Posts Tagged ‘maria miller’

Pat’s Petition – Urgent Call for Action

Sunday, September 2nd, 2012

Friends,

We have now reached the last two months for the epetition ( sign here ) and now, more than ever, we need your support.

Charities like Disability Rights UK, Carers Trust and Carers UK have added our flyer to their newsletters, and grassroots organisations including Disabled People Against Cuts, Spartacus, Act Now for Autism and many more  have promoted it.

You may already have done this in previous months. But can I ask you to repeat it?

Send it to your contacts, media organisations, charities, trade unions and local community organisations, anyone who can send it on further. Don’t worry about duplicating the message – they need to know we all want this to succeed.

With the Paralympics and the week of ATOS protests, as well as the recent TV programmes about the Work Capability Assessment, we can see that people are becoming more aware of the perfect storm that lies ahead. But we do not have much time to get this petition to 100,000.  Virgin Trains achieved their target within one week. The changes impacting on disabled people will affect far more people.

Now is the time to act.

I have copied the text of our flyer below – please use it and edit it to suit your situation. We recommend making sure you include the epetition link to make it easy for people to sign.

If you need more information, or want a formatted version of the flyer, please do just get in touch.

Thank you, Pat x

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Pat’s Petition

URGENT CALL FOR ACTION

SIGN THE PETITION AND PASS IT ON http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/20968

Stop and review the cuts to benefits and services, which are falling disproportionately on disabled people, their carers and families

The petition is just one of many actions being taken by disabled people and their supporters. The idea is to get a debate in parliament. To force those dismantling our public services, rights and entitlements, to account for themselves. There is no illusion that the petition will stop anything by itself. But every small action joins with other actions, so that together they can make a difference.

A small group of volunteers has got this to over 44,000 signatures. Now we need to get it to 100,000 by November 1st.

Together WE can do this.

So please sign, and as important, send on to friends and colleagues. Add to e-newsletters, blogs, and social media platforms – spread the word.

Further information here – Pat’s Petition 

 Contact Pat – patspetition@gmail.com

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       Download a copy here   -    Call to Action sept 2nd

 

 

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Posted in care crisis, Pat's Petition, social care, welfare reform | No Comments »

This isn’t a dress rehearsal. This is reality

Tuesday, July 17th, 2012

With the help of caring GP’s and some excellent medical services I have managed to care for David for nigh on 20 years. As his spine continues to degenerate he needs more help, support and treatments. The injuries he sustained are now compounded by the additional disintegration of his shoulder and hip. Further complications of memory loss caused by many years of strong opiate based prescription drugs make life very hard for him.

He has many other related conditions – some minor, others more invasive. His package comes untidily wrapped with chronic pain ribbons and reactive depression bows.

The calendar is filled with hospital appointments; follow ups with his GP and little crosses to remind him to change his morphine patches. His drugs, which started in a biscuit tin, now take up 4 shelves in the kitchen cupboard, with an overflow to his bathroom and bedside locker.

A gentle man who can be reduced to a screaming wreck when the pain becomes so unbearable not even the morphine works. A screaming wreck hurling obscenities at me whilst banging his head to make the pain stop. A screaming wreck who is my gentle husband, and I can do nothing for.

I am told I am valued by society. I am told there is help for me to deal with being a carer. Oh really? Let’s start with social works. They can’t visit, as they are 3 social workers short. They only have 4. Earliest appointment is 3 weeks away but they may be able to squeeze me in before that. They manage a squeeze – likely at some other’s cancellation – and I am assessed. The assessment joins the previous one with the same words written on them. ‘No services available.’

This isn’t a dress rehearsal. This is reality. Who do we turn to? We keep being told; ‘vulnerable people’ will be supported. No they won’t – they aren’t. No one is.

Ignore them while their conditions deteriorate which then needs costly treatment. Help them before they become unable to function with some normality. Hasn’t it always been ‘prevention is better than cure?’

Maybe, but not any more. Welfare Reform has slashed Services at local level. Benefits cut to disabled people across the country. No longer any services provided and you don’t have any of your disability allowances to look elsewhere. Doctor – help me. What can they do? Nothing without that fall back safety net of care. Suddenly more and more people are admitted to hospital. No beds – no resources. If you do manage a bed you will get no care on discharge. Back on the merry go round again.

No government would completely abandon those in real need would they?

You’d better believe it – they would, and they do.

Sign my petition  and share,  asking your family, friends and contacts to do the same. It asks the government to -

Stop and review the cuts to benefits and services which are falling disproportionately on disabled people, their carers and families

Pat x

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Posted in care crisis, Pat's Petition, welfare reform | 3 Comments »

Learning Disability Alliance Scotland fully support Pat’s Petition

Thursday, May 10th, 2012

Ian Hood, Coordinator of the Learning Disability Alliance Scotland said,

We fully support Pat’s petition.  The implications of the proposed welfare reform have been poorly thought out by the government. We recently carried out research which found that up to 40% of people with learning disabilities could be adversely affected by the changes to Disability Living Allowance. In fact, nearly one in ten might lose all entitlement to benefit leaving them thousands of pounds a year worse off.  Pat’s Petition calls for a halt to this process and will allow the government time to make much needed changes to protect those with disabilities.

Report ‘Worse Off’ can be read here

Pat’s Petition now has over 36,000 signatories and needs your support.

Please sign and share, asking others to do the same.

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Posted in care crisis, Pat's Petition, social care, spartacus report, welfare reform | 1 Comment »

Maria Miller sits back and waits for the ‘car crash’

Wednesday, May 9th, 2012

You wouldn’t change the layout of a busy road junction; add traffic lights, a roundabout, a cycle lane, a pedestrian crossing, plus a one-way system all on the same day without studying the effects first. I hear those who say they have witnessed similar works and it has been disastrous. Cars crashing, people getting knocked down and no one knowing which way to go next.

This is actually happening. Not with traffic cones and diggers but with disabled people with real lives under the heading of Welfare Reform.

The Lords challenged the government when they brought in Welfare Reform and said it was one big social experiment and that they were being asked to sign a blank cheque. The government said they would monitor it as it went along. Stable doors and horses come to mind.

Now the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR) is challenging the government to conduct a Cumulative Impact Assessment. Law requires this.

It means look at all the individual changes and how they add up and interact. It means look at the totality of the changes taken together.

It is one thing to look at each change by itself. For example – look at what impact changes to Disability Living Allowance might have -  the loss of a care package, inability to meet huge heating bills or be able to leave your home. To many disabled people DLA enables them to get to work to pay their ‘hard earned taxes.’ Reduction or loss of DLA will result in a loss of their employment.

The so-called ‘spare room tax’ hits those in work as well as disabled and long tem sick. The government is trying to uproot vast numbers of families from London to a city hundreds of miles away. Oh yes they CAN stay but only if they pay another stealth tax. They can’t afford it so leave friends, move children to completely alien schools. All this allegedly to save money.

How will cuts to local authority budgets affect those in need of respite? To be able to go to local day centres and give their unpaid carers a little time to themselves?

What impact will losing legal aid have at a time when welfare changes may mean more appeals?

What is needed here is an assessment of how all the changes affect each other.

We know there are so many changes at the moment. Welfare Reform – cuts to local authority budgets – legal aid, NHS in England, pensions, Remploy, to name but a few.

How will these affect each other?

Do we just wait and see and pick up the pieces later? Or do we look at and change it before the worst happens?

Like the new traffic system. Any one of the changes could possibly work but put them altogether and it is a disaster of magnitude proportions.

Support the JHRC in its call for a Cumulative Impact Assessment.

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The government have set up an epetition site so that people can let them know what’s important. They said they would consider debating any petition which achieved over 100,000 signatures. Signing a petition is the simplest way of letting them know this is important.

Please sign Pat’s Petition and encourage friends and colleagues to sign it too. By everyone sharing the link we can gather more signatories.

Join us on Face Book here

Follow  @patspetition  on Twitter

Want to do more?    Make a noise

Let charities you belong to and your MPs know that you support Dr Francis and the JCHR’s call for a Cumulative Impact Assessment. Make sure Maria Miller knows that she can’t just sit back and wait for the car crash

Contact your MP here

Send support to JCHR here

Letter from Maria Miller to JCHR    an extension has been granted till May 21st

Question asked in Parliament by Caroline Lucas

 

 

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Posted in care crisis, Pat's Petition, social care, spartacus report, welfare reform | 1 Comment »

‘Smalls’ and their tantrums

Saturday, January 21st, 2012

The BBC news presenter was half way through the story of ‘benefit caps’ when I turned the television on. It nearly went straight off again as I thought -  here we go again.  What are we being accused of now? I stayed to listen – perhaps it would have a happy ending?

Mr Duncan Smith told me ‘ministers were determined to get HIS reforms through Parliament.’ It was so like a small child, going through that stage of grabbing whatever they want, and shrieking ‘MINE.’  You can not reason with them – cannot explain they can’t just take what they want. Try doing that and they will throw themselves on the floor having a screaming tantrum.

Smalls have no concept that their actions will hurt and upset others. This is a life skill they’ll learn as they grow into adulthood. Learn that they can not automatically take things as and when they want.

Somewhere through his life Mr DS never quite grasped those skills

The Minister went on to tell me that it was ‘important that taxpayers saw the system as fair.’ Ah so that’s it. Fair. He wants it to be fair. Well not really fair to those it most affects, but tax payers. A very noble breed of upright, honest citizens. Hang on a moment. Every man, woman and child, who, from the moment they get their first few pounds of pocket money become a tax payer.

But I don’t think he really means everyone. He means that even rarer breed who are lucky to have jobs. Now he is making sense. He wants any benefit to be a stop gap until you get up off your idle, scrounging backside and get one of those mythical jobs. If you choose not to join the ’round the block and over the hill’ queue outside the job centre you will be punished. You will have no money in your pocket. Money which is just loose change to a man who tells you the system must be fair. 

So not a happy ending to this news item. It joins the very long list of Welfare Reforms Mr DS is grabbing from those, he thinks, are least able to defend themselves. Wrong. We are not giving in to your tantrums.

Please sign my petition which is for all of us. Share it as wide as possible. Our numbers are growing, our voices growing louder.

Set yourself a target of getting at least 5 others to sign and for them to do the same.

Pat x

 

 

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Posted in Pat's Petition, spartacus report, welfare reform | No Comments »