Disability rights

Jobs massacre at Remploy

Remploy workers face a further wave of attacks as bosses plan to close an initial 36 factories and privatise a further 18, with a view to closure. Nearly 2,000 workers face compulsory redundancy. The closures include the effective abolition of all Remploy employment in Wales, with just two of nine factories escaping the chop. The move comes after the publication of a government-commissioned review into disabled workers’ employment conducted by Liz Sayce, the director of Disability Rights UK, which argued that the government should invest more into supporting individuals rather than subsidising...

Who's to blame for the crisis? The disabled!

The political atmosphere is so dominated by the prejudices and norms of the right that it always a surprise when someone expresses even the most basic of socialist or egalitarian ideas in the mainstream media. Hence it was a joy to see Mark Steel tell it like it is on Question Time on 26 January. When the panel were asked about the proposals to cap benefits he said “This is what [the Tories] do all the time — make the poor pay for the mess created by the rich”. Pointing out that there are only 67,000 households receiving housing benefit and that the areas where most is paid are simply those...

Remploy workers fight bosses' two-tier workforce plan

Remploy employees in the company’s factories in Glasgow and Chesterfield struck for 24 hours last Thursday (26 January) in protest at moves to introduce a two-tier workforce and privatise the company. Remploy is a government-supported organisation which was set up after the war to provide employment for people with disabilities. It recently formed a partnership with Websters Ltd., a private company which manufactures aids for people with disabilities. The new company, Remploy Healthcare, has now begun to employ non-disabled production workers and apprentices in Remploy workplaces, on rates of...

The sadistic logic of capitalist cuts

Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, millionaire Iain Duncan Smith, has pledged to cut the cost of benefits for disabled people by 20% — one of the “reforms” embedded in the Welfare Reform Bill. The House of Lords recently voted down some of the measures relating to disability benefits on the grounds that they are arbitrary and gratuitously mean. Quite right! None of the “reforms” in Welfare Reform Bill are about improving the benefit system for the people whose daily lives depend upon it but this reality is pushed into stark relief by the measures aimed at disabled people. The reforms...

Government prepares incapacity benefits purge

According to new research by Sheffield Hallam University, more than more half a million sick and disabled people could be forced out of the benefits system by 2014. The researchers estimate that 600,000 people will lose their social security benefits as a result of Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) being extended to people currently claiming Incapacity Benefit. ESA was introduced for new claimants in 2008. Amid the rightful anger at the draconian and arbitrary ESA medical assessment which has seen hundreds of seriously ill people declared fit for work, another point is often overlooked...

MP's slam sickness benefit testing regime

The Department for Work and Pensions Select Committee has described the process being used to reassess Incapacity Benefit claimants as "flawed". A report by the committee concludes that the Work Capabilty Assessment - a short interview in which yes/no boxes are ticked on a computer screen - has led to "fear and anxiety among vulnerable people" and large numbers of claimants with serious and long-term medical problems having their benefits cut or stopped altogether. The report goes on to say: "It is widely accepted that the Work Capability Assessment [WCA], as introduced in 2008, was flawed...

55 vulnerable adults abused every day

Leaked data from the NHS Information Centre reveals that from October 2009 to March 2010, social care departments received 40,000 formal complaints about abuse of vulnerable adults. ( Financial Times , 13 June) More than 8,600 claims were substantiated, in a survey covering 80% of councils. So probably 10,000-plus vulnerable adults have been abused over a six month period — that’s 55 adults a day. A quarter of the claims involved adults with learning disabilities, and another quarter people aged 85 or over. A third of all claims involved physical abuse, and others psychological abuse, misuse...

Learning disbilities: not out of sight

Like anyone else who watched it, I felt sickened by Panorama’s expose of how people with learning disabilities were tortured by their carers at a private hospital near Bristol (31 May). As a social worker who works with adults with learning disabilities I review placements like Winterbourne hospital fairly frequently. I’ve never seen anything like the treatment shown by the programme, but my heart often sinks when I walk into these places. The closure of long-stay hospitals was heralded by many as the end of institutionalisation — and the end of the appalling treatment that went on. But “care...

Housing benefit cuts will hit disabled youth hardest

Government plans to cut housing benefit will have a particularly severe effect on young disabled people according to a homeless charity. Crisis says the changes could leave up to 11,000 young disabled people homeless. From next January single people aged 25-34 will only be able to claim housing benefit for a room in a shared house rather than a one-bedroom flat, an average cut of £41 a week. According to figures produced by the Department for Work and Pensions, the average cut will rise to £45 a week across the South East, £87 a week across London, £108 a week in Westminster, £109 a week in...

Disabled trade unionists meet

More than 200 delegates gathered at the TUC Disability Conference on 25-26 May. It followed much campaigning by disabled people against the savage effect of cuts. Disabled workers are more likely to work in the public rather than the private sector, so the massive public sector job cuts will have a devastating effect. Together with benefit cuts and housing cuts, this will drive many disabled people out of work and into poverty. Examples include cuts to: • Remploy and other supported employment • NHS provision eg. mental health services face losing 6,300 staff, a quarter of the total •...

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