued by Atos to staff carrying out PIP assessments.
The detailed guidance covers issues such as the way in which requests for the recording of PIP assessments are dealt with.
However, the DWP refused to release the guidance on the grounds that it was commercially confidential.
We asked the DWP to reconsider their decision, because these are not commercially confidential matters and there is a strong public interest in knowing how the PIP system is administered on a day-to-day basis.
If there is a difference in the PIP is manged by different companies, then this is also a strong matter of public interest as claimants ought to be able to be sure that their assessment is a standardised one and not one based on which company carries it out.
The DWP, however, have once again refused to release the documents because they consider them to be commercially sensitive.
The DWP told us:
“Release of this information would reveal to their competitors commercially sensitive information which would disadvantage IAS’s [Independent Assessment Service, the name that Atos now use] competitive position in the marketplace.
“This in turn would prejudice the ability of the Department to secure best value for the taxpayer when the contract is re-tendered. Release of this type of key financial information would also undermine the effectiveness of the Department’s future dealings with IAS or other service providers.”
The DWP now routinely refuses a large proportion of freedom of information requests on the grounds of commercial confidentiality, without attempting to justify in any way how anyone’s interests would be threatened.
Benefits and Work is now applying to the Information Commissioner to have the documents disclosed. We’ll let you know what their decision is.
Almost one in three claimants with multiple sclerosis (MS) who were getting the higher rate of the mobility component of disability living allowance (DLA) have had their award reduced after being forced to claim personal independence payment (PIP).
The figures were obtained by the MS Society, which also discovered that almost a quarter claimants with MS who were getting the higher rate of the care component of DLA had their award reduced after being assessed for PIP.
Genevieve Edwards, of the MS Society said:
“These staggering figures show how PIP is failing some people with MS who need the highest level of support.
“It doesn’t make sense that people are losing money they once qualified for, when they are living with a progressive condition.”
Same Difference just heard of Dean Eastmond yesterday, but we were so inspired that we just had to share some tributes.
Tributes have poured in for “inspirational” LGBT journalist Dean Eastmond following his death from cancer aged 21.
The editor of HISKIND documented his battle with Ewing’s Sarcoma, a rare form of bone and soft tissue cancer, openly and frankly in articles, interviews and on social media.
Following his diagnosis, he wrote in a HISKIND article: “I was diagnosed with soft tissue cancer in my rib (Ewing’s Sarcoma) after getting myself an Uber to the closest A&E thinking I had a broken rib after a large lump the size of a grapefruit appeared on the right hand side of my chest.
“Fickle and naive, being told there and then that this wasn’t a broken rib, but a cyst or a tumour saw a terrified Dean breaking down in the A&E waiting area, unable to decide whether to call his boyfriend or mother first.
“After a needle biopsy, I was diagnosed,” he added.
The much-loved British writer was overwhelmed with support in his last few months, with Nicole Scherzinger sending him a special video message.
Following his death, numerous fellow journalists and fans took to social media to pay tribute.
Author and Labour activist Owen Jones wrote: “RIP Dean Eastmond, an amazing, courageous, inspirational queer young journalist who has died of cancer. He moved so, so many people.”
He added: “He was so incredible, he moved so many people, he achieved so much, and he’ll be remembered forever.”
Radio host Philip Ellis said: “@deanvictorr achieved more in just a handful of years than most of us do in a lifetime and I will forever be in awe of him.”
The Royal Vauxhall Tavern, one of London’s most iconic LGBT venues, tweeted: “Saddened to hear that Dean Eastmond has passed away – he was an inspiring and brave person. We send our condolences to his friends & family.”
BBC journalist Ben Hunte added: “Devastated to hear @deanvictorr has passed away. I know that his AMAZING work will live on, but he will be so missed.”
Guardian journalist Chris Godfrey wrote: “You were an absolute hero @deanvictorr and an inspiring figure to so many. Grateful to have had the pleasure of knowing you.”
It was March 2011 when the coalition government announced proposals to reform England’s special educational needs (SEN) system. Some of the initial noise around their plans was grim: government sources said as many as 450,000 children could be taken out of the category of special needs altogether, while the dependably sensitive Mail Online ran such headlines as “Schools on a scam and an excuse for lazy teaching”. At the same time, ministers made contrasting pledges, many of which I heard first-hand – not least the promises to make things “stronger and simpler” for parents and children.
But from the start, the changes were plagued by confusion, slipshod administration and the effects of austerity. SEN is inevitably a niche area of policy, but there is a big story here, of one of the David Cameron era’s most howling disasters, and an iron law of modern government: that to try to revolutionise a system in the midst of swingeing cuts is to invite chaos and failure.
My 10-year-old son is autistic. Before he started primary school, my partner and I began the journey to getting him a statement of special educational needs, which would set out the support he required in detail, and gave us a legally backed means of securing it. Throughout the process, I was painfully aware of how it favoured people with the money and time to pursue their case, and cut out many more for whom the SEN system was an impossible maze.
As with so many parents, our initial request for our local authority to begin the process of getting a statement was turned down – which entailed probably the most stressful experience I have ever had: months of legal argy-bargy, stop-start negotiation with our local authority and the frequent fear that we were about to hit a brick wall. Even with some of the correct arrangements in place, it took two attempts to get our son’s provision right, but with the help of two brilliantly supportive local schools, by the time he was nine, we were able to stop fighting and worrying, at least for the time being. He is now making real progress, both educationally and socially.
In our case, the announcement that the SEN system was to be overhauled triggered a deep ambivalence. The system had just about worked for us, and the prospect of its reinvention often seemed like yet another obstacle we would have to climb over. On the plus side, statements were to be phased out in favour of so-called education, health and care (EHC) plans – ours, we’re told, is on the way – which would go beyond education to cover health and social care, and run up to the age of 25. But the means of holding the providers of these services to account were unclear. Pilot schemes ran late. And it soon became apparent that amid cuts and the shrinking of local authority education departments thanks to Michael Gove’s academies and free schools drive during his time as education minister, councils were in no position to roll the changes out.
Five years on, it looks as if the already-difficult lives of parents and children in need of support have been made even more trying. Getting a halfway satisfactory EHC plan seems to be as difficult as securing a dependable statement. SEN insiders say councils are using the transition to plans to cut entitlements, often by changing specified provision (for example, weekly speech therapy) to much fuzzier commitments: the word “regular”, which can often mean almost nothing at all, is a favourite.
According to Melinda Nettleton, the lawyer whose book Special Needs and Legal Entitlement is something of a set text for people fighting their way through the SEN jungle, many councils are insisting parents try at least three terms of non-statutory provision before they apply for a plan: something that has no basis in legislation, and in many cases, means months of failure before any meaningful improvements can even begin. She also highlights the serial absurdities of SEN funding: schools are now meant to spend up to £6,000 a pupil each year on SEN support – but it is part of the Kafkaesque thinking at work that this figure is “notional” and can sometimes translate into as little as £200.
Self-evidently, tumbling school budgets are compounding the pain. Many authorities have long had a policy of pushing parents away from statements and plans towards their own non-statutory arrangements, so as to keep costs down.
One example was Devon county council, which involved hundreds of families in an ad hoc system called My Plan, with no formal legal entitlements. In a particularly cruel turn, the council announced at the end of this year’s summer term that it would be drastically cutting back this provision, and leaving schools and parents to apply for individual EHC plans. It is not hard to see what this move threatens to result in: even more children being left with little or no provision at all.
Across England, the same story is glaringly clear: one failed regime being chaotically replaced by another, and all that initial hype dwindling into meaninglessness. The promise of a stronger and simpler system looks set to result in the exact opposite: a set of arrangements that are weak, absurdly complex and full of the same old trapdoors. The upshot, needless to say, will be tragic: dashed hopes, ruined lives, and a great ocean of educational potential left ignored.
Two years ago, Ben Johnson, then aged nine, suffered a mental breakdown after years of difficulties at home and at school. His mother, Sonia Johnson, says he had deep anxiety and refused to go to school. From the first year of his schooling, she says, she had requested extra support, but the school did not offer the assistance she believed he needed. “I was made to feel I was hysterical and attention-seeking just for asking for support for my son’s needs,” she says.
The crisis brought things to a head. Ben’s GP signed him off. He has not been to school since.
His doctors – a psychiatrist, a paediatrician, a neurologist and his GP – had said he needed extra assistance at school. Ben was on medication for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and had a diagnosis of autism, as well as paralysis to one side of his body because of a congenital brain problem. The headteacher, though, said Ben did not display enough difficulties to warrant the extra help his mother was calling for. Johnson felt the school’s response was “brutal”. But Ben did not have the vital document from his local authority that would help.
Since September 2014, the passport to receiving any extra services is no longer the “statement” of special educational needs (SEN) but an education, health and care (EHC) plan, intended to bring together a child’s education, health and social care needs. As under the previous system, pupils are not automatically entitled to be assessed. But now delays in the system are causing extra distress.
The Johnson family’s experience seems all too common. As council budgets and school funding have been cut, families of children with special needs increasingly find they have to battle for help – a fight some do not win.
Anyone can request an assessment, but local authorities can refuse if they believe a required threshold of needs has not been met. And councils are refusing more requests. According to Department for Education figures, there was a 35% increase between 2015 and 2016 in the number of local authority refusals to carry out EHC needs assessments on children. And for those who did get an assessment, in just over 40% of cases, the family had to wait longer than the 20 weeks cut-off date by which a decision whether to approve an EHC plan should be made, as councils struggle to do their job with the funding they have.
Even families who do get a plan still may not be given the services needed. More than 4,000 children in England with an approved EHC plan still receive no provision. The number of children and young people who are waiting more than doubled from 1,710 in 2016 to 4,050 in 2017 – and that figure is more than five times bigger than in 2010.
In Ben’s case, his mother says she was promised his school would refer him for an EHC plan, but teachers subsequently maintained he was managing. Three years later, in despair at Ben’s worsening physical and mental state, Johnson requested an EHC needs assessment herself. The council refused. She said she would appeal, but agreed to mediation first. As soon as the mediation meeting started, the assessment was agreed. Ben’s EHC plan was finally approved in February, but the document was received by his mother only in July – two years after her application.
Ben now has an out-of-school tutor and his mother says a range of professionals agree he may never be able to return to mainstream education because of all the negative experiences. “It’s been a really tough journey for the family. I feel that hopefully we’ve come over a really large mountain,” says Johnson. “I’m still worried for his future, and desperately sad and angry to see the damage caused.”
Figures from 2015 showed that when families challenged their local authority refusal to grant an EHC plan at a tribunal, 86% of council decisions were overturned. But the strain and cost of preparing a tribunal case mean many families cannot even try. One parent who talked to the Guardian spent £15,000 to employ a barrister, only for her local authority to cave in a week before the hearing. “It seemed a criminal waste of time and money,” she says.
Parents also worry that schools don’t have an incentive to offer enough help because a child with special needs is, bluntly, an expensive line on a headteacher’s spreadsheet. If an EHC plan is granted, schools must meet the first £6,000 cost of any extra support. This comes out of their overall budget.
Adding to the pressures, since the Children and Families Act (2014) local authorities have been landed with effectively limitless liability for SEN: as a matter of equality, because students with SEN need longer to learn, legislation now says they may be entitled to educational support until the age of 25 – five to six years longer than before. Local authorities say they have received no funding for this.
David Ellis, chief executive of National Star College in Gloucestershire, says that when it comes to children over the age of 16, councils are reluctant to pay for specialist provision such as that offered by his college, because of the cost, even when there is nothing suitable locally. This means young people are often forced repeatedly to fail at local colleges that do not meet their needs, he says. “There is a central government solution, which is to recognise that not everyone who needs an EHC plan can have a local solution. There are only three or four high needs students per local authority per year. For those students, you need national centres of excellence.”
Decisions all seem to be about funding, says Barney Angliss, a former local authority commissioner, now an SEN and disability consultant who advises parents. “Councils are wrestling with the cost of everything, and they are saying we simply have to balance the books. … If you talk to parents, they will say we want a decision that is needs-led. If you talk to local authorities, they say they are on their knees because of special needs. It is breaking them. Their core argument is that they don’t get the money from Westminster to be able to do it.”
Richard Watts, chair of the Local Government Association’s children and young people board, says councils have been put in an impossible position. He says the LGA warned the government from the outset that the SEN reforms in the Children and Families Act were significantly underfunded.
The LGA also says mainstream schools are becoming wary of taking children with SEN, even if their needs could reasonably be supported. “If we’re to make sure that all children get access to a mainstream education, the government must urgently provide additional funding,” says Watts.
Mia Appley, whose seven-year-old son, Sam, has autism and problems with speech and communication, says it’s wrong that local authorities are driven by controlling costs rather than what is right for young people. “If you want anything more than the absolute minimum they force you to fight for it.” When her local authority had to cut costs, it withdrew Sam’s language therapy support, Appley says, and was able to do so because at that point he had no EHC plan.
When Sam’s EHC plan came through, within hours of the 20-week deadline, it emerged that professionals’ recommendations for the type of therapies he needed had been ignored in favour of a standard “autism package”. “I had to go to mediation and then apply to tribunal,” says Appley. Her local authority capitulated weeks before the deadline requiring tribunal papers to be lodged.
Over time, the anxiety experienced by parents such as Appley and Johnson is debilitating. “I think what they do is make it so hard that lots of people give up,” says Johnson.
The pressure on budgets is also leading to schools operating “selection by stealth”, says Vic Goddard, principal of Passmores academy in Harlow, Essex. His school takes 53% of children with special needs in Harlow – which has five secondary schools – so his budget is disproportionately hit to the tune of about £370,000 a year. He is proud, he says, that parents choose Passmores, but notes pointedly that none of the other local secondaries “are queuing up to give me the £6,000 they’re not spending by not taking their share”.
Goddard says performance on SEN should be a limiting provision in Ofsted inspections, meaning a school could not be graded outstanding if its share of this group of children on roll was not representative of the need in the community.
The Association of School and College Leaders’ deputy general secretary, Malcolm Trobe, agrees some schools are “not acting ethically and are looking at ways of not taking certain young people because of the pressures they believe they will put on the school”. He says the government has not caught up with the cost implications of there being higher numbers of children with significant needs.
A government consultation specifically about SEN funding closed in March. The results have yet to be published.
Robert Goodwill, the minister for children and families, says the government’s planned new funding formula for schools, due to start in 2018, will deal with the issue. “We recognise the importance of ensuring that schools have the necessary resources to meet the range of special educational needs. Fairer schools funding – backed by £1.3bn of additional investment – will mean protection for those with high needs and will ensure every local authority is in a position to give schools a cash increase through the new formula.”
Meanwhile, though, Goddard says: “As a society we are letting down the parents, and if I’m honest it feels like we’re blaming and punishing them for having a child with special needs.”
In her past two pregnancies, the Duchess of Cambridge suffered from extreme morning sickness, known as hyperemesis gravidarum (HG).
It appears that she is having a tough time with it again, now she is expecting her third child.
HG is a condition thought to affect around one in every 100 women in pregnancy and is much more severe than “normal” morning sickness.
Some mums-to-be who have it report being sick up to 50 times a day.
Unlike regular morning sickness, HG may not get better after the first few months of pregnancy.
Why do only some women get it?
The cause is thought to be pregnancy hormones but it is unclear why some women suffer worse than others and why it can persist. If you are suffering from it, there is nothing that you are doing or have done that has brought on the symptoms. It is not your fault that you have it.
HG is more likely if you have had it before or if you are expecting twins or triplets. HG does appear to run in some families.
How bad is it?
A woman with HG can experience:
Persistent vomiting
Dehydration
Tiredness
Dizziness
It can be very unpleasant and have a huge impact on daily life.
Women who have experienced HG say it made them feel isolated, lonely, scared and frustrated.
Can it harm the baby?
There is no evidence that it is directly harmful. It is not a sign that the pregnancy is unhealthy.
Doctors will want to make sure that the mother is not losing too much weight during the pregnancy or getting dehydrated because this can be harmful.
What helps?
Seek help from your doctor and midwifery team. Doctors can prescribe drugs to help control the nausea.
Some women say keeping a diary of their symptoms helps them become more aware of what times of day they might feel well enough to eat and drink.
Keeping well hydrated by drinking enough fluid is vital. Water is great and small, frequent sips might be more manageable.
Some pregnant women say certain smells, including cooked food, make them feel even more nauseous. If that is the case, try to avoid them if you can.
Meals that are high in carbohydrate and low in fat, such as potato, rice and pasta, are sometimes easier to tolerate. Try plain biscuits or crackers. Some women find eating or drinking ginger products helps.
The charity Pregnancy Sickness Support has a support forum where people can share their experiences.
Some women find it helpful to carry a “sick kit” – a pack of wipes, some disposable bags, a bottle of water and some mints or chewing gum.
Have regular check-ups and stay in touch with your doctor. HG can be extremely serious. If you are unable to drink fluids you can become dangerously dehydrated. You may need to be admitted to hospital to receive fluids intravenously via a drip.
The Unspoken Project CIC is embarking on its most ambitious project yet. A presentation on how to talk with an AAC peep (or just another human being) at the ISAAC (International Society for Augmentative and Alternative Communication) conference.
In 2018, the conference is being held on the Gold Coast of Australia and we really want to get there. In order to do this we need to raise as much money as possible and get as many people as we can on board.
We think AAC users should be heard and it is our aim to create better representation of AAC, break down stereotypes and improve communication access worldwide.
Our dream is that everyone who uses AAC and has communication difficulties are spoken to as human beings with respect.
We are hoping to make a tongue in cheek video entitled “How not to talk with an AAC user”. We feel adding humour to a serious subject is powerful (I think).
If you would like to join us on this adventure, there are a few ways you can do this.
On 21st September we are holding a quiz night at the John Baird in Muswell Hill. The tickets are £5 and include a Ploughman’s Lunch. To book a table, call The John Baird on 020 8444 8830.
We are also planning other events like this throughout the year and will keep you posted on the details as and when they come.
Another way you can help is by giving us your views by filling in our questionnaire about voice. This can be done by following the link: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/7THLKJ3
The video we plan to make will require a lot of man/woman power and this is another way you can help. If you would be interested in being involved with this, please contact us at kate.unspoken@gmail.com
Meet the poet whose poem about OCD has 62 million YouTube hits, on the September talk show from BBC Ouch.
Also, writer Rachel Bagshaw reveals how she feels pain but also sees and hears it. And Tourette’s Hero Jess Thom speaks strongly about how she deserves to be an independent disabled person.
Presented by Simon Minty and Kate Monaghan from the recent Edinburgh Festival.
A mother killed herself after her disabled son lost a string of benefits and support, a coroner said.
Valerie Grant, 73, walked in front of a train near Stafford on 23 April.
Her severely autistic son James, 37, had lost his job placement and been told he no longer qualified for disability benefits shortly before his mother died.
Coroner Andrew Haigh said he did not know who to complain to because she was let down by so many agencies.
In the months before Mrs Grant’s death, several agencies withdrew support from James.
‘What do I have to do?’
He had lost a placement as a bin man, no longer qualified for a day care centre and had been turned down for accommodation, the inquest heard.
He had also just been notified that he would lose disability living allowance in May and did not qualify for PIP – personal independence payments.
Mrs Grant, who had a history of depression, had previously said when interviewed by mental health workers: “What have I got to do? Top myself to get help for my son?”
On 10 January, she confided in her GP that she had suicidal thoughts and when tested, scored 96% for the severity of her mental health state. She was given a routine appointment which she never attended.
The inquest in Cannock concluded she had taken her own life whilst suffering from depression.
‘One blames another’
Mr Haigh accepted that lack of support was probably the main issue.
“There were a number of agencies involved, but nobody took a lead.
“I do have concerns about the lack of support, but I don’t think there’s any one agency that I can write to to try to remedy this,” he said.
Mrs Grant’s stepson, Stuart Grant, shouted at the hearing: “It is just being swept under the carpet.
“One agency blames another agency and they can get away with it.”
Mr Haigh said that if family members wanted to write to him, he would give the matter further consideration.
A press release from Inclusion London. Same Difference was hoping for a different result for Luke Davey. We wish him well.
Today, on the 1st of September 2017, the Court of Appeal delivered its judgement in the case of R (on the application of Davey) v Oxfordshire County Council). This is the first case under the Care Act 2014 to reach the Court of Appeal and is critical in determining how far the legislation supports Disabled people’s well-being, choice and control and independent living. The judges dismissed the appeal mainly because of the factual evidence in the case.
The case was brought by Luke Davey, a Disabled person with high support needs, whose support package has been slashed after the closure of the Independent Living Fund (2). The Equality and Human Rights Commission and Inclusion London (3) both intervened in the case, which highlights the situation many Disabled people are going through at the moment with care packages being cut to the bone by cash strapped Local Authorities.
Svetlana Kotova, Disaability Justice Co-Ordinator at Inclusion London said
“We are very disappointed with today’s decision. This judgement illustrates the devastating impact of the Government policies on Disabled people. Many Disabled people like Luke Davey, who were supported by the Independent living Fund had their support packages cut to s bare bone. With those cuts went their independence, choice and control and the opportunity to live a normal life. Today the Court of Appeal confirmed that local authorities can get away with doing this.
Without adequate levels of support more and more Disabled people are existing not living. This is one reason why yesterday the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities said social cuts in the UK have led to human catastrophe.
This case has destroyed any hopes that the Care Act 2014 will transform our experience of social care. It shows how easily local authorities can override disabled people’s about what’s good for us.
It is time the Government recognises and urgently addresses the huge crisis in social care. through ensuring adequate funding and the introduction of an appeals system, which would give Disabled people a fair chance to challenge the views and decisions of social workers”.
To mark 60 years of the Today programme we are looking at how Britain has changed in that time. One of the most noticeable changes is the attitudes to disability and how we treat disabled people.
The Times columnist Melanie Reid, who was paralysed in a horse-riding accident in 2010, and the Radio 4 presenter Peter White, who’s been blind since birth, discuss how they’ve been treated and perceived.
We have received this prompt and positive response to our complaint about people being refused permission to take notes in PIP assessments. We hope that the assessors also respond as positively. If anyone suffers similar problems, please let us know.
From PIP Customer Service Support at Independent Assessment Services (the new name for Atos Healthcare):
I am sorry to hear that you have encountered two occasions where the Health Professional has not allowed the accompanying individual to take notes.
This is something, that as an organisation, we allow and not something that should be refused.
I will certainly speak to the assessment centre involved to prevent this from happening in the future.
It’s all over now, isn’t it? With Brexit in focus and the coalition government long out of office, it would be easy to believe the Tories’ brutal “welfare” policies were a thing of the past. The bedroom tax is old news. The once notorious “fit for work” tests are no longer set pieces in ministers’ press speeches. Benefit sanctions – for years, the epitome of post-crash “tough on welfare” posture – are a dated crisis.
Except, that’s what the Tories would like you to think. The language of disabled people “languishing” on sickness benefits may have quietened and enthusiasm for austerity – now an electoral risk – be spoken of less zealously, but the policies have gone nowhere. For proof, take a look at the official figures released this month showing the scale of benefit sanctions against disabled and chronically ill people since the Conservatives first introduced stricter measures. More than 70,000 people on the out-of-work sickness benefit (employment and support allowance) ESA had their benefits stopped between December 2012 and December 2016. More than 5,000 had them stopped for at least six months. That’s wheelchair users and people with learning difficulties left with bare cupboards and cold homes.
ESA sanctions are made for a fixed period of one, two or four weeks. But they carry on indefinitely if claimants are deemed not to follow jobcentre rules. The vast majority of recent ESA sanctions – more than 90% since December 2015 – have been a punishment for people failing to take part in “work-related activity”: anything from skills training or drawing up a CV to community work placements. Disabled people going through the system repeatedly report this can mean being sanctioned for not going to a meeting despite being in too much pain to get out of bed.
This is not a coincidence but, rather, reflective of a political culture that has fetishised getting disabled people into work at any cost. It’s the same thinking that from April resulted in many people on ESA permanently losing £30 a week under the guise that it would give them an “incentive to work”. Mid-recession, and on the brink of the biggest squeeze on workers’ living standards in decades, the drive to sanction disabled people too ill to work spoke to the birth of a wider narrative of suspicion around disability benefit claimants, actively propagated by large sections of the media and the political class.
The headlines may fade but the misery doesn’t. In fact, it’s increasing. Early signs of the roll out of universal credit – the “all in one” benefit system – suggest the new benefit is adopting a particularly pernicious sanctioning culture. This month’s same government figures show the number of sanctions on people on UC are at an all-time monthly high, and since its launch in 2015, more than 100,000 UC claimants have been penalised. Meanwhile, with so many families facing sanctions and benefit delays, the Trussell Trust reported a record number of its food banks running out of food this summer.
Social policy reform based on the premise of removing the money people need in order to live is always shameful. But to do this to disabled people – who are receiving benefits because they are not well enough to work – is a stain on the national conscience. Theresa May and her ministers, by choosing to continue the heightened sanction regime, are as complicit as their predecessors who launched it. Five years on, the government is still starving disabled people. That this is now largely occurring under the radar makes it all the more disturbing.
Ministers have spent almost £40m in an “appalling” attempt to stop sick and disabled people receiving the financial help they are entitled to, The Independent can reveal.
Freedom of Information requests have exposed how taxpayers’ money has been spent on futile legal battles to prevent vulnerable people receiving help.
The hit to the public purse could also be far higher than the new data suggests because it is still unclear how much more the state spends running courts where sanctions are challenged.
The vast majority of appeals were lost by the Government last year, making the expense appear unnecessary. Early indications now show the problem is becoming even worse in 2017, with a 77 per cent rise in money spent trying to stop people from getting Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) payments.
Critics claim the situation has arisen because fitness to work assessments are deeply flawed, leading to incorrect decisions which need to be fought.
Senior Labour MP Frank Field, who worked as David Cameron’s poverty tsar, said: “What’s appalling is that the [Government] is prepared to spend £39m of taxpayers’ money against people who are desperately fighting off destitution.”
New figures show that in 2016 the Government spent £22m processing claimants’ initial appeals against sanctions – a stage most people must pass through before they reach a tribunal.
It emerged earlier this year that government officials are given targets to reject four out of five initial appeals – known as mandatory reconsiderations – for some disability benefits.
Further data obtained by The Independent under Freedom of Information law shows the Government then spent a further £17m fighting cases in the courts that were not settled at the initial appeal stage, bringing the total appeals process cost to £39m last year.
In the same period the Government lost 62 per cent of the tribunal cases in which it was attempting to sanction a claimant’s ESA – which supports people when impairments prevent them working.
They also lost 65 per cent of the cases in the latter half of 2016, the most recent period for which figures are available, relating to the Personal Independence Payment (PIP), a longer-term benefit.
But the defeats suffered by government lawyers are not persuading ministers of the need to change tack, with the figures actually pointing to a more costly appeals process in 2017.
The Government spent £1,166,459 trying to take benefits from ESA claimants between January and March 2016, and £2,069,849 in the same period this year – a 77 per cent rise.
Meanwhile, the proportion of cases where judges found that claimants were too ill to work also increased. In the first three months of last year judges decided in favour of claimants in 58 per cent of cases.
That figure rose to 70 per cent in the same period this year, suggesting the Government is denying payments to more people who are genuinely unfit to work.
The costs that have been exposed so far only refer to those incurred by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and do not include money spent by the Courts and Tribunals Service, which carry out the appeals.
Three-stage appeal process
1. Assessment
Both PIP and ESA claimants have to complete assessments after which the DWP determines whether an applicant will receive payments and what level of support they will get.
2. Mandatory reconsideration
If an applicant wants to challenge the decision made at their assessment they have to complete a mandatory reconsideration, in which the DWP will re-examine a claim.
3. Appeal
If the decision is not overturned at a mandatory reconsideration, a claimant can then take the DWP to an independent tribunal. There is usually both a doctor and a judge sitting on the panel who will reexamine the case.
Chair of the Commons Work and Pensions Committee Mr Field added: “We clearly need a new compact between the [Government] and claimants, otherwise this injustice will continue to act as a recruiting agent for food banks.”
Critics believe the Government’s system for assessing if people are eligible for benefits like ESA and PIP are at the root of the problem.
Currently assessments are contracted out to private firms Atos and Capita, which do not require employees performing the assessments to have relevant expertise in specific disabilities.
It has led to reports of cases where physiotherapists have assessed claimants with mental health problems.
One ex-civil servant who suffers from Parkinson’s told The Independent how he won his case to receive financial help through the appeals system only to be informed he will have to be reassessed next year – despite his illness being degenerative.
Jeffrey Sturt, 59, said his assessor was “hostile” and “spoke down” to him. The former civil servant said he thought “people would walk away from challenging decisions because they are aggressive”.
“Minimum overheads, maximum profits – that’s what they’re going for,” he added.
One woman who suffers up to 30 epileptic seizures a month, said the Government took her back to a tribunal twice after she won her appeal. Citizens Advice said it is seeing more cases such as this, where the DWP does not accept the judge’s decision.
During the period when she was waiting to hear the outcome, the 38-year-old woman’s illness became worse and the frequency of her fits increased due to stress. “You start panicking about it,” she said. “You think, ‘Have they forgotten about me?’”
She finally won her case after 18 months. She asked: “What was the point in that? How much money did they waste on me?”
In April it was reported that Atos and Capita had been paid £578m so far for assessing people for PIP since it launched in 2013. Their contracts were due to expire in December this year but have been extended to July 2019, according to the DWP.
Michelle Mitchell, chief executive at the MS Society, said: “These exorbitant costs point to a welfare system that clearly doesn’t make sense.
“We know that many people with MS aren’t getting accurate decisions the first time around.
“Being forced to go through the lengthy and stressful appeals process is a waste of time and money, and also harms people’s health.”
Ken Butler, who leads on benefits policy at Disability Rights UK, said inaccurate assessments too often denied disabled people justice until their independent tribunals.
“I think the problem is that things go wrong at the very start and then they’re hard to put right,” he said.
“If the assessments were better then you wouldn’t have the need for mandatory reconsiderations. The system now only functions really to put people off going any further – the whole process is quite lengthy and stressful.”
Chief executive of Citizens Advice Gillian Guy said: “Last year Citizens Advice helped people with almost 400,000 PIP issues, up 37 per cent on the previous 12 months.
Many come to us concerned that the outcome of their PIP assessment doesn’t accurately reflect the support needs they have because of their health issues.
The next steps can be time-consuming, distressing and even costly if people have to pay to gather additional evidence.”
Margaret Greenwood, shadow minister for employment and inequalities, said: “These figures are a clear demonstration that the current assessment process, which causes significant stress to ill and disabled people, is not fit for purpose.
“The flawed Tory assessments are a damning indictment of this Government’s cruel social security reforms and seven wasted years of austerity.
“In addition to putting unnecessary pressure on people who need support, these assessments have created waste and expense with thousands overturned in the courts.”
A DWP spokesperson responded to the new findings by highlighting the low number of overturns as a proportion of all decisions made since 2013.
They said just 3 per cent of PIP decisions and 4 per cent of ESA decisions made at initial assessment had been overturned in that period.
Yet changes to the system make comparisons difficult.
“In the majority of successful appeals, decisions are overturned because people have submitted more oral or written evidence,” they said.
People often assume that the lead singer of Culture Abuse is wasted. In fact he has cerebral palsy. “They think I’m fucked up no matter what,” says David Kelling, “so I’ll just act like I’m partying to make people more comfortable.”
Kelling’s disability affects his movement on the right side of his body – he walks with a limp and often finds it hard to get on and off stage. His five-piece band signed to Epitaph in June and have been in Europe since they supported Green Day in Hyde Park in July, at the personal request of lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong; this weekend they play the Reading and Leeds festivals.
We meet as they begin their UK tour – they are relying on friends for places to crash between shows. Lining up pints of Guinness, Kelling explains that cerebral palsy, a condition that reduces muscle strength and motor skills, “affects everything” in his life. People stare at him on the street, he learned to play the guitar with his fingers because he can’t hold a pick, and almost every venue he plays at has stairs that are difficult for him to navigate.
The band’s latest album, Peach, released last year, was about various issues in the band members’ lives. “Our rent kept going up, one of our friends died, there’s a drought in California, and my mum has a terminal heart condition. But our fans kept saying how positive it was,” says Kelling, smiling. Originally from San Francisco but now living in LA, he says it feels weird to be in Europe, “writing cute love songs” when the US is in political turmoil, but believes that as a band they offer hope. Last week’s tweet proclaiming “fuck Donald Trump” and “fuck racism” lays out their political stall.
So Busted, the band’s latest single, is seemingly about the pain of liking someone who doesn’t like you back, but Kelling, who says he’s still “getting over hating myself”, explains it’s also about his insecurities.
He wrote it when he started seeing his girlfriend. “She is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen, but I still question why she is with me, [because] I’ve never seen the kid with the disability get the girl,” he says. “I’d keep asking: ‘Are you sure? Is it just because the band’s doing good?’”
Kelling says he is happy to be an ambassador for disability. “There are female musicians, there are black musicians – almost everyone can find someone who is like them. But disabled people have no role models at all. There could be more, there should be more.”
While there are campaigns for gender-neutral public bathrooms, Kelling argues that there’s no equivalent for disabled facilities. “Five flights of stairs to get to a venue – how does someone in a wheelchair get up them? And who is talking about that?” he asks. “It never stopped me going to gigs when I was younger, but sometimes I’d trip and fall and feel like I didn’t want to be there anymore.”
Kelling writes all the band’s music, which he has previously described as “the Clash and the Ramones mixed with some Nirvana”, but says it took him until the age of 30 to be confident to go public with it. He now wants to fight the media narrative of “a normal human, then you have a disabled person” and show parents that “their kid can be a hero too”.
He is confident that he will be the only disabled frontman to perform at Reading and Leeds this weekend. “I was always afraid of singing,” he says. “But I feel like a freak anyway, so I may as well get up on stage in a dirty T-shirt, spit all over myself and just embrace it.”
“Can you really not talk?” and “have you ever tried to speak to see what would happen?” are just two questions put to the comedian with cerebral palsy by drunk people after gigs.
His many witty comebacks, including pretending he has a side-line as a satellite navigation system, are revealed in the second of our podcasts from the BBC Ouch storytelling night at this year’s Edinburgh Festival.
Also featured are Maura, an autistic woman with hair envy and “the social skills of a used teabag” – and Frank, who was rescued from a partial seizure by Al Pacino.
Rosemary Johnson is unable to move or speak but using sensors attached to her head can select notes from a screen for another violinist to play.
Her former colleague Alison Balfour-Paul, from Cardiff, brought the music to life along with an orchestra.
The resulting performance has been made into a short film.
The technology was developed in a joint project between Plymouth University and the Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability in London, where Ms Johnson lives.
Brain Computer Music Interfacing technology works with a user wearing a cap with electrodes which can read electric information from their brain.
The user can then select music from a screen with their eye movements. The music chosen is displayed on a screen in front of a partner musician who plays it in real time.
The university teamed up with the Royal Hospital and composer Prof Eduardo Miranda for the project involving Ms Johnson.
A promising classical musician, at age 22 Ms Johnson was fourth violin at the Welsh National Opera (WNO) orchestra in 1988 when she was in a car crash on her way to a gig in north Wales.
She had only been with the WNO for nine months when the accident happened.
Ms Balfour-Paul, who lives in Cardiff, was approached six weeks ago by a mutual friend who had stayed in touch with Ms Johnson, after no-one could be found to play with her.
She said: “I accepted because I was a colleague of Rosie 29 years ago. She was a lovely player with everything going for her. She was caught up in this terrible accident and it left her terribly brain-damaged.
“She was a very open, kind of happy, bubbly person, no great pride in what she was doing – she was just a natural.”
The music which the pair play together has been composed by Prof Miranda in advance. Ms Johnson is given a choice of four different notes and selects the one she wants on the screen in front of her, which then displays on Ms Balfour-Paul’s screen and she plays it in real time.
‘We could feel the joy’
Ms Balfour-Paul remained at the WNO after Ms Johnson’s accident and now works as a freelance musician.
She said of the technology: “I hope it goes somewhere. I hope it can help more people – that’s the whole point of such technology.”
Prof Miranda said of the project: “The first time we tried with Rosemary we were in tears. We could feel the joy coming from her at being able to make music.
“When I met Rosie for the first time, something clicked. It is very interesting working with her. Because she is a classically trained musician, I don’t have to ask her too many questions, through the technology we are almost instantly working in a realm of musical communication.
“Working with her is helping us to develop and shape this technology. It’s a wonderful blend of science and creativity.”
Disabled people and the over-50s are the two most under-represented minority groups in the broadcasting industry, according to a report.
Disabled people make up just 6.5% of on-screen staff and 5.5% of off-screen staff in television, even though 18% of the national population have a disability. Over-50s – who are 36% of the population – make up 24.2% of on-screen and 20.4% of off-screen workers.
The findings are in a provisional report by Diamond, a project set up in 2015 by the major broadcasters, including BBC, ITV, Channel 4, and Sky, to monitor diversity in the industry.
The project has generated significant controversy in the broadcasting industry because it does not break down the diversity of each organisation. Bectu, the trade union, and the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain threatened to boycott the report over the refusal to publish details about the broadcasters.
Just 24% of the individuals working in television who were asked to submit information to the survey did so. This is equivalent to almost 6,000 people. However, the quality of the data has been approved in an independent review by the National Centre for Social Research.
The report states that 21.5% of on-screen workers have a black, Asian or minority ethnic (BAME) background but this slumps to 10.1% for off-screen. This compares with 13% of the UK population with a BAME background.
The findings are likely to increase calls for Ofcom to set targets for the number of BBC off-screen workers with a BAME background. The media regulator is under growing pressure to take action over the issue.
Diamond shows that women take up 48.1% of on-screen roles and 54.6% of off-screen roles, when they make up 51% of the population. LGB people take up 13.2% of on-screen roles and 11.7% of off-screen, and are 6.4% of the UK population, while 0.8% of on-screen roles are fulfilled by transgender people, the same proportion they form of the population as a whole. No transgender off-screen workers were recorded.
Deborah Williams, chief executive of the organisation behind Diamond, the Creative Diversity Network, said: “Diamond has been, and still is a hugely complex project to deliver. We now have an operational and systematic approach to collecting meaningful data across the UK industry. Diamond was built to provide long term monitoring, and with less than a year’s worth of data, it would be premature to draw conclusions from it or set definitive benchmarks.
“However, Diamond represents a committed decision by leading UK broadcasters to deliver a change. Now we need every individual within the industry to support the project by entering their data when asked and we will have a real opportunity to take Diamond to the next level and bring about the ambitious change we all want.”
A deaf man was thrown out of a branch of Gourmet Burger Kitchen in front of shocked customers because he had his hearing dog with him.
Louise DeNew was eating with her partner at the restaurant in Wimbledon, south-west London, on Saturday afternoon when she was confronted with the “horrible, horrible sight”.
She said she saw a middle-aged deaf man and his wife being kicked out by the manager of the branch, as outraged patrons looked on.
Ms DeNew added that although the small dog, believed to be a cocker spaniel, wore an assistance dog harness and had an ID card on its lead, the manager ordered them to leave.
She told the Standard: “They came in after us and had been seated in the corner with the dog pretty much hidden under the table.
“It wasn’t in anyone way and most customers in there wouldn’t of seen it.
“My partner and I were most upset by the fact that the gentleman seemed to have speech difficulties and wasn’t able to make himself understood.
“He was waving the dogs lead with the Hearing Dog badge on it to show it was an assistance dog but the staff just ignored him.
“We felt that they used the gentleman’s disability against him really.
“It happened very quickly and the manager put his arms out and pretty much herded the chap out of the door.
“It was very upsetting to witness and we left soon after.
“My boyfriend did complain before we left, in fact he kicked off quite loudly that it shouldn’t happen in this day and age so I am fairly certain that other customers would of heard it too.”
She said she and her partner put a formal complaint to the manager who “just shrugged and arrogantly stated it was GBK policy”.
Alasdair Murdoch, CEO Gourmet Burger Kitchen, said in a statement “I was very disappointed to learn of the incident at the weekend that occurred in our Wimbledon restaurant.
“At GBK we firmly believe in equality and the treatment of these customers was unacceptable. This in no way reflects the values of the company and we are truly sorry for the upset that was caused. We have taken this matter very seriously.
“All our restaurants accept assistance dogs and we are taking immediate action to ensure this doesn’t happen again.
“We are reviewing all training and are re-communicating with all members of staff regarding our inclusive policy.
“In the meantime we have been in touch with the customer affected to apologise and have resolved the situation directly.
“Again, we would like to apologise sincerely if we have offended anyone through this matter.”
At last, readers, a Paralympian on Strictly! A disabled competitor on Strictly! Our editor has waited ages for this moment. She’ll be watching, and hoping Jonnie Peacock does very well in the competition. She’s thrilled!!!
TV personality Debbie McGee, singer Alexandra Burke and Paralympian Jonnie Peacock are the final contestants to be announced for Strictly Come Dancing.
Peacock has won two Paralympics sprinting gold medals and is the first celebrity hopeful to have a disability.
His appearance follows that of former Royal Marine and fellow amputee Cassidy Little, who took part in a “people’s” edition of Strictly in 2015 as well as that year’s Christmas show.
…
The 24-year-old had his right leg amputated below the knee after contracting meningitis as a child.
“The opportunity to be the first contestant with a disability to take part in Strictly’s main show was too good to turn down,” he said.
“I’ve got no previous dance history outside of the occasional ‘worm’ at a mate’s party and I know this will be a challenge and a new experience.
“I can’t wait to see what I can achieve and how far I can push myself.”
Awkward! This week’s podcast, the first of two recorded live in Scotland, is all about a badly timed dislocation, a wheelchair user who stunned a nun by walking and the depressed man who got too good at pretending to like people.
BBC Ouch recently took five listeners and two comedians to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where they told awkward tales relating to their disability or mental health difficulty to a live audience.
It happened to Abbi Brown, when she stunned a praying Parisian nun by getting up and walking away from her wheelchair.
Angela Clarke forgot to tell a masseuse that her bones regularly dislocate, with predictably humorous consequences.
Mark Granger’s social butterfly persona masks his depression and difficulty around people so well that even the briefest of interactions can give them the wrong impression – especially single ladies.
And awkward interactions with people won’t stop comedian Juliette Burton talking about her mental health and eating disorders at gigs.
Downing Street claimed that “no disability applicant will lose out as a result of the changes to personal independence payment (Pip)” but, in my experience, hardly a day has passed without hard evidence to the contrary. It’s heartbreaking.
Pip is a benefit that helps with the extra costs of living with a long-term health condition or disability for people aged between 16 and 64. It is gradually replacing the disability living allowance (DLA) but, for many, navigating the new assessment system is an ordeal. Benefit recipients and those acting on their behalf are struggling to ensure that claims are correct and being made in full.
Claiming Pip is time-consuming. The application form is a monstrous 40-page document that needs to be handwritten. And Pip is assessed using a completely different set of criteria to DLA. You now need to score a certain number of points in relation to 12 activities. These comprise 10 daily living activities – including preparing food, washing and bathing, managing toilet needs, dressing and making decisions about money – plus two mobility activities: planning and following a journey, and moving around.
The application usually also requires a face-to-face consultation with a health professional to confirm individual needs.
What I have found particularly hard, in my experience of assisting claimants, is the apparent lack of understanding or empathy from healthcare professionals and telephone representatives at Atos and Capita, the two private companies that carry out the assessments. For someone with a physical or mental health condition, for example, there are challenges involved in simply travelling to the assessment. A client who lives in Cardiff was asked to attend an assessment in Swansea, with no recognition that this could be difficult.
Claimants are also forced outside their comfort zone during the appointment. Often they are asked lots of personal questions, many of which they don’t fully understand because they have very little insight into their own health conditions. Someone with a mental health condition may present as very capable at an assessment but in reality needs a high level of support.
At one recent assessment, in a hot, cramped room in Croydon, I had to sit on an examination bed because there were no spare chairs. The heating was stuck on high, so the health assessor had an electric fan on the table. I asked how he could work in such conditions. When our 90-minute assessment drew to a close I overheard him complain to a colleague that he’d had no lunch break.
The following day a support worker came to me in tears after being turned away from an assessment with a client. She was terrified that the client might lose his benefit. He didn’t fully understand the situation and began to behave in a challenging way. We complained and the client eventually received compensation, but many of those affected have no access to professional support, either to help fill in the application form, go to an assessment or appeal an unfavourable decision.
With all this going on, it is tricky to reassure people – especially those with mental health issues – that their benefits are being properly dealt with, and even more of a challenge trying to explain why it takes so long for the government to process a claim. Sometimes, when a phone call is not enough to allay their concerns, I have to write to them as well, even if there’s nothing new to report.
While it’s easy to understand the role of benefits in ensuring basic conditions for living, people also rely on them to fund activities vital for their quality of life. Pip enables them to take up a hobby, travel to visit friends and relatives, or take part in unpaid voluntary work that can be a route into paid employment.
One recent decision under the new regime meant a man with an acquired brain injury lost his motability car. For him this meant a total loss of independence. Even going to the supermarket is now fraught with difficulty.
The new mobility guidelines make it harder in particular for people who experience psychological distress when they undertake a journey, perhaps as a result of phobias or anxiety, to have this taken into account as the basis for a claim.
The changes mean that those with learning disabilities, autism, schizophrenia, anxiety disorders, cognitive disorder due to a stroke, dementia, depressive disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, phobias and OCD will all be affected. How can the government claim nobody will lose out?
Regard is offering advice and support to other providers struggling with the new process and its implications for individuals they support. Official government guidance for Pip can be found here.
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has revealed the extent of punishments used against people on disability benefit Employment and Support Allowance.
ESA is slowly replacing the ageing Incapacity Benefit and is now paid to 2.4million people.
Between December 2012 and December 2016, 71,543 ESA claimants have been sanctioned – which normally involves stopping their benefits.
Just over half of those claimants (40,288) had their benefits sanctioned for less than four weeks and the average length of a sanction was 28 days.
But 5,739 suffered a sanction for 27 weeks or more.
Another 6,579 claimants were sanctioned for between 14 and 26 weeks, statistics published yesterday show.
Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Debbie Abrahams said: “It is abhorrent to see the Tories sanction thousands of sick and disabled people for up to six months, depriving them of much needed financial support and causing them further stress.
“The figures confirm that disabled people are not receiving the proper support from Jobcentres to navigate the complex social security system.”
Sanctions are only made against ESA claimants deemed fit for “work-related activity”, not those in the more serious support group, a DWP official said.
ESA sanctions are made for a fixed period of one, two or four weeks.
But they are open-ended and carry on indefinitely if people are still unable or refuse to take part in ‘work-related activity’.
DWP officials insist this means no one will be sanctioned for six months if they play by the rules.
But campaigners argue assessments that deem people fit for work-related activity in the first place are flawed.
The vast majority of ESA sanctions – more than 90% since December 2015 – have been a punishment for people refusing to take part in that activity.
Meanwhile the rate paid to the work-related activity group has axed and made the same as Jobseekers’ Allowance – a cut of £30 a week.
Yesterday’s figures showed the number of people on Jobseekers’ Allowance or ESA being sanctioned is falling.
However the number of sanctions for people on Universal Credit, the all-in-one system that’s slowly being claimed by more and more people as it replaces the old benefits – hit an all-time monthly high of 9,119 in December 2016.
More than 100,000 Universal Credit claimants have now been sanctioned since August 2015, 2,313 of them for six months or more.
A DWP spokesman said: “Only a very small proportion of people on ESA are sanctioned every month – just 0.6%.
“ESA sanctions are designed to encourage people to fulfil their requirements, so they remain in place until someone re-engages with their work coach or employment support.
“It’s only fair to ask claimants to do their part and there is a well-established system of payments available for people who need support to meet their immediate and most essential needs.”
A programme of office closures and the implementation of a new “corporate centre hub strategy” will see the positions axed as early as February next year.
The Public and Commercial Services union, which represents civil servants, said under new protocols its period of consultation with the department had been limited to just 45 days, and that the plans were “unwelcome and unnecessary”.
General secretary Mark Serwotka said: “At a time when workloads are at record highs, DWP should be recruiting new staff, not forcing loyal and experienced staff onto the dole.
“PCS will continue to campaign against these redundancies using every means at our disposal.
“This is a dreadful announcement from the DWP. The government are forcing through unprecedented cuts on the civil service. We shall intensify our campaign against office closures and job cuts.”
At-risk staff will be offered the chance to put themselves forward for voluntary redundancy in the first instance.
The department, headed by secretary of state David Gauke, will offer redundancy packages based on the terms of the 2010 civil service compensation scheme, after a new, less generous 2016 scheme was ruled unlawful following a court battle.
Theresa May has previously drawn criticism from some senior civil service officials, who warned the PM would need to “change her management style” if she is to steer her minority government successfully through Brexit.
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Same Difference 