To think there is a definite surge in annoyance towards the disabled?

[WarySwan]

I have seen it in real life. Not just social media forums and news outlets where every other post seems to be about 'free money this for disabled' and 'free cars'.

My 2 children have autism. They get highest rate DLA. About £800 a month. We get respite care funded that costs the tax payer about £700 a month.

Just had an extension on our new build house, housing association, brand new bedroom and ensuite installed. Free of charge through the council.

Motability 7 seater car. 25 plate.

People seem to just see this and see the money. They do not see the costs that are present because of disability. The amount of time and resources it takes to keep 2 profoundly children at home.

They do not see that my children will need 24/7 care for life. 2-1 support in public. The constant cleaning and caring. Waking up at the crack of dawn, years on end. Cleaning smearing and endless washing. Endless marks on your body from a child who doesn't get that taking a chunk out of you will hurt that much and scar

Watching your eldest almost die as he can't speak a word or use a communication device. Meaning appendicitis went undetected until he was almost dying. The constant battle of keeping a cannula in his arm with hospital staff just not getting why a play therapist does not bloody cut it and he needs constant supervision that I cannot possibly do 24/7 without moving from the bedside. The weeks spend in recovery because of this.

If we do not or cannot provide this care, residential placements are about £40,000+ per month. Yes. Per month. It is eye watering in cost. That won't change anytime soon because social care is beyond shot to bits.

My children deserve the best life possible. And a dignified society should surely want to ensure this happens? Children who are not disabled and their parents have options. They have chances and doorways. Mine will never work. Never have a marriage or children, they won't even be able to cook a basic meal.

There is no overtime or upskilling for me. No situation where they fly the nest and I can focus on my career again. Unless they become some dangerous through no fault of their own that a 40k plus a month placement goes ahead as the alternative means I could die or be seriously injured, and that would mean they'd be at risk if I am literally unconscious on the floor.

They still deserve dignity and compassion. The chance of a good life. They are very happy currently. Good routines that are followed to a T. Safe at home because I have the resources to do it.

Care placement does not save money. Unfortunately. It would cost over ten times what I get in benefits.

I have seen so many mentions of people saying those on benefits should have no savings at all. Nothing. Really? You think my life isn't hard enough? You think I shouldn't be allowed a small nest of savings too?

When I finally drop down from caring, I will have next to no pension. After spending a lifetime ensuring the state doesn't have to take full responsibility for 2 adult men that will mean at least 4 paid members of staff are present at all times.

I am not just talking about MN. It is everywhere. Even 'funny' reels on Instagram targeted about how the disabled get this and that. How they should all drive a basic tiny car that has something written in bold to make sure everyone knows its a free car, as if they're really disabled, they'll use. That'll stop the chancers eh!

This is NOT about criticism towards PIP and DLA for things people deem questionable... even though they almost certainly dont have all the facts. This is about the blatant and not hidden disgust and begrudge of help to those with lifelong and profound disability

PEOPLE keep saying in black and white, no room for confusion in their words, that the disabled get too much. That it isn't fair.

I suppose this thread will get deleted. But a lot of views seem to be going unchallenged about the disabled that wouldn't be allowed if it was about something else that's suppose to be a protected characteristic. Seems to have quite a few comparisons with a certain country in Europe 80 or so years ago. When the hatred and deceit was being thrown around and brain washing people before not many years later, the public became okay with euthanasia of them.

Hell, I am sure we are already there for some. As I have seen with my own eyes, people commenting on MN and the likes of social media where their bloody name and pictures of themselves and their work can be traced, that euthanasia could be an option, ideally.

Institutions might be the only way society can afford to care for massively disabled people.

The OP's two children would cost £960,000 a year in care, based upon the OP's claim of £40k per month.

Given the national debt burden, costs do need to be cut.

Personally, I'd abolish PIP for all the invisible illnesses.

My 9 year old, actually.

And pardon the assumption, but if you didn’t think eliminating the cost of disability was a reasonable/sensible discussion, you wouldn’t be having it.

The level of “philosophical debate” you appear to be interested in, at least in part implies that you agree with assigning QOL quotas to disabled children and doing away with the ones who don’t meet it, because it’s cheaper.

If I’m wrong, do correct me and explain what your actual motive is here.

You'd seriously abolish pip for people like me who have both hearing and sight loss plus a load of neurological problems including vertigo caused by a head injury?

I actually think this is quite interesting.

Christianity generally is pro-life.

this means that the general position is that life is a gift granted by god and that this should be respected.

this has several implications which can be seen in broadly Christian societies - firstly the traditional Greek and Roman practice of simply exposing or throwing on the town rubbish dump unwanted babies is frowned upon. It becomes not ok to allow a baby to die.

it also becomes not ok to kill yourself. Suicide becomes a crime in medieval Christian societies because it is rejecting the gift of life that god gave you.

it doesn’t mean you should never kill anyone else - this is held up as the ideal but it is recognised that there are situations where it is necessary. Which leads to the rather odd situation of medieval bishops riding to war with any weapon other than a sword because they may not spill blood but can happily crush someone’s head.

other religions and other cultures do not have this perspective. So as mentioned the Greeks and the Romans exposed unwanted babies at birth (and there are a lot of plays written around the problems it causes when a shepherd finds the baby and keeps it) but there’s no sense of this being immoral.

equally, China and India are notorious for favouring boy children to the extent that they are significantly unbalanced in sex ratio and this can only really be due to abortion/infanticide on an extremely large scale.

japan also famously does not have the Christian prohibition against suicide with seppuku being a normal part of culture in their medieval times and kamikazi suicide planes a significant part of world war 2.

mostly the reason the U.K. and europe and America thinks the way it does about moral situations is from broadly Christian values. Other cultures either in time or in space do not think that way.

My MIL declared herself a 'poetic savant' to me a few weeks ago. She's been collecting diagnoses for years now and has decided that autism is her new thing.

That is good for you, really, that you feel that way about it.

But that is really not everyone's experience. Many people have children who do seem to be suffering, whose moments of joy are few and far between.

But also, this isn't just a discussion about parents, it's about society, and society does not always look on things like this with the eyes of a parent. Sometimes it very much pressures parents to do what it thinks is best for society.

Good god, I suggest you go back and actually read what has been written by @TempestTost in particular. If you actually read the posts you will see just how much you have got the wrong end of the stick. You seem to think that because @TempestTost acknowledges the existence of things or views that somehow means they approve of them or are advocating for them, In fact it is pretty bloody evident that they are in fact flagging the dangers of how views and beliefs can incrementally accepted by a society without people really realising what has happened.

In the west, yes.

elsewhere, absolutely not.

You wouldn't abolish PIP for all the invisible disabilities because if you were in charge of such decisions you'd have advisers. And they'd remind you that disability benefits, like other benefits are pragmatic rather than altruistic. That the knock on cost of people not having their basic needs met through accident of fate would lead to a really unstable society which would be very unpleasant all round.
Even people without moral compass, basic compassion or ethics can understand cold hard cash.

I’d say most people give value items to the food bank because while they want to help they’re also trying to save money and buying value items for themselves… not because they want people to know their place.

I donate value items. I also volunteer every week at the food bank so I know what people want and don’t want. And I buy those exact same items for myself.

Course they would. No wheelchair, no disability. 🙄

(And that sounds like an awful lot to contend with btw, I feel for you. Some of us do get it.)

Their utopia would also involve shutting kids in institutions to save money because they understand neither the welfare state nor the economy. I think we can safely ignore uninformed batshit crazy twattery like that. All the best to you.

The institutions would cost nearly £million for OPs children so why cut PIP when it is so much cheaper to have OP care for them?

Think back only a few years and you had swathes of people with autism and/or learning disabilities having DNARs placed on their file without their consent during the pandemic. Chilling.

I work with adults with learning disabilities - some with a huge number of co-morbid conditions - and for whom the right wing rent a gob crowd on here would view as not being worthy of life or having a quality of life - and I get more joy and common sense out of many of my working days (spent with clients - not with management who distinctly lack common sense) than most people do in months and months. We should view and judge a society by how it treats its most vulnerable - and we're still fighting massive health inequalities in ours.

I'm also autistic and probably kind of a poster boy for the whole "autism is a superpower" twaddle - I'm in a job where I can use my ASD as a strength, where I do well in my career, where I'm respected among colleagues and in line for promotions... I had people fighting to get me to apply to them when I graduated. So autism can't be that big a deal right? If you're high functioning you've got it sorted right? Nope - the cognitive load I have to work through to navigate social situations most people don't have to think about and the mental burnout that causes me is huge. I work twice as hard to be able to be seen to be an equal to my colleagues and it is fucking hard work slogging along through life with an invisible (and increasingly stigmatised) neurodevelopment disability. It's not a fucking superpower - it's just a bad luck roll of the dice I got off lightly with really - and no I don't have a Motability car, I don't get any benefits (we're even over the child benefit cut off these days) and I drive a knackered Corsa with a dent in the side and a questionable approach to starting on a cold morning. I've been incredibly lucky, and also incredibly tenacious to get to where I am now - but my mental health is fucked, my physical health can be dicey as well and I DO now blow my own trumpet a bit about how much harder I've had to work to get where I am - and not everyone is going to be able to, or be as lucky as I have been - and society needs to support and value these people too.

And family carers are fucking amazing. They can understand and communicate with their relatives better than any communication aid, system or well-intentioned person is ever going to be able to... they cope with mountains of literal and metaphorical shit on a daily basis while keeping a sense of humour and remaining sane, and again, society could learn a hell of a lot from them and doesn't value them anywhere near enough. (I also know some lovely small group supported living places that aren't the sort you're likely to see on Panorama - so it's not all dreadful out there too if that helps)

I have a lot of sympathy with the posters on here who are worried about the public purse. We have to be pragmatic about these things and some members of society are just really expensive to keep alive. Consider fascists for example: they cost Germany far more than disabled people ever did. Moreover, fascism seems to run in families (this is actually true, I'm a political psychologist) so there are things we could do to stop breeding so many of them.

I wonder, therefore, whether the right-wingers on this forum have done anything to plan for and ameliorate this risk in their own families. You might only be a little bit fascist (maybe you're a "high functioning" fascist who's really good at masking), but if your partner is right wing as well then you might have a child that is "severely" right-wing. Have you considered not breeding ? Or maybe just having one and then a really long break while you wait to see if your firstborn has any sense of empathy.

I also think it's important, just for the sake of debate, for us all to discuss the conditions under which we might decide that one of your children was enough of an arsehole that we would subject them to some kind of lethal injection.

I hope no one gets offended by this or gives me a shirty answer. It's so important to be rational about these things.

Would be particularly keen to hear from
@kornwall
@ACatNamedRobin
@CanSeeClearlyNowTheRainHasGone

Astounded to see such a large portion of my thread has been posters 'pondering' a good old Hitler style final solution to disabled people. What a depressing thread. Not sure depressing even cuts it to be honest

@Plainspoken

I also think it's important, just for the sake of debate, for us all to discuss the conditions under which we might decide that one of your children was enough of an arsehole that we would subject them to some kind of lethal injection

Round of applause for you 😂😂👏🏻

I wasn’t asking you, I was asking your friend.

You are making a lot of assumptions that don't seem to have any kind of logical thread behind them.

I think resources are finite, no matter what. I think what resources we have need to be balanced fairly, which does not mean everyone gets the same amount, It means that all are equally important though. One child might need more help to get a good education, however his right to a good education isn't greater than the right of another child in the classroom.

I think if people think there is a lack of balance, or injustice, in how resources are distributed, they will become "annoyed" as the OP said, and it will probably lead to change eventually. Whether that is appropriate or not.

I think that it is a belief in equality of value, balance, fairness, and social trust that underpin the possibility of a welfare state, and that a sense that there is a hierarchy of value, and that some people are taking advantage, is the fastest way to undermine that. I think if people are seeing this themselves in their lives and communities, trying to deny it happens worn't work, it makes it worse. (eg, the person up thread told that it was wrong of her to notice that people talked openly about defrauding the system.)

I think making decisions about how to balance finite resources can be really hard. And because it's hard, we need to look very carefully at the principles we use so we can apply them carefully. How do we decide what is fair for all - it's often very complex and deciding to prioritise some does not solve that complexity. We also have to look very carefully at what is actually going on, for example in terms of increasing diagnoses. I personally think some things we are seeing, for example with ADHD, are iatrogenic illness and that should be addressed with real urgency.

I think we need to guard against the idea that some lives are not worth living, and that suffering means life is not worth living, which seems to be all too common a view now -I suspect has a large element related to fear of loss of control. But if people come to accept this idea it has massive knock on consequences for society.

I think combined with worries about resources, many people do not see the danger we are walking into as a society with that idea.

Thanks.

Do you think it’s legitimate to be concerned about the distribution of resources to vulnerable people who need them?

Do you think it’s appropriate to begrudge disabled people the resources they do receive, because if there’s one thing that’s unfair it’s someone having a Motobility car that you don’t, even though you don’t need one?

Or do you, like most sensible people, think disabled people are scapegoated and attacked because they actually are less able to fight back. Easy targets.

I appreciate the warning that society may decide that we need to assign a QOL quota, it’s great to hear you don’t agree with that.

But on behalf of all SENd parents everywhere, if society does decide our children’s lives aren’t worth living, we will tell them promptly - to fuck off.

Unless you are serious of course and want to have a discussion about killing people who have differing political views to yourself and by extension their families. TBH I am not sure it's really that controversial a standpoint to suggest it happens as it is a tactic that has been used by both the left and the right politically multiple times in multiple countries. What is the particular aspect you want to debate?

There's no need to get so defensive, I'm literally just asking questions. Let's all try to be a bit less emotional 💕

That's where the argument is, unfortunately. Some people think other people are better off dead, or not born (e.g. some countries encourage abortion of Down's Syndrome babies). The Assisted Dying Bill is a great big Trojan horse here - when what we need is social care and palliative care properly funded (which means running the economy properly and for what it is for: the people).

See that response could have worked had I been affronted by your post but, given my response, your comeback doesn't really make much sense 😉I am sure you will have another go though!