Several national disability charities are reporting significant increases in verbal and physical abuse of disabled people following their stigmatising as scroungers by both the Government and populist media. The regular Scope survey of the experiences of disabled people has shown a rise in disabled people experiencing at least one incident of abuse from 41% of respondents to nearly two-thirds over the four months to last September alone. Anecdotal evidence since then suggests no decline in this level of ... read more »
From The Morning Star newspaperAs I write, the Con Dem Government is comprehensively voting down in the House of Commons various amendments passed a couple of weeks ago in the House of Lords which would have partially mollified some of the harshest aspects of the new Welfare Act. These amendments included extending from one to two years the period of time people previously on Incapacity Benefit would keep the new Employment Support Allowance before it becomes means-tested (at which point, if the disabled... read more »
ATOS Origin is the French-based company whose UK arm, ATOS Healthcare is employed by the Coalition Government at a cost of hundreds of millions of taxpayers' money to supposedly carry out a fair and balanced review of people who are on disability benefits. As previously blogged here and a thousand other places, there have been many, many dreadful examples of vulnerable people being mistreated during cursory assessments that have effected more miracles than Lourdes, so much so that a recent report by MPs ... read more »
The Government's "reforms" of disability support continue apace, ill-informed and liable to cause serious damage to the lives of hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people. Part of this is a ham-fisted attempt to cut disability living allowance costs by 20% in the ignorant belief, now incorrectly parroted by several government Ministers as well as the gutter press, that DLA is paid exclusively to people who are out of work. In fact, it is a payment recognising that disability adds to people's costs, for ... read more »
The last twenty four hours have seen Britain's social care system plunged into genuine crisis on several fronts.Most graphic has been the secretly filmed abuse of residents with learning difficulties at a hospital facility in Bristol. An undercover journalist spent five weeks posing as a member of staff to record images of residents being doused with water for not obeying instructions, beaten, stamped on and verbally abused by the people responsible for their care and well being.Next came the news that S... read more »
