to think that disability affects you all?

[LadySybilDeChocolate]

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/a1380515-AIBU-about-the-government-lying-about-DLA#29486359 I'm talking about this thread. Your support is needed. Disability is an ongoing issue and the disabled are being bastardised at the moment. Children are having vital benefits cut, as are those who really need them. We all know someone who's disabled. By burying your head in the sand you're ignoring the needs of your relatives, your friends or your children.

I know plenty of people who have a disability. They range from my lovely nephew who is autistic to my mother who has Osteoperosis and heart failure. These cuts would affect my family. What about yours?

Or me.... desperately shocked just before the millennium when a very good friend of mine had a child with multiple disabilities.

Seven years later my eldest was diagnosed.
Eleven years later I have three children with multiple complex needs.

Or my parents old neighbour. He owned his own building firm, made a decent living they were comfortable.
They were involved in a car crash. He was killed outright and she suffered injuries to her spin and legs that left her in a wheelchair.

Thankfully they had paid off enough of tehir mortgage that the insurance pay out paid the rest. but she is now on benefits.

but its ok though cos few years ago non of this would have affected her either.

I don't think that being aggressive helps get the point across. We all take an interest first in what affects us. I do not have any poor, elderly relatives, so I take little interest in policies aimed at OAPs. However, if someone drew my attention to some horrible policy re: OAPs, I might then become interested and do something to make my views heard. We care about disability issues because of our children/ our own disabilities. Some, who have more time or knowledge, might care or know about disability issues even without personal experience. But I don't think that 'the others' are bad people - most do share our concerns once it's explained.

I don't expect those unaffected by these proposals to even know about them. They have been largely ignored by the media as we aren't a sexy enough story.

But there is one thing to say that you have been unaware of the issues and another to be deliberately provocative

I don't think i was aggressive. Just not willing to engage with someone purely to argue the toss. It does affect us, all of us. Same as proposals affect us... you too wil be an OAP soon enough and the laws being passed now will be in place and ready for when you get there.

the whole "its not me" attitude is so short sighted.

I agree that all benefits should be means-tested.

Benefits should exist only in order to support people to reach their full potential, not as a pity payment 'so that people can buy presents for their family'. As one Lord put it so sympathetically.

The advantage of the payment plan is that individuals can choose what they spend their money on and if the service is crap they can get it from somewhere else.

I think the impact of changes in the NHS will affect disabled people, particularly children, far far more with devastating effects. In market economy health service, the unheard will be even less heard and will be swept under the carpet. I've had several NHS departments try to discharge my dd from their services over the past year or so.

I used to think it was right that DLA was non means tested. That was until i heard that the millionaire that is David Cameron claimed it for his son.
That didn't seem right to me.

So yes, i think that it should be means tested along with all other benefits. I think there should be a far higher cut off limit, so as to accommodate those who are able to work but require assistance.

Children don't vote. The parents of Disabled children usually have too much going on to be able to fight campaigns to stop these sorts of things being passed. That is how they get away with things like this.

Pendeen

I never thought I would end up disabled , was healthy and fit , went to hospital in April with what I thought was a severe urine infection and a bad back . I left that hospital in a wheelchair paralysed from the waist down .

Maybe your not affected right now , but call it safe guarding yours and your family future because you never know what's around the corner . Because you don't want to be discovering that sagger net/ help you need no longer exists when you need it

Spenditwisrly

Your talking about Pip. May I ask what do you know about it .

The fact that if you can propel 50 m in your wheelchair . Then your not entitled to mobility at all . Im in a wheelchair full time can't walk but according to pip rules I will no longer be disabled I shall be the same AA everyone else . So the fact that a 6 inch step stops me entering a building is neither here or there or the fact I can not catch a train without 24 hr notice the fact not all stations are accessibile

So no adapted car , no lightweight wheelchair that I can lift into a car . Because the nHs do not provide lightweight proper active users chairs . So my DlA brought one at cost of just over £3000 and that's cheap as I need no extras .

Pip will take my independence away from me

I am not disabled - my DS is autistic though. Currently I receive £267 a month in DLA payments for him. This goes into the bank account and helps towards paying the rent etc. I work part-time as opposed to full time, this means I can be with my DS before and after school and give him the support he needs. He requires one to one support in school and would require the same in after school care putting the cost out of my reach - even WITH the DLA.
In any case the one to one support dies not begin to replace the support his Mum can give.

I am utterly hacked off but not surprised that this shitty Govt (who have no mandate lets remember) are planning to ride roughshod over the Lords on this issue.

They would have done better to spend their cash on targeting the 0.5% of fraudulent claims rather than shitting on those with genuine claims as they are doing.

I feel nothing but contempt for this Government - in fact they are beyond contempt. Taking money away from disabled people - it beggars belief.

''The thing is everyone is worse off.Is not just people with disabilities.'

This is true
e But remember we don't exist in a vacuum- changes to pricing, struggles in the job market etc affect us AS WELL as the rest. The battle is that we don't think disability should inevitably lead to increased likelihood of poverty, not wanting to be exempt from the real world. Everything ATM seems more likely to hit us: cuts to services that we have no choice but to depend on, cuts to financial services we depend on, struggles in job market that mean the flexible work we rely on is harder to come by...

As for disability excluding work: totally depends. I have a friend with severe CP who already employs eleven people at 20. There has never been a question of my ds1 with ASD not working, instead we seek things he CAN do and work towards those. OTOH ds3 without a miracle would be ridiculously hard to employ. He can walk, and sort of talk in a 'well he does but it ain't right' sorta way, but he can't be anywhere with more than a few people, needs someone over him constantly prompting to complete any task and drfits away. DH is self employed so we are aware that if we could not employ him in any capacity we can think of, nobody else could either.

As for me- well DH as I said above works, but self employed and currently low income but we are hopeful. I haven't been able to work for years, too many appointments for ds1 and ds3, being there for the taxis and the four separate schools we rely on and just general exhaustion from still being up at night with a 12 year old- so much so it led to a nervous breakdown at the end of last year, if I were working I would probably be on sick leave anyway. The plan for this year is that once DH can be mroe flexible and qualifies in June he will share that and I will start to look for work- but it's a shite market and will take time. The house lease precludes me working from here but I am looking to see if there are otehr self employment options to circumvent that. But at teh same time my remaining 2 chidlren have been referred (not both for ASD surprisingly, only one for that) so back on the appt merrygoround!

Childcare is a problem for us too.

Social Services told us if we palced aggressive ds1 somewhere and someone was hurt (inevitable) we would be liable. not that anyone would touch him anyway. His schools have never run after school clubs and now we are dependent on his SN Placement school he has to fit in with their bus schedule which means being dropped off here straight after school. A childminder used to take ds3 and she would love to have him- except that the taxi drop off is exactly the same time as the local school kicks out, and the Cm has to be there, not waiting at home for a car that gets stuck in traffic. It's not an option for her sadly. She has her own, now grown, ASD ds and she was fab with him when I was at university.

Besides, ds1 is 12 now and very little childcare exists after that age, one after school club with over a year's waiting list, that we couldn't afford to put a deposit on until I had a job- unworkable.

I did work until I had ds3, we could afford for me to be at home but dh's well paid job went with the first wave of 2008 redundancies. I think by Christmas we shall be on the right side again to climb back up but it's taken us years to unpick it all and pulling apart the support system as they are would have meant we were doomed to nothing after we were hit by the crap.

Oh and PIP- one criteria that may be dropped is the need for constant supervision. ATM if it is night and day that is a trigger for HR DLA Care.

How someone needing constant supervision does not need help I do not know, what am I supposed to do, pack in work when ds3 turns 16 to take him to a job instead and then sit with him whilst he pushes trollogs all day, provising a high level of 1-1 just to stop him walking in front of a car, wandering off or simply stopping.

Yesterday's sermon at the West London Synagogue of British Jews in Central London

benefitscroungingscum.blogspot.com/2012/01/spartacusreport-inspires-sermon.html

That's nice Kate

I was pleased to see Bishops voting fr amendments in lords as well

DLA / PIP thing is up next week btw

battle far from won. PIP is a shitey thing.

I do wish that on these threads there wasn't always one or 2 posters who come on to cause a ruck.
I also wonder if the people who say it doesn't affect them (now) also say the same about things like cancer. do they pay it to a pension, even though old age does't affect them now.
perhaps people should think of keeping these benefits as an insurance for the future when it will affect them

ABsolutely Seven

Also- I wonder if these people realise how it affects us who do deal with disability to find these threads here all the time? waking up on a quiet Sunday to see more crap.

My breakdown was caused by exhaustion but also by the constant 'words on a screen' on places like this. It is only becuase I have a good GP that I am not severely ill now, possibly in a MH Unit, possibly dead.

level playing field?

You have to use DLA to buy wheelchairs; no one seems to grasp this. The NHS doesn't provide usable equipment unless you are extremely lucky. Frex, the NHS wheelchair prescribed for DP is a folding car transfer assistant propelled chair, value of around £230.

He is quadriplegic with low sitting tolerance, so he can't sit in the chair (he just falls out). It has no head support (he's got a progressive cervical SCI). He cannot transfer without full cradle hoist and we don't have a car anyway. It is of zero utility. And now he has not left his bed for longer than one hour for three years, SIMPLY for lack of a chair. That is what people mean when they say disabled by society. For that whole time we have been engaged in a battle to get a powered chair. A powered chair that he would pay the bulk of from his DLA anyway!

When PIP comes in, having the chair could disqualify him from the payments, but as you need the payments to get the chair, in reality this means he would have neither chair nor money to buy one. (And if you don't think this is what would happen you have never dealt with the DWP.)

Imagine turning up to hospital in labour and being given two napkins and a lecture about gratitude. That's what happens when you're disabled. Every day. You're drowning and all you get is scornful commentary about how some people just seem to have this unwarranted sense of entitlement to dry land.

It doesn't need to be like this. This is a choice our society is making. This is a choice we are all making together.

link to e-petition for those who dont want to scroll through pages but want to do something to help.

Acumen - I had to buy my wheelchair too and it cost £2000 (the one that would give me an even better quality of life is £14,000 but that's not going to happen). The NHS said they would give me vouchers worth a couple of hundred pounds towards the one I have now. Oh but they would own it. Despite me paying £1800 towards the cost. So they could have it back when they wanted it or deemed that I had finished using it.

My heart bleeds for people like your dp. It is so utterly wrong that they could think it ok to provide him with the chair you describe. He deserves far far more.

I'm another person who thought I'd never be disabled. Was completely and utterly healthy and physically able. It turned out I had a genetic condition that was triggered by an accident aged 11. Over the course of a week I went from running around to having to use a wheelchair.

I can totally appreciate why people dismiss this issue and think it doesn't affect them but I promise your life can change in an instant. It might be the farthest thing you can possibly imagine happening. But it can still happen. And if it doesn't happen to you it will happen to someone you love.