Save Disability Benefits and Services

A Fair Society – How the cuts affect disabled people by Simon Duffy

Full details can be found here – The Centre for Welfare Reform

The government seems to have made no effort to understand the cumulative impact

of its cuts on minority groups, especially those with the greatest needs. It has rejected

calls for a ‘Cumulative Impact Assessment’ of the cuts despite the obvious fact that

those with the most severe disabilities now face the combined impact of:

Social care cuts

Benefit cuts

Housing cuts

Regressive tax increases

For this reason The Centre for Welfare Reform, on behalf of the Campaign for a Fair

Society, has done its own analysis -

Using the government’s own figures, it is clear that by 2015, in England alone, local

government and housing will be cut by

£16.2 billion. This is a cut in real terms of 41.9%.

Social care for children and adults makes up

60% of all spending over which local

authorities have any control. Data collected over the past two years indicates that social

care has already been cut by nearly

£4 billion, and will be cut by £8 billion by 2015, a cut

of about 33%.

Benefits for disabled people and the poorest will also have been cut by

£18 billion, a cut

of about 20%.

When we look at the combined impact of all the cuts we find:

People in poverty (

21% of the population) bear 39% of all cuts.

Disabled people (

8% of the population) bear 29% of all cuts.

People with severest disabilities (

 

2% of the whole population) bear 15% of all cuts.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, January 17th, 2013 at 11:41 am and is filed under care crisis, Pat's Petition, social care, welfare reform. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.