Enable us, Don't Disable Us

When I write about the cuts facing sick and disabled people, it's easy for that to become background noise in a society battling austerity on every front.

The Mum losing childcare, the school losing funding, the library closing, the young person who can't afford a home or a degree, the hospital shutting wards - we all know that cuts are hurting and will only hurt more over the next few years.

So why do I think that the onslaught facing sick and disabled people is so serious? Why, of all the battles, do I choose to fight this one?

Disability rights movements have fought for decades to change the way we see disability. Just 30 years ago, many sick and disabled people were locked away in institutions, excluded entirely from society. There is no doubt that we were considered second class citizens incapable of looking after our own needs. Work was a distant dream; living independently, taking part in society in any meaningful way was impossible.

With Care in the Community and the slow, painful birth of the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA), society changed the way it looked at disability. The whole emphasis shifted towards community living, personal funding and making the country a more welcoming and accessible place.

DLA (Disability Living Allowance) was introduced by the Conservatives under Margaret Thatcher to acknowledge that disability involved extra costs - accessible transport, higher utility bills, specialist aids, modified homes - and was supposed to replace and reduce the eye watering costs of institutional care, putting a little control directly into the hands of those who's lives were affected by disability.

Schemes like Access to Work provided funding to make workplaces more accessible, social care packages meant that many more people could live at home, community mental health teams helped to break down the stigma and exclusion faced by those with mental illness The Independent Living Fund helped just 21,000 of the most severely disabled people to also continue to live in their own homes whilst, in theory, the DDA meant that our rights to equality, access, dignity and employment were enshrined in law. By the mid noughties, with general employment rates high, politicians felt that sick or disabled people had all the help and support they may need to live independent lives with dignity.

As is so often the case though, the DDA sometimes proved a blunt tool. Is it discrimination for an employer to choose a non-disabled person for a job over one with a disability? You bet, but it's very hard to prove. Did every workplace and shop and public space become magically accessible? Sadly no. Did everyone get the care they needed in the community? Did healthcare become so efficient that we never had to wait for treatment? Of course not.

Nonetheless, the shift was broadly in the right direction and here's the really important bit - it saved the country billions. Every pound spent on enabling sick or disabled people to live independently, saved at least as much as it cost. Institutions closed and residents who previously cost society thousands of pounds a month were supported in the community and with modest disability benefits.

Every mobility scooter or wheelchair meant that someone previously unable to engage with society could do so, saving care costs and reducing isolation and exclusion. Every ramp or special aid funded through Access to Work meant that someone could get a job who otherwise may never have contributed financially to society. Every care package reduced the need for lengthy NHS in patient stays or residential care.

Decent disability funding is not about somehow giving people "stuff" they haven't "earned". It saves the government money. Even if we don't wish to make a moral argument for disability policy that aims to include as many people in society as possible, even if we ignore that that aim is enshrined in international human rights law, we can make a financial argument.

If a disabled person is no longer entitled to personal care, the simple fact is they cannot wash or eat. They certainly won't be getting a job or taking part in society any time soon. Cutting care further disables and excludes us.

If we can no longer access the mobility aids that allow us to get out and about, we will need more home visits and more help with shopping or appointments. Most things that we could do for ourselves then need to be done by others, costing thousands more in the long run and acting as yet another barrier to work.

If we lose benefits altogether as DLA is reduced by 20% and ESA by up to 93%, we become more dependent on others. As sick and disabled people face greater poverty and hardship, other areas of the benefit system simply find themselves taking the strain as people fall through the cracks.

But the truly sinister thing is that if you cut ALL of these things at once and combine this with the cuts faced by everyone else - cuts to childcare, to housing, to pensions, higher VAT, higher inflation - we risk turning the clock back to a time when sick or disabled people simply "disappeared." Every cut will further disable us, further exclude us and ultimately push us back into institutions. If the institutions no longer exist what then? We suffer behind four walls, trapped, excluded and invisible.

A political class who saved billions by putting our own care into our own hands have forgotten that it ever saved money in the first place. If they now take away the much lower amounts designed to enable us, they leave us with nothing. Work becomes less likely, not more likely. Friendships and relationships face more pressure, not less. Integration and enablement become unimportant. We turn the clock back to a time when out of sight meant out of mind.

The bottom line is that enabling sick or disabled people costs money. Does that mean we can't afford to do it any more? Is that REALLY what we want?  Are we really not going to consider the implications of leaving people in filth and poverty and despair, simply because they were born or became less able? Are we going to abandon the aims of a Disability Discrimination Act that hoped to create a level playing field? Are we going to drift back toward a time when sick and disabled people didn't count, when dignity relied on benevolence and philanthropy?

*************

Today is the 1st September. In a few days, the welfare reform bill faces it's 2nd reading in the House of Lords. There are lots of good articles appearing today as we all come back to the battle for a life of dignity and respect before it's too late. I will add links here as the day goes on, but please do join us in tweeting, sharing and linking articles wherever you can. On twitter, please use the hashtag #septembercomeback and let's show our politicians that we will not - cannot - accept a society that goes back to excluding us. 

Let's create a social media storm. Let's refuse to be "disappeared".

http://www.leftfootforward.org/2011/09/papworth-trust-survey-disabled-people-fears/#comments

http://thepotterblogger.blogspot.com/2011/09/sick-way-britain-treats-her-sick-and.html

http://inde-woman.blogspot.com/2011/08/box-ticking-exercise.html

DAnewsflash On 22 Oct disabled ppl to protest in cities across UK saying: stop the cuts. http://www.hardesthit.org.uk/


http://www.disabledgo.com/blog/2011/09/government-sends-threatening-access-to-work-letters/

http://stream.aljazeera.com/story/uk-health-contractor-accuses-online-critics-libel

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/joepublic/2011/sep/01/cuts-targeting-disabled-people

http://www.leftfootforward.org/2011/09/how-the-disabled-took-all-the-jobs/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/sep/01/welfare-reform-bill

http://carons-musings.blogspot.com/2011/09/signal-boost-george-potter-on-sick-way.html

**Due to great success, the #septembercomeback will now run all week :)