AIBU to just want to shout “ other disabilities exist “

[winterplease21]

it seems that everywhere at the moment including newspapers, forums , government are trying to cause debates surrounding the cost of disability to our country. This could be welfare costs, educations costs etc etc

every single one of theee debates turns in to only about those with ADHD and Autism.

the constant comments “ everyone wants a disabled child, they are all teaching eachother to get diagnosis’s “
I don’t have an opinion on this but don’t people realise that not all EHCP granted are for adhd / autism and as quoted the 1 in 10 secondary school children on disability benefits are not all autism and ADHD and there is a lot of other reasons why children may need extra funding at school and disability benefits.

every disability debate I’ve seen just turns on to those with her are nuerodivergent.
im not saying they they are not important but to those harping on how there is too many disabled people like sorry we can’t exactly reverse a brain injury, heart disease and organ failure 😩

A quick Google search contradicts your statement about 1/4 cars in the road being a mobility car so where are your stats from? How do you get a mobility car for acne?

Perhaps you don’t know but mobility cars aren’t free and for those with get them as DLA it’s around £334 per month and often with a lump sum paid at the start of the contract. It’s not benefits and a car, the car replaces the full mobility payment.

I think this is certainly a big part of the issue with all kinds of benefits.

We can say all we like - this should be covered, this should be covered, and more, and there could be entirely good reasons to do so.

But that doesn't create the money for support at the level people want it to be available, or for the infrastructure.

So the option are reduce waste, which is limited, increase the cash, which means increase productivity which is actually going down, or decrease benefits.

Urgh. Another “I work with kids…..” expert.

Children with Autism mask. It’s what they do. I see my daughter “accepting” boundaries set in school, then coming home and entirely melting down because she has spent all day following those rules (which often are not put in place to benefit her) We have boundaries for her that suit her. We work with her to make sure she is able to cope with her day-to-day. If I had £1 for every time her school have said “but she isn’t like that here” I’d be a very rich woman.

The fact is, your setting is designed entirely to look after those children, it is your only job. Where parents have a home life that means juggling a whole load of things to provide for their autistic child, and other children in the home, it is never as simple as “just setting boundaries”. If respite care is being reduced on the basis of you deciding those children are not autistic, that’s scandalous. What I see happening is local authorities deciding they can’t afford respite for all the children who need it and removing it from families who’s children they decide are not disabled enough to deserve it. Leaving parents to cope alone, impacting on families who are already hanging on by a thread. Worth noting that in many cases, as Autism can be genetic, undiagnosed autistic adults are trying to do all this whilst facing their own barriers.

Parents are not looking to have NT children diagnosed in order to get benefits or respite care. They are asking to be taken seriously and not judged as bad parents by people who don’t have a clue what they are going through.

Mental illness just look other disabilities can range from mild to profound

So your assumption is that no one tries to get benefits that isn't eligible?

That seems obviously silly, and statements like that will make people question your judgement generally.

@BoredZelda

Urgh. Another “I work with kids…..” expert

Oh a posster who has taken my opinions as personal attack! Ugh!!! 😆
Cool your jets! I didn't say I was an 'expert' but a FSW!

Of course young people like your daughter mask. However the yps im talking about aren't with us for a few hours but weeks. It is not anADHD/ autism unit or a specialised disability unit i work in and the issues are not always around mental health or cognitive behaviours.

Anyway i was mainly commenting on parents who are trying to get a diagnosis for their children when there is nothing wrong with them once we've unpicked and supported family life.
The trouble is those that do push for a diagnose make it harder for people like your dd to get support or others that are genuinely struggling to get help quicker.

You clearly don't know not much about my job for you to say its only to look after them, its not. That is just a small part of the role. I'm not a carer fir children with disabilities.

DWP claims that PIP had a 0% fraud rate in the samples cases last year. Obviously that doesn’t take into account applications but it doesn’t suggest it’s given out to those who aren’t eligible very often. At the time there were 3.4 million people claiming it.

Yoy absolutely cannot get disability car for acne, maybe anxiety but it would have to be do so severe it prevents you from undertaking a journey firm A to B
You will have been mislead by those daily mail articles who say something like three people questioned ( I'm just plucking a random figure here ) who had a mobility car had acne ,you have to list all your conditions so yes those three people will have had acne, but they were also paraplegic for example
We have a mobility car for my son and one of his conditions is constipation, he ,s also severely autistic with severe learning disabilities and is entitled due to his severe mental impairment, but one of his conditions listed is constipation.

I agree with this (my child also has ADHD)

I do think there’s an issue that there seems to be an ability on the part of middle class parents to get an EHCP much more easily and quickly than those who can’t pay for assessment.

I have a feeling that autism and ADHD are massively UNDER diagnosed in those children whose parents don’t have money, or the time and awareness of what is available to be pushy, and quite possibly over diagnosed in those children whose parents do.

My youngest son has asd and ocd. He is an inbetweener so to speak. He wouldn’t fit in a school specifically for SEN and he barely copes in his mainstream school. He masks hugely whilst at school but will unleash everything at home.
When I went to Early help for help with him their first suggestion was that I apply for PIP for him. I’m well aware of PIP etc as my nephew is physically disabled from birth and never going to be able to have an independent life.
I was quite taken aback by the suggestion to claim for my son. He walks fine, he isn’t a danger to himself, he needs prompting to get dressed but so does my NT elder DS. There isn’t anything he requires that mine or his dad’s income doesn’t meet. I did say this to Early help who then questioned if I needed help. It was really pushed that I should apply for PIP for him.

There was a big article in the Sunday times setting out the stats and included the fact they had found an example of a motability car for acne and another for anxiety.

I understand that the cars are funded by transferring other benefits. My view is that we cannot afford a level of benefits which covers running a car for so many people and too many conditions qualify.

people will now give worthy examples and ask if I think they should qualify and no doubt I would agree that many should, but we can’t afford the total bill so something is going to have to change and I would rather the most severely impacted by untreatable disabilities have a good level of support even if that means others have theirs cut or removed (or ideally some of the savings used to fund MH treatment so they no longer need taxpayer support).

Unfortunately some of the DC diagnosed are impacted by their environment, poor parenting, bad diet, no positive stimulation, ipad all week, classroom disturbances, labelled ADHD or a social development/emotional disorder.
If the same child had boundaries, a good diet, limited screen time, they wouldn't be the behavioural problems.
There is websites that advise parents on how to maximise benefits.
Some diagnosis are down to environmental factors.

I don’t understand your point about the EHCP. It’s needs based and the LA do the assessing, so there is no cost to the parent.

We claim DLA for our children.

Yes one does have autism & ADHD but he also has a learning disability. My second child gets DLA for type one diabetes which a very expensive disease to mantain and if we didn’t he would have complications fairly quickly & pass away.
So I completely agree with you, far to much focus on autism & ADHD.

I can’t find that article for the stats. Can you screen share? The person with acne - what other conditions did they have? Because they won’t have got any rate or mobility for acne, as it’s not possible, so what were the other disabilities that they also had?

The thing is PIP/DLA goes off care needs anyway; it has never gone off what people’s diagnosis’ are. So the acne report is just typical rubbish journalism.

Mobility cars are the hardest to get I find ( high rate mobility ) my DC is attached to machinery for an organ failure, has CP and uses a wheelchair and we can’t get one.

Middle class parents can afford private ED psych evaluations and SLT reports.

Motability say they have 860,000 customers which doesn't really match 1 in 4 cars on the road. I did read that they represent 1 in 5 brand new cars purchased each year.

Of course, I’m just trying to remain polite and make the poster educate themselves into realising this as they keep searching to try to maintain their argument. It’s already gone from you get cars for acne and anxiety to there was one solitary example seen in a newspaper….

The number is actually 1/5. It has increased from 1/8. You would suggest that’s because people are now getting more “free” cars because they have acne. In fact what’s happened is the “1” part of that ratio hasn’t changed. The number of motability cars being ordered each year has largely remained stable for a long time. It’s the other part of the ratio that has reduced. New car registrations across the board has plummeted since the pandemic. More people work from home, fewer companies have fleet cars, cost of living means people are not buying new cars. This is also evidenced by the boom in the second hand car market in the past 5 years. To put it plainly if out of 100 cars sold, 13 were motability, that gives you 1 in 8. If now only 60 cars are sold, but 13 are still motability, that gives you 1 in 5.

My daughter’s “free” car is going to cost us £2,900 in down payment, plus £500 for adaptions, and will take the mobility part of her disability benefit. This is largely the same as it would cost to lease the car outwith the scheme. She won’t be able to build any no claims bonus so if she comes away from the scheme in the future, any money she saves on not paying insurance will be eaten up by paying full price for insurance. If we went private on her car at the moment, insurance would cost us £3,000. Because direct line exclusively insure motability cars, they have a different risk profile for those customers, Motability are not paying that amount for her. It also means we won’t be ripped off by lease companies deciding the tiniest ding to a wheel means they all must be replaced when we hand it back.

If we wanted to replace the car we have for her at the moment, the down payment is 5k. The trope of people getting free BMWs on motability is so obviously false. To get an i4, your down payment is 6k.

To suggest we can’t afford to support disabled people because the numbers are too high is ridiculous. Can you imagine if the government said there are too many children to educate so we just won’t educate them all? The numbers are high because the systems in place have routinely ignored what started as a minor problem but is now a bigger issue. You can’t shut down schools, the NHS and remove services for disabled people for 2 years during a pandemic and expect to open them up and things are the same. Schools have been blaming parents for the poor academic and behaviour issues with their children for decades, and we’ve been telling them they are wrong. When parents took over educating their ND children in the kind of environment that allowed them to flourish, it became clear that is wasn’t the parents or kids who were the problem. Of course when those children had to return to schools, more parents are pushing for EHCPs in order to get the best for their child.

If the country can’t afford to support poor and vulnerable people, but still feel they can afford to give tax breaks to wealthy individuals, wouldn’t a better idea be to reduce the tax breaks for wealthier people? The argument against this is that rich people will leave. Nobody considers that the argument for cutting support means that generations of children will fail. Their life outcomes will be poor, they will not be able to support themselves, they will live miserable lives, and die young. Perhaps that’s actually what the government is counting on.

Are you implying they bribe the professionals into writing what they want because they can afford that? Otherwise it might interest you to know that some EPs and some SALT or OTs do both LA and private work. They have to ensure their integrity is maintained.

Are you also aware that some so called middle class people have far less money than some so called working class?

motability say they have 633000 actual cars (benefitting 860000 people). That’s less than 2% cars.

That’s a jump - that’s not what I said at all 🤣🤣
but some local authorities drag their feet in getting an ed psych evaluation and trying to get your child refered to SLT in many places is near impossible. Being able pay to see one speeds up the process.

I paid privately

No they didn't they will have found that somone with a mobility car also has acne amongst other conditions that make them eligible for the higher rate of mobility.