Cuts Cuts Cuts

+ Latest news about Disability Living Allowance campaign

January 29th, 2011

 

Please see this link for latest news on DLA campaign

 

+ Share your testimony re: Disability Living Allowance

January 4th, 2011

Do you receive Disability Living Allowance?

The Broken of Britain  is putting together a submission to the Public Consultation, with the support of our sister organisation Carer Watch , on DLA reform, closing on the 14th of February. The draft submission will be launched on TBofB and CW forums this Friday, 7th of January. It will remain open for discussion, criticism, editing and general tearing-apart until the 7th of February, giving a week for it to be edited before being sent off. Because TBofB and CW are user-led, we want everyone who logs into our forum to have their own say and advance their own arguments because this grassroots solidarity can only make us stronger.

For now, some tidying up is being carried out to make sure that the document is presentable and sensible. What is missing from the submission is proper user testimonies. I’d like to appeal to all readers for testimonies, which will, of course, remain anonymous in the end-document. We need:                    Read the full article…

 

+ One Month Before Heartbreak – a great success

January 16th, 2011

Carer Watch are fully supportive of our sister group The Broken of Britain’s’ blogswarm this weekend regarding the changes to Disability Living Allowance proposed by the government.  Whilst we are primarily a carer campaigning group, many persons who live with disability are also members.

For disabled people and carers tied to the home, the World Wide Web is a great campaigning tool and we intend to continue using it as so. We have all found each other on the web so we decided to work alongside each other on issues that will affect our lives, and to make ourselves heard.

The blogswarm is an excellent initiative of Emma Crees, and full details of support given to date can be found here on One Month Before Heartbreak blog.

A master list is available and is being updated constantly.

It has most definitely been a weekend to remember – to witness many individuals, groups, bloggers all joining together to support One Month Before Heartbreak.

Face book and Twitter were inundated with posts/tweets and hash tags used included #ombh and #TboB.

The petition re DLA has been well supported too.

 What is DLA? 

Read the full article…

 

+ Kaliya Franklin speaks out about DLA reform

January 13th, 2011

While Millbank swarmed with student protestors and Mumsnet buzzed angrily about the reductions to child benefit, away from the glare of publicity, disabled people and carers mourned alone. The cuts to benefits and services affecting us really are a matter of life and death, so why the wider silence? Perhaps it’s because the benefits to be slashed are poorly understood and after years of tabloid scrounger stories the assumption is that people who claim them are living a lifestyle choice of state-sponsored ease.

read in full here

Kaliya Franklin blogs at Benefit Scrounging Scum

 

+ The Broken of Britain fight DLA reform

January 13th, 2011

The Broken of Britain is busy fighting DLA reform, ILF cuts and the botched ESA system. For now, the immediate goal is to stop DLA reform but as an user-led grassroots organization we need your help.

Firstly, sign the petition to stop DLA reform here

Use our campaign resource to write to MPs and Ministers here

Let supportive representatives and friends know how they can help here

To complete a submission for the consultation on DLA, we need user testimonies. Read more and help us here

 

+ Announcing One month Before Heartbreak

January 4th, 2011

Carer Watch,  along with many other individuals/groups , are helping to raise awareness of this campaign by Bendygirl
 
We had also ran our own campaign after the Emergency Budget 2010 .  One of our greatest concerns was that – Middle and Higher rate DLA are both also passport benefits to enable family members to claim Carers Allowance, removing or reducing DLA will not only have an enormous financial impact on disabled people it will also impact on their carers – a double blow which will especially hit hard those families on the poverty line.
 
We also ran a campaign asking people to contact their MPs.
 
Please support Bendygirl and this campaign – details below
 
One Month Before Heartbreak  ……..
 
is taking place from 14th – 16th January 2011.  This is a blog swarm (or blog carnival) style event somewhat similar to Blogging Against Disablism Day (BADD).    A Blog swarm is where people come together to post on their own blogs about the same issue and then share the links on a master list.
Drastic cuts have been announced in the UK to help reduce the monetary deficit.  The proposed cuts appear to disproportionately target the more vulnerable members of society, including disabled people.  When the cuts were first announced the government freely admitted that they hadn’t carried out a full analysis of the likely impact on disabled people.
The cuts include: ……..
 
see full details here
 

+ Stop punitive reforms’ – Prof Peter Beresford

December 16th, 2010

Peter Beresford, chair of national service user network Shaping Our Lives and professor of social policy at Brunel University, explains why he has signed the petition to stop the reform of disability living allowance and why benefits and social care must be seen as a complete system.

see full article here

 

+ Disability Living Allowance review:RNIB’s key issues

December 16th, 2010

Carer Watch received the following :

Please feel free to pass either or both of these around your own networks. We have the OK from the Work and Pensions Committee to make our evidence as widely available as we wish. 

1.4 The consultation document (on pages 30-32) asks 22 specific questions. This briefing does not go into that amount of detail, but sets out the main proposals and RNIB’s broad concerns.

see RNIB briefing here 

DLA (2010.12) (DWP review – RNIB’s key issues)

 

+ Sign this petition now

December 12th, 2010

Support BoB and sign this petition – here

We, the undersigned, urge the Minister for Disabled People to recall the Public Consultation on Disability Living Allowance (DLA) reform, and to cease work on reform of this benefit, due to serious flaws in the consultation paper. As such, the consultation questions are deeply skewed and any answers will be likely to support wholesale reform. This is both unfair and unwise, and will cause hardship for many disabled people.

The case for reform has been criticized, and then completely demolished, by the various disability rights groups fighting reform. Read the full article…

 

+ Letter to EHRC

December 11th, 2010

To Neil Crowther
Equality and Human Rights Commission
Dear Neil,
 
Within 7 days we have had the current government saying in the DLA consultation that it is too costly to sustain payments to disabled people of DLA, basically our lives are too costly to the state, and now the Independent Living Fund is to be scrapped by 2015 to save £330 million.
 
This is at the same time as local authority budgets are being slashed and care funding is being already cut drastically. Read the full article…