New non-disabled chair of parliamentary disability group dodges questions
Campaigners are calling on the parliamentary group set up to campaign on disability rights to ensure that a disabled politician is appointed to help lead its work.
13 Nov 2015
News
Carers Rights Day
Having the right information at the right time can make a huge difference when you are looking after someone. This year Carers Rights Day is taking place on Friday 20 November 2015.
13 Nov 2015
Receiving benefits because of your mental health? You’re up to three times more likely to be punished by the DWP than helped to find work
Data from Mind today reveal the scale of sanctions imposed on people with mental health problems being supported by out-of-work disability benefits. Figures obtained by the mental health charity under the Freedom of Information Act show that there were up to three times more benefit sanctions issued by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to people with mental health problems last year than there were people supported into work. There were almost 20,000 benefits sanctions received by people who were out of work because of their mental health last year[1], while only 6340[2] of this group were successfully supported into a job during the same period. There are approximately 250,000 people receiving the benefit Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) who need this support primarily because of their mental health. People can be sanctioned - have their benefits cut - if they fail to participate in work-related activity, including missing appointments or being late for meetings or CV writing workshops. Howev
10 Nov 2015
Learning disability care hospital beds reduced
The number of hospital beds for people with learning disabilities and autism will be halved in England, the NHS has announced.
10 Nov 2015
Visual perception and seeing things differently
Many people with Dyspraxia and other neurological deficits find interpreting the meaning of messages from what we see in the world around us a challenge. Of course some people without Dyspraxia sometimes experience these difficulties too, when trying to decode to us what seems like the impossible. I was inspired to write this next blog post by one of the most unlikely of sources, a friend posted a photo of a tap on Facebook, explaining his confusion when trying to understand the visual messages that the tap provided, so that he could operate it successfully. I understood the frustration of trying to interpret visual information and related it to being an obstacle that many people with Dyspraxia have to overcome. Visual perception and seeing the world in a different way is very rarely understood by society.
9 Nov 2015
Leave people in WRAG alone.
So. Today the House of Commons are discussing the Welfare Reform and Work Bill. This is the Bill that will cut the Employment Support Allowance payments received by disabled people in the Work Related Activity Group (WRAG) by thirty pounds every week to the same level as non-disabled people receiving Job Seekers Allowance. And the justification the Government for this move? Apparently, cutting disabled people's benefits will 'incentivise' them to go out and get a job.
9 Nov 2015