HareOnna Diversity guest blog: My fears for disabled people

I have been meaning and promising to blog about DLA and the coalition government for ages now, and just haven't had the time or energy. (Mainly the latter.) I want to broaden out the blog post to also include my fears about how the proposed public sector cuts will affect disabled people as well. So this is my first HareOnna Diversity blog entry (once my HareOnna Diversity website is up and running I'll have a blog on that.)

DLA

I'll tackle DLA first though. My big fears about the proposals for DLA are two fold. As I've mentioned on the blog before I'm concerned that the government is wilfully misunderstanding what DLA is actually for and the media are reporting about DLA in a very negative way. Secondly I am concerned that the mandatory medicals from 2013 for all DLA recipients will actually waste money and not save it at all.

DLA myths

There are a lot of unhelpful myths out there about DLA and disability benefits more generally. I did a simple search on the Daily Mail website for "Disability Living Allowance" and here is a link to the search page the vast majority of stories including the top stories found are about disability benefit cheats! When searching the Sun for stories relating to DLA it isn't much different lots of benefit cheat stories and the headline below comes in 3rd from top (below the story about a traffic warden disability benefit cheat)

"We’ll fare better by spending a lot less on welfare

Wednesday, June 23, 2010,The Sun

CHANCELLOR attacks benefits culture, vowing hundreds of thousands will go back to work"

So there are a couple of myths at work here, the first relates to disproportionate reporting about disability benefit cheats and scammers. This perpetuates a myth that there are hundreds of disabled people wrongly claiming benefits and playing the system. (Personally I think these scamming scrounger stories feed into 2 of the most damaging and pervasive negative stereo types about disabled people that there are "deserving disabled people" who need charity and "undeserving" disabled people who should be feared.)

The other myth relates to what DLA is for. The Sun's story equates cuts in DLA as part of the agenda for getting disabled people back to work. DLA is paid to disabled people regardless of whether they are in work or not. Its a "living" allowance that is supposed to meet the extra costs that disabled people face because society is not designed in an accessible way for them.

The DLA medical

The proposal to make all recipients of DLA attend a medical in 2013 perpetuates one of the other myths that it's easy to claim DLA and you don't have a medical. This is wrong because most people on DLA are called for medicals and all will have to supply detailed medical evidence from a specialist. Many recipients are called for medicals on a 4 yearly basis. I don't get called for medicals at the moment as the evidence provided by my consultant at Moorfields Eye Hospital explained that my eye condition will not change (though it could get worse.) Quite rightly and so not to waste money I am not called to attend medicals. If all those claiming DLA for a condition like mine which will not "get better" are called to a medical in 2013 this will cost the government more money not save it.

The other issue is who will carry out these medicals? Generally local GPs are used to carry out medicals for the benefits agency. When I was a Disability Employment Advisor in the jobcentre I would occasionally send someone claiming benefits to one of these Drs so that I could get clearer information about how their condition affected their ability to work. (With DLA of course they will have to look at how the impairment affects all of their life including work but also personal care and mobility at home and in all environments.) To be honest these GPs reports were pretty useless. Quite often the GP would have no idea about the clients medical condition and would have to recommend we send them to a specialist. On other occasions the Dr even if an occupational health expert would not actually be able to asses the client for the correct type of work. They'd be assessed either too generally or too specifically. For example if the client had been a crane operator the Dr would assess them for that job and say no they can't do that anymore. They would then recommend something incredibly general and not make any recommendations for reasonable adjustments.

I'm not saying that all Drs were like this but many were, those who are very good and specialised in this field are expensive to use and hard to find appointments with. So how are they going to cope come 2013 when these Drs will be considering a much wider remit not just the work environment?

This leads me on to my second concern

Supporting disabled people back into work

There is a link between people on DLA and the coalition government and the previous government's plans to get more disabled people into work. The previous government had commissioned some research last year into the work expectations of people out of work who also receive DLA. Below is a link to the research and a paragraph from the summary about work expectations of people on DLA who were out of work.

DLA and work expectations research for the DWP

The relationship between respondents’ work aspirations and their DLA status was explored. Across the whole sample, 42 per cent of respondents said that they were either unsure about working in the future or that they did not expect to work again. Among the respondents who claimed DLA this figure was 60 per cent, suggesting that DLA claimants were further from the labour market than those claiming incapacity benefits without DLA. Those who reported that their health condition limited their activities either somewhat or a great deal were also more likely to hold pessimistic views about the prospect of working in the future.

When DLA claimants did identify things that would enable them to work they tended to mention measures related to in-work support.

These findings shouldn't be a surprise. Incapacity Benefit is paid to people "incapable of work due to illness" and includes people who have health conditions like broken limbs, those having major surgery, other serious but non permanent injuries or illnesses. Of course people who have long term impairments which we would think of as disabilities can also receive incapacity benefit if out of work, it is this group who are likely to also claim DLA. So if someone is claiming incapacity benefit and DLA their health condition or impairment is likely to be permanent so of course their expectations about work or circumstances changing will be less than someone who is recovering from surgery.

Similarly it is then no surprise that those who receive DLA are most concerned about receiving support when they are in work. Their conditions aren't likely to "get better" they are the people who will most likely need "reasonable adjustments" made for them when they return to work or those who will most need supported employment.

Whist the government are planning cuts across the public sector which will lead inevitably to the loss of jobs, will support for disabled people who want to work still be available? There are rumours that Ian Duncan Smith at the DWP wants to feed some of the money saved in benefit curs and freezes into supported employment. I think this is a must.

One of the other findings from the DLA and work expectations research was that more people in receipt of DLA said that returning to work would be easier if they could work from home. Hinting at some of the wider barriers that they face in returning to work relate to the physical activity of getting to work and the work environment.

The future of supported employement

At last weeks RADAR seminar on Sustainable Careers and the future of supported employment barriers relating to transport and travelling to work as well as the physical and attitudinal barriers within the work place were all discussed as being still very hard for disabled people to overcome. The seminar really brought home to me how serious the situation is for disabled people at the moment.

At the government's own admission disabled people are going to be worse off with changes to the benefits system. Many disabled people who are out of work would really love to be working but the barriers they face are just huge. There are some excellent examples of good practice regarding supporting disabled people to find work, and maintain careers that are meaningful and productive. These examples of good practice need to be supported though and learnt from.

The evidence from both Australia and America is that when benefits for disabled people are cut and adequate support into work isn't provided then disabled people just fall out of the system all together. You get greater numbers of disabled people back in care (costing the government more), larger numbers on the streets, more children in poverty. We don't want this to happen over here!

One thing said by Susan Scott Parker at the seminar which rang totally true with me and links back to the myths about DLA is that when it comes to disabled people and work and benefits there is still a pervasive belief (even if its not spoken) that genuinely disabled people can't work and so those disabled people who do work can't actually be "disabled." This is such a divisive and dangerous stereotype and yet one which seems to be at the heart of the rhetoric around getting people off benefits and into work and the DLA cuts.

I think that it is only when we have tackled prejudice and misunderstanding like this and the concept of "deserving" and "undeserving" disabled people that we can really start to achieve equality.

Weekly roundup

I've had a busy week including meeting David Blunkett and having my friend Lorraine (pictured above with me) with her little boy Ben to stay for a long weekend.

RADIATE and David Blunkett

Last Wednesday I went to the second meeting of the Radiate network (Radiate is a network of "disabled high flyers" so I feel very lucky to be part of it.) The meeting took the form of networking time and an interview of David Blunkett by Peter White and then a quick Q & A. The interview was really enlightening, Peter certainly got David Blunkett to open up. It was interesting to hear that David Blunkett did regret not asking for more help in his career as a politician and in particular not asking for more reasonable adjustments when he was a minister.

When it came to the Q&A I got to ask a question, so I made the most of it and asked about Disability Living Allowance (DLA), in his interview David Blunkett has mentioned that some in the Labour government did not understand what DLA was about. So I asked about the current measures proposed by the coalition government, because yet again DLA is being misunderstood and being spoke about as if it is a welfare to work benefit.

For those not familiar with DLA it is a non means tested benefit which is given to disabled people and the parents of disabled children after a rigorous application process. The benefit is paid not as a benefit related to employment or lack of, but to meet the extra costs which disabled people are faced with because of barriers they face in society or as a direct result of their impairment. DLA is paid at different levels which relate to the difficulty disabled people face with day to day care and independence needs and mobility.

Fot example I receive DLA for care and mobility at a low rate (I've not reapplied for any more since 1996 when I first lived by myself) I use DLA to pay towards taxis especially in the winter when it is dark and it is difficult for me to walk short distances, and to meet the cost of every day items that cost me more because I need them to be accessible for me. Even simple things like an alarm clock that I can read at night because it lights up and has extra large numbers costs more than a standard one. Those are just a couple of examples but I hope they explain.

Anyway the Coalition Government want to introduce mandatory medicals in 2013 for all DLA recipients. At the moment I don't get called in for medicals on a 4 yearly basis like some on DLA do, this is because my eye condition will not improve. If my circumstances change I can of course contact the DLA office. I wanted to know what David Blunkett thought should be done to A provide more information about what DLA is for and B how to campaign against the "medicalisation" of DLA. His answers were very interesting but I'm not going to go into them here. You'll have to watch this space as I'll be blogging about it specifically in the next couple of days!

Lorraine and Ben visit

On Friday my friend Lorraine and her little boy Ben (he's nearly 7) visited for a long weekend on their way back to Inverness from a holiday on the south coast. We had a lovely and lively weekend, including visits to Hitchin for some shopping, a trip to the park, visiting various sweet shops, 2 bouncy slides and a roundabout ride, visits to Bedfordshire Growers and Simply Oaks as well as a BBQ on Sunday. We also watched Primer which was one of the oddest films I've seen in a while but it s well worth a watch.

It was lovely to see Lorraine, as living at opposite ends of the British Isles its hard to meet up regularly. If only a Star Trek teleportation machine was available and we could just be "beamed up" to where ever we wanted to meet!

sunset after the storm

sunset over Dells Lane
Originally uploaded by Happy Salmon

On Friday night not long after Lorraine and Ben arrived to visit we had some torrential rain, then no sooner had the rain cleared the most beautiful sunset emerged. I had only just got my new iPhone so was testing out the camera with these pictures. I was very surprised how well the photos came out. Click on the photo and you should see more from that evening.

Squirrel

Squirrel
Originally uploaded by JasonGDoig

Here is the picture I promised of our cheeky garden squirrel that Jason took!

Squirrel!

Over the last week or so we have had a new visiter to the front garden, this time he has fur and not feathers. I snapped two blurry pictures of the squirrel who likes to raid the bird feeders. It's really windy today and the squirrel didn't need to knock the feeders too much as nuts had been knocked out on to the ground already. Still he had a go at getting some more!
He moves very fast and my digital camera isn't great at zooming in. I'll try and get some better pictures though over the next few days. Jason has taken some really good pictures of the squirrel which really do the cheeky creature justice! I hope to link to them soon.

banana loaf and Spanish delights

Due to popular demand I have blogged 2 pictures of the banana loaf I made today. I was busy making a sauce for patatas bravas and planning to make a spanish tortilla when I noticed I had some ripe bananas that would need to be used today or tomorrow at the latest. So I thought I'd just knock up a banana loaf and throw in a few ripe strawberries as well! I'll come back to the other recipes in a minute but the banana loaf was a doddle. The recipe was a BBC good food one and you can get it here.

I didn't jazz is up with nuts and stuff and I didn't have butter milk so I just improvised. I kept the same measurements but I used dark muscavado sugar, added some ripe strawberries to the mash, a dash of lemon juice, I used half butter half low fat spread, and just normal semi skimmed milk. It didn't take quite 1 hour and 15 mins to cook about 1 hour 5. I wasn't sure how it would turn out as I didn't have baking paper so had to just grease the whole tin but it worked fine. That's why I took a pic of it in the tin in case it was in pieces by the time it was out of the tin!

having just tried a slice, before I freeze it for the weekend, I can say it is very tasty! Very bananary and the strawberry is very sweet. In fact the banana and strawberry go so well I think I'll call it "banana and strawberry smoothy cake" because that's what it looks like when you pour the banana and strawberry mix in!

The sauce I made was for patatas bravas I based it on a few recipes I saw which were from different parts of Spain. I slowly sweated onions, garlic, a red chilli and diced red pepper for about half an hour until the pepper was soft but not mushy. Then I added some chunky chopped fresh tomatoes with some paprika, and red wine vinegar (and a dash of Worcestershire sauce) and let that bubble away very gently and slowly for ages until everything was soft. I then mashed the hell out of it and got the sauce just how I wanted it, thick with real pieces of onion, pepper and tomato but definitely a sauce! It tasted good too but I'm freezing it for the weekend. The final ingredient when I heat it up for serving is to throw in some shredded fresh sage from the garden!

The other thing I made was spanish tortilla pictured below while I was frying it, slowly, very slowly. I put onion, potato and red pepper in this one.

And below is the finished article. It's quite a thin tortilla but I don't like the really thick cakey ones they give me a headache! Again another one for me to freeze for the weekend!

My latest venture - why not book a place?

I've been working freelance now for just over a month. It has been an interesting experience so far. I only ever intended to work part time so finding work hasn't been too hard. So far I've delivered training at Kingston University to nurse tutors and mentors about making reasonable adjustments for disabled students on work placement. It was a really enjoyable day and I learnt a lot too from the nurses. I then did a bit of work for the NMC (my old employers which was nice.)

My latest contract is to work with Caroline Gooding - who used to be my boss at the Disability Rights Commission. We are now working together to organise and deliver a seminar for Inclusion London in September. The seminar is about what the new Equality Act means for disability legislation and how disabled people can use it. We also want to encourage equality and policy officers to come along and learn about what their organisations need to do to meet the duties in the new Act. Anyway here are some details about the seminar and a link to the webpage where you can down load a booking form.

Announcing a new seminar: Disability in the Equality Act 2010

23 September 2010

10:00 - 13:30 (registration and refreshments from 9:30)

The South Bank Suite
Coin Street Neighbourhood Centre
108 Stamford Street
London
SE1 9NH

This is a half day seminar, presented by Caroline Gooding and Natalie Salmon (both formerly with the Disability Rights Commission). Simone Aspis (Allfie) will give a guest presentation on education. There is more information about the presenters at the end of this invitation.

The new Equality Act will replace the Disability Discrimination Act, including the disability equality duties, beginning from October 2010. There has been a great deal of concern about what this might mean for Deaf and disabled people. This seminar provides an exciting opportunity for London’s disability organisations and disability and equality officers to explore with experts the practical effect of these changes.

The seminar will examine:

• How disability rights will be strengthened by the Equality Act, including the new restrictions on pre-employment health screening and new duties on schools;
• How disability will be addressed by the new equality duties;
• How disabled people in London can get the most out of the legislation;
• What public authorities need to do.

Who should attend?
We are inviting to the seminar, organisations of disabled people, other voluntary sector organisations who work with disabled people, local authority disability officers, other public sector officers who specialise in disability equality issues and any individuals interested.

Booking and cost of the event
We have decided to charge for this seminar. The price covers the half day seminar, hand out materials, a copy of a report of the seminar and refreshments including a light lunch. In the current economic situation we know that we need to be realistic about what we charge and we have set three levels of pricing which is as follows for:

Public sector organisations like local authorities, government departments
The price is £75

Voluntary sector organisations and charities
The price is £40

We also have a limited number of free places for individuals or organisations of disabled people on limited budgets.

Our booking form allows you to indicate which price range applies to you as well as indicating if you have any access requirements.

Presenters
Some more information about our presenters:

Caroline Gooding
At present Caroline Gooding is drafting Statutory Codes for the EHRC, explaining aspects of the Equality Act, as well as producing guidance for the Government Equality Office aimed at the voluntary sector explaining the new disability provisions concerning service delivery.

Natalie Salmon
Natalie is former Head of Equality and Diversity at a UK regulator and has extensive experience of developing single equality schemes and improving meaningful involvement of disabled people in developing schemes.

Simone Aspis
Simone is policy officer for the Allfie and will make a guest contribution on education and the Equality Act.

How to book your place
Please download and complete the booking and access form and return it to Libby Oakley, all her contact details appear at the end of the booking form.

We really look forward to seeing you on the 23rd of September.

Here is the link again to down load a form: booking form

petunias

petunias
Originally uploaded by Happy Salmon

There are some more photos on my flickr page like these of my garden. It's really growing like mad. We've hardly had any rain lately so I'm out each night with my watering can! It's very therapeutic though, pottering about the garden.

Being a partially sighted gardener

I didn't have time to blog too much about my gardening earlier; the Wimbledon men's final was about to start. So I thought I'd blog something now about gardening.

Being partially sighted means that I find different dimensions to lots of things I do. Compared to others I sometimes encounter more barriers or problems and sometimes I appreciate things in a totally different and refreshing way. So it is with gardening.

I just had one of those "aaaaggghhhh" moments whilst watering my hanging basket and rose bush by the front door. (And it wasn't the fact that I managed to water my leg with the watering can!) I noticed that a new rose bud had emerged so I reached out to touch it to find out more, how close to flowering was it etc. I pinched gently the bud and felt something not unlike a thin layer of mushy peas on the bud. I peered closely at my fingers and realised that I had just squashed a legion of green fly! eeeyuuuuck Not a nice sensation at all. I am guessing someone who could see better than I can, would have known weeks ago that the rose was infested with the evil little green blighters!

I may miss well camouflaged pests, and sometimes I mistake innocent petunia buds for giant spiders, but I am very thorough in the way I look after my garden. (well thorough in an organised kind of way) Just glancing out of the window at the garden won't tell me if the weeds are going wild, so instead I have a routine that 2 days after using miracle grow I weed no matter what. I just have little routines that help me not miss stuff.

I also like plants with different textures as well as colours, and I love plants that have different scents, not just pretty things like roses and honey suckle but in particular herbs. Well you can eat those too!

Garden photos

It's very windy here today so not a good time to take photos of plants but still its over a month since I started gardening here so I I wanted to take some update pictures. You can look at all the photos on my flickr page here

Above is a photo of some snap dragons and below a close up of some of the fuchsia flowers and below that some french lavender.

Carnival

Last Saturday was Carnival day in Biggleswade. This involved local schools, businesses and services decorating floats and parading through town. This years theme was "children's TV past and present" the local paper has some good pics of the day here The photos on my blog are all my own. Above is a photo of the top of our road which is a little way out of town but there was still quite a crowd waiting for the carnival parade. Below is the float containing the Carnival Queen and her court of princesses and princes. (sponsored by one of our local independent coffee shops)
I particularly like this "white van" which has been converted into Scooby Doo's mystery mobile.
I'm beginning to get used to living in Biggleswade now, which is a good thing as we exchanged contracts on our new house this week after completing the sale of our flat the week before. Our new house won't be built until the end of the year (providing this summer's fair weather continues. I'm wondering if this is the BBQ summer the weathermen were on about last year?)

It's funny because when I moved to London 12 years ago I thought that London would be a place of freedom of expression and quirkiness, and yes London can be like that. More recently though I've been feeling that London only does "freedom" and "expression" in an organised kind of way. Maybe I'm just getting old.

Biggleswade is a funny old place here are some of my observations just from today in Biggleswade:

The local butcher, a burly, cockney geezer type was merrily singing a long to every record played by Dale Winton on the radio but he gave a particularly hearty rendition of the London Boys: London Nights. He didn't have a care in the world as he weighed out sausages and cuts of lamb!

An old lady harangued me in ASDA, she stared into my trolly balefully then looked at the toilet roll in my hand and said "You aren't going to pay nearly £5 on toilet roll are you?" (it was rather a lot of toilet rolls I hasten to add, but they were those fancy quilted ones) I just smiled awkwardly said yes and trundled apologetically off with my trolley. (not doubt the old lady mafia of Biggleswade will all know by tea time that I waste money on fancy toilet roll.)

I over heard the man who runs the jewellery stall on the market saying to his son "What more could you want from a Dad? I got you a banjo from eBay didn't I? What other Dad would do that eh?"

So yes its a funny old place, Biggleswade but its fun.