Join us on Thursday to discuss the role played by social enterprises in increasing disabled employment Many social enterprises employ disabled workers. This is part of the social value they generate and can also give them a unique selling point in their chosen market place
Letters warning of £500-a-week benefit cap are sent to thousands of households that will not be affected Thousands of households, including families with disabled children, have been incorrectly told they are likely to see their welfare payments cut, charities and social security advisers say. From next year, couples or single parents in England who receive more than £500 a week in benefits will have their payments cut
Disabled people have been characterised as fraudsters by the press, yet our submissions to the inquiry are being ignored When the select committee on culture, media and sport wrote in its recent report : “In failing to investigate properly, and by ignoring evidence of widespread wrongdoing, News International and its parent News Corporation exhibited wilful blindness, for which the companies’ directors – including Rupert Murdoch and James Murdoch – should ultimately be prepared to take responsibility”, I couldn’t help but smile. We all look to Lord Justice Leveson to clean out our stables in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal – after all, he is investigating “the culture, practices and ethics of the press” – arising from it. Yet he, like Rupert Murdoch, also appears to be “wilfully blind”; he too is failing to investigate properly; he too is ignoring evidence – in this case that some journalists, fed by unscrupulous politicians, are whipping up a perfect storm for disabled people.
Unite is offering legal, debt and benefits advice for out of work people in their local communities to win new followers to its cause When a visitor enters the Casa Bar in central
Disability living allowance is being replaced with personal independence payment assessments, and private companies are queueing up to cash in The Department for Work and Pensions has just announced the 10 private companies on the shortlist to deliver the personal independence payment (PIP) assessments, which everyone receiving disability living allowance will have to undergo from next year when DLA is replaced by PIPs. With 3.2 million captive customers, not to mention a monopoly on all new claimants, it’s not hard to see the appeal of the contract for profit-hungry companies untroubled by the ethics of slashing 20% from the money provided to disabled people to help them meet some of the basic expenses that living with a disability inevitably incurs. DLA is far from excessive.
Employment support allowance offers me a shred of dignity. And tomorrow ministers take it away from me CutsTomorrow marks the end of an era for the disability benefits paid to people like me
As the parent of a 48-year-old daughter with learning difficulties and other health issues, I recognise the situation reported by Amelia Gentleman ( Legal aid bill ‘puts most vulnerable at risk’ , 17 April). It is, sadly, getting worse by the day
Government’s upcoming reforms must take the needs and contributions of unpaid carers into account, says Heléna Herklots We will all need care or provide care for loved ones at some point in our lives – it is an issue for all of society and all parts of government. As care and support for older and disabled people rises up the political agenda, decision-makers and the public are confronted with an array of stark statistics on the rising demand for care – with the number of people over 80 to double by 2020, 11 million people alive today expected to live to 100, the number of adults with learning disabilities to rise by a third by 2030 and the number of carers by 50% in the next 25 years to 9 million.
Protesters include Adam Lotun, 49, a father of baby twin girls, has been severely affected by the government cuts after his disability living allowance was taken from him after six years Ole Alsaker
Paul Farmer says he has resigned to publicise his anger at an ‘inhumane system’ that is telling severely ill and disabled they are fit to work Here’s the moral dilemma that faced Paul Farmer, chief executive of the mental health charity Mind, last week: should he continue to sit on a government advisory panel, charged with scrutinising a policy that his charity believes to be inhumane? Or should he resign, publicising his anger at the coalition government’s refusal to listen to the charity’s concerns, and remove himself from the room where improvements are being discussed? Farmer chose to leave the panel responsible for monitoring the functioning of the work capability assessment (WCA), the new fitness-for-work test that determines who is eligible for sickness benefits, frustrated that the government was not paying attention to the growing chorus of alarm over the reliability of the test.
