Welfare Reform: Over 50,000 Disabled People Could Lose Their Jobs, Charities Warn

The Disability Benefits Consortium (DBC), an organisation of over 50 leading charities, has warned that coalition reforms to disability benefits could lead to over 50,000 disabled people losing their jobs.

The government is reforming benefits for disabled people by replacing Disability Living Allowance (DLA) with a new benefit called Personal Independence Payment (PIP).

The government’s own projections suggest that as many as half a million disabled people could lose part, if not all of their benefit when they are migrated away from DLA to PIP, due to a toughening of the eligibility criteria.

Full article on Welfare News Service

Keep Warm Keep Well: Information for over 60s, low-income families and people living with a disability

Public Health England have published their leaflet which gives advice on staying well in cold weather, covering issues such as financial help, healthy lifestyle, flu jabs and heating.

View the leaflet

Disability welfare changes delayed by assessment process

Disability welfare changes for England, Scotland and Wales have been delayed because the government has been unable to assess claimants in time.

Personal Independence Payments will replace Disability Living Allowance next week only for claimants in certain areas rather than across Britain.

Ministers said assessments were taking longer than expected and the scheme would now be phased in more gradually.

Full Article on BBC News

Fit-to-work benefits test 'unfit for purpose'

More than 150,000 people have raised serious concerns about fit-for-work tests administered by a private healthcare company on behalf of the Government.

Figures obtained exclusively by Sky News show the charity Citizens Advice has been inundated by huge numbers of complaints about assessments carried out by Atos.

It warns that genuinely disabled and seriously ill people are being stripped of benefits following inadequate tests.

Full Article on Sky News

Review disabled children's support, says commissioner

Ministers are being urged to review care provided for children with disabilities following research into the adequacy of support for families.

Children's commissioner for England Maggie Atkinson called the findings "heart-rending" and "disturbing".

The report suggested some families were unable to afford basic necessities for "a dignified life".

Full Article on BBC News

Is it time for a new wheelchair access icon?

The stick figure in a wheelchair has become one of the most widely-used and instantly recognised symbols in the world - but a group of American designers want to change this famous icon of disability. 

Seen on toilet doors, parking bays and practically every public building in the developed world, the International Symbol of Access has been in circulation since 1969. But now a group calling itself the Accessible Icon Project want to give the design a more 21st Century, even paralympic, feel.

Full Article on BBC News

MPs say 'No Go Britain' must end for disabled people

For followers of No Go Britain, it will not come as a surprise. But perhaps this time it will make more of a difference.

In a new, wide-ranging report, the transport select committee has branded access to transport for disabled people as "unacceptably poor" and said it is essential that the government and the transport operators work harder to improve the situation.

Chair of the committee MP Louise Ellman told Channel 4 News: "The Paralympics were successful particularly in assisting disabled people getting to the games, and improving access to vehicles and trains. But some of the impetus seems to have gone - and we should hold on to that."

Full Article on Channel 4 News

Carers for disabled passengers should fly for free, say MPs

Carers should not be charged to fly if airline rules mean disabled people have to be accompanied, MPs have said.

Some airlines require carers for people who cannot manage emergency procedures, so the Transport Select Committee wants an EU rule that carers should not pay.

In a wide-ranging report, the MPs said UK transport access for the disabled was "unacceptably poor" and momentum had been lost after the Paralympics.

Full Article on BBC News

Andrew Marr: stroke has made me more aware of people with disabilities

Andrew Marr says he has become more aware of people suffering from disabilities – whom previously he "simply didn't see" – after the stroke that nearly killed him in January.

"You definitely see the world differently, actually. You move more slowly. You suck up experiences more intensely and you live the day more," the 53-year-old presenter said in an interview with Radio Times magazine. "And you're much more aware of all the people all around us who have got really, really difficult disabilities who are looking after their parents, perhaps, and who frankly most of the time, like most people, I simply didn't see them. I wasn't thinking about them. That has changed. I do see them now, I do think about it."

The presenter returned to his Sunday morning BBC1 current affairs show on 1 September after a nine-month absence.

Full Article on Guardian Media

Disabled can now dive in Melksham

People with disabilities could now try a whole new experience, thanks to a diving course run by a Melksham-based firm.

Alex Slade, recently qualified as an instructor for the disabled and has set up the not-for-profit 3D Diving Services in the town to offer scuba classes to the mentally and physically disabled.

She said: “I have been teaching diving for over 20 years, but recently qualified as a disabled diving instructor.

Full Article on Wiltshire Times

The art of being different: combating stereotypes of disability

Chris Wright, now 32, has had depression and social anxiety since he was five and by the time he was 11, had attempted suicide three times. "I wouldn't wish a mental health disorder on anyone but I wouldn't change it… It's who I am," he says. "[But] I can count on one hand the people who will to talk to me about my problems."

It was this sense of stigma around mental health, particularly suicide, that inspired him to make a private snapshot of his life public and turn his childhood medical records into art.

Wright is one of over 500 contributors to Postcards from the Edges, a website and upcoming series of nationwide exhibitions that allows people with disabilities and mental health needs, their families and carers, to express what's important to them, using a single postcard. "That could be any 11-year-old boy [on those records]," he says of his entry "Welcome to my world… That could be you or somebody you know."

Full Article on Guardian Society

Parents should pool resources to combat cuts in respite care

While most of us are enjoying our summer holidays, parents with disabled children are finding it tougher to access the respite care they desperately need for them and the rest of their family to have a break from their 24/7 caring roles.

According to research by the learning disability charity Mencap earlier this year, 29% of local authorities have cut short-break services for children with a learning disability over the past three years. Yet for many families traditional respite services are not suitable.

Full Article on Guardian Society

Bedroom tax legal challenge dismissed by high court

Ten families dealing with disability have lost their attempt to overturn the government's "bedroom tax" on the basis that it was highly discriminatory and contrary to article 14 of the European convention on human rights.

Two high court judges ruled that courts should not "micro-manage" policy decisions and that £30m in discretionary housing payments granted local authorities enough flexibility to deal with shortfalls.

Following the judgment on Tuesday, the government has announced an extra £35m in payments to deal with housing benefit shortfalls for those with disabilities.

Full Article on Guardian Society

Care system now 'unsustainable' after £3bn cuts, social services chiefs warn

A total of £2.7 billion less is being spent on care for vulnerable elderly and disabled people across England than before the current round of austerity cuts began – a drop of a fifth in just three years.

The cut in care budgets comes despite hundreds of millions of pounds being diverted from the NHS to prop up the struggling system.

Care chiefs warned they now expect to see many nursing homes and home-care agencies being driven to the brink of bankruptcy because councils can no longer afford to increase what they pay them, even in line with inflation.

Full Article on Telegraph

Atos apologises to long-term sick wrongly assessed as fit for work

The executive in charge of running medical assessments for benefits claims at Atos Healthcare has offered an apology to those long-term sick it has incorrectly assessed as being "fit for work".

In her first public interview, Lisa Coleman, the manager who oversees the firm's contract with the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), was asked by BBC Radio 4's You and Yours programme if she would like to apologise. She replied: "If we get something wrong then I'm very happy to say sorry."

Although work capability tests were introduced by the Labour government in 2008, the coalition has rapidly expanded their use. However, Atos – which last year processed almost 20,000 incapacity benefit claimants a week – has faced criticism after it emerged that a third (37%) of decisions appealed were successfully overturned.

Full Article on Guardian Society

Disability payment changes begin

Reforms to disability benefits will end the 'ridiculous' system that gives people lifetime awards, Iain Duncan Smith has said as the disability living allowance is replaced by the new personal independence payment (PLA).

The work and pensions secretary said claims in disability benefit had more than doubled in some parts of the country ahead of the changes.

His comments came as nearly half a million people call on the Tory cabinet minister to live off £53 a week for a year in a petition being delivered to his office on Monday.

Full Article on Guardian Society

Welfare cuts will cost disabled people £28bn over five years

Thousands of disabled people will be hit by up to six different welfare cuts, with the very worst off potentially losing up to £23,000 each over five years, research shows.

The effect of the changes, the bulk of which kick in after 1 April, will be to plunge tens of thousands of disabled people deeper into poverty, says a study that captures the multiple impacts of social security reforms for the first time.

The research, carried out for the Guardian, estimates that by 2017-18 about 3.7 million disabled people will collectively lose £28bn as a result of the reforms. Individuals will be hit by one of seven combinations of welfare cuts and small numbers could lose more than £20,000 each.

Full Article on Guardian 

Disabled exempted from 'bedroom tax'

Parents with severely disabled children who are unable to share a room with their siblings are to be exempt from the Government’s under-occupation penalty, or so-called bedroom tax.


Ministers will publish guidance to local authorities today which will allow them to exclude families with disabled children from the reduction in benefits for having a spare room, which is due to come into effect next month.

The cost of the allowance will be paid for centrally and not from the discretionary fund which is available to local authorities.

Full Article on Daily Express

Carer crisis: Councils cutting vital grants for those looking after sick and disabled relatives

A cruel new wave of council cuts is axing vital grants to people who care for their disabled relatives.

Respite payments, which let full-time carers take an occasional break, are a lifeline for thousands of people who look after vulnerable loved ones.

Some use the money to pay for home visits from professional carers or to take their family members to respite centres near their homes.

Others rely on them to fund short breaks which give them some relief from the 24-hour job of caring.

Full Article on Mirror

Charities say millions without internet access will face benefits struggle

Charities and housing associations have warned that plans to move to an online-only system for claiming benefits do not include enought support for people who have no access to computers and do not know how to use the internet.

Once the government's flagship welfare reform Universal Credit is introduced later this year, the system will be wholly internet-based and claimants will only be able to make face-to-face applications in exceptional circumstances.

The radical changes to the benefit system are being introduced at a time when funding cuts have reduced the number of charitable advice centres that help claimants apply for benefits. Delegates at a debate on Universal Credit and IT readiness warned that insufficient thought has been given to how to support claimants from among the eight million UK citizens who are not online.

Full Article on Guardian Society