Disabled people
 |
| Disabled people |
Disabled People demand Rights not
Charity and we reject all cuts to our services and benefits.
INDEPENDENT LIVING
Disabled people must have the right
to live independently in society with the necessary levels of support to take a
full and inclusive part in everyday activities their non-disabled peers take
for granted.
To ensue this can happen disabled
people must have full entitlement to free care and support services of their
own choice with complete transparency in scoring and resource allocation for social
care funding.
Care and support services must be
fully transportable between local authorities ending the current postcode
lottery.
To continue to provide care and
support for those with the most complex needs the Independent Living Fund must
be retained and reopened to new applicants with adequate funding for this. It
should not be restricted to those in employment.
There should also be an immediate
end to the use of child carers whose parents should be provided with the care
and support they need to live independently.
There should be no means-testing for
aids and adaptations needed to enhance independent living, including for
disabled children.
No-one should be forced through lack
of accessible housing or care and support services to live in residential care
homes or nursing homes, and at a time when SHELTER estimate people are becoming
homeless at the rate of one person every two minutes there should be a
commitment that no disabled person will be made homeless.
The inadequate supply of accessible
housing to meet people’s needs to live independently must be urgently addressed
and money made available to increase the available stock of accessible housing
and to provide adaptations to already existing properties. In considering
accessibility the needs of those with neuro-diverse and mental health
conditions must also be taken into account as well as the needs of those with
visible physical impairments. Disabled people should not be removed from
society through the use of extra-care housing schemes.
Until there is an adequate supply of
social housing there should be a UK
Social Housing tenures for disabled
people should be granted permanently and Housing Benefit levels must meet
people’s real housing needs regardless of whether they rent in the social or
private rented sectors. Mortgage payments for those in receipt of benefits must
be high enough to prevent homelessness.
While the supply of accessible and
affordable housing remains inadequate squatting should not be made illegal as
many of those who are or who are likely to become homeless are disabled people.
If they are imprisoned for squatting the prison system would be unable to meet
their needs.
INCOME
 |
| Disabled people |
There should be a guaranteed
entitlement to a rate of living benefits and wages including an increase in the
money disabled people living in residential homes have for ‘pocket money.’ The
mobility component of Disability Living Allowance must be retained for those
living in residential care homes, colleges and schools.
Disability Living Allowance should
be kept in its current form as a payment to help meet the additional costs of
being disabled. Personal Independence Payments should not be introduced and 20%
of disabled people should not be arbitrarily removed from entitlement to this
benefit.
Repeated, expensive and totally
unnecessary re-testing of disabled people’s needs for PIP entitlement as is
being suggested must be stopped. This will just be another example of public
money being wasted.
The Work Capability Assessment
should be abolished and whether disabled people are fit to work should once
more be a decision that is reached between themselves, their GPs and their
consultants. The hugely expensive contract with ATOS healthcare must be ended
immediately, not only because the tests have been totally discredited but
because this is double-funding, where GPs and consultants and ATOS are both
paid to assess patients and therefore a waste of tax-payers money.
Disabled people placed in the Work
Related Activity Group of ESA or those wrongly thrown off ESA must not face
sanctions to their benefits if they are unable to meet the work requirements
placed on them due to their impairments or due
to any access issues related to any work place that does not
take account of disabling barriers constituting any form of disability
discrimination under the Equality Act 2010. Disabled people who do not
manage to jump through the right hoops must not be left with no other means of
financial support.
ESA for those in the Work Related
Activity Group must not be stopped after 12 months. This makes no sense as
people are not magically going to become fit to work nor are they going to
experience miracle cures.
Neither must disabled people must be
forced to work for their benefits through the Workfare programmes and Mandatory
Work Programmes. Compulsory labour for those who are disabled and ill is
unacceptable.
For those disabled people who are
able to work and can find suitable employment Access to Work funding should be
extended and more easily available. Recent cuts to AtW funding make it very
unlikely that smaller firms could afford to hire disabled people. Disabled
people should be able to find out what AtW support they will get
beforehand as was previously the case.
AtW funding should also be extended
to help disabled people work in a voluntary capacity.
SERVICES FOR THE DEAF
COMMUNITY
 |
| Disabled people |
British Sign Language is the language used
by Deaf people, who increasingly describe themselves as a cultural and
linguistic minority. There are around 80-100,000 native British Sign Language
(BSL) users. This number has increased substantially in recent years and has
become more reflective of the wider community welcoming other sign language
users from around the world.
The Deaf community, its organisations and
hearing allies have campaigned long and hard for the recognition of British
Sign Language, winning official recognition as a language (but not legal
protection) in 2003 after marches of over 11,000 Deaf people.
One of our biggest issues is that many
deaf children are still prevented from learning BSL as children, or have not
access to education via skilled BSL. This is the predominant ideology
declaring that if deaf children learn BSL, they will never learn to speak
“properly”. The irony is we have parents of hearing babies encouraged to
learn “babysign” to help them with their child’s development, while parents of
deaf children are told not to use BSL on the basis it will harm their child’s
language development. The end result is many deaf children grow up with
little or no language.
The issues facing the Deaf community today
are much the same as that facing disabled people; the lack of access to
services, education and employment plus the effect of the financial cuts.
The main campaigning issues for both Deaf children and Deaf adults are access
to qualified BSL interpreting whether for education, work or health
services. In some areas of the UK Education Departments are reducing or
cutting support for Deaf children entirely, this means not only will their
education suffer but access to social opportunities and their right to be
involved their school community will be severely limited.
Campaigns currently within the Deaf
community are: Legal protection for BSL; teachers and other
education professionals working with deaf children to be more highly skilled in
BSL; lobbying Ofcom for provision of Video Relay Service (VRS) which provides equal
access to telephony services; the demand that Access to Work provide full
interpreting support to Deaf people both at interviews and in the work
place.
ENVIRONMENT
All forms of transport should be
fully accessible with reasonable adjustments for all impairments available.
Access to all services and
facilities should be generic to include those with hidden impairments such as
neuro-diverse impairments who have environmental access needs. Information
should be available to meet all needs.
There should be better access to a
full range of toilet facilities including more Changing Places toilets.
EDUCATION
The current bias towards segregated
education must end and there must be a genuine commitment to work towards a
fully inclusive education system. All disabled children should have a
right to mainstream education with proper levels of support available Ito them
in all schools including academies, free schools and private schools.
HEALTH CARE
All people should be entitled to
free health care with no restrictions on availability of drugs and treatments
due to costs. Services should be fully
accessible for people with all impairments.
OTHER PUBLIC SERVICES
Our public services should remain as
public services to provide us with services and not services run to make money
for the shareholders of private firms.
ACCESS TO JUSTICE AND
SUPPORT SERVICES
There should be Disabled People’s
Organisations in every town and these should be adequately funded with ring
fenced funding. These should include free legal and welfare rights advice and
advocacy available for all.
All cuts to Legal Aid should be
reversed and funding re-instated.
The Equalities Act must be
strengthened to include a duty to consult with disabled people and there should
be a fully independent body set up with strong enforcement powers able to
impose penalties for non-compliance of equality duties. This body should also
have the power to force fair and truthful media coverage of disability issues
and powers to prevent distorted media coverage of disability issues. Meaningful, rather then simply tokenistic, disability
equality impact assessments must be carried out BEFORE any policy or
legal change.
All rights enshrined in the UNCRPD
which has been ratified by UK government should become a reality for disabled
people.
HATE CRIME
Current increases in hate crime are
unacceptable and disablism must be made illegal as is racism and homophobia.
ASYLUM SEEKERS
Asylum seekers should be entitled to
an adequate rate of benefits on which to live and there must be no deportation
of disabled asylum seekers back to countries where they will not be able to
access the health care services they need and are likely to die.
Aucun commentaire: