Please or to access all these features

Anyone seen this piece on Riven in the Guardian?

1 reply

LindsayWagner · 10/06/2011 10:27

It's here.

Reading again the details of her daily life reminds me a) what an astonishing woman Riven is and b) how ashamed I am to live in a country which can treat its most vulnerable members with such disdain.

I'm so glad the Graun are following up on her and Celyn's story. She says she's tired of campaigning - of course she is. I can't imagine where she found the reserves of energy in the first place - imagine it's similar to people finding superhuman reserves of strength when their lives are under threat.

There seems to be a bit of a lull in coverage of these issues at the moment, while everyone waits for the full effects of funding cuts to become clear. But at some point the gob-smacking, almost-inconceivable reality - that the cuts are being carved out of the daily lives of families like Riven's, who probably thought their lives couldn't get any harder - will be impossible to ignore. I really, really hope we don't let this one go.

KateMumsnet · 10/06/2011 19:40

Hello everyone

MN Campaigns are really keen to keep this issue live - here's our campaigns page just in case you've not seen. Every Disabled Child Matters are attempting to track which authorities are spending what, though it's a bit of an uphill struggle from what I can gather.

Clearly there's concern that the localism agenda may make it harder to press for the (non-ring-fenced) extra funding to actually go towards short breaks. But local authorities have a statutory duty to report back on what they're spending/planning to spend in this area by a certain point in October (will check exactly when) - so in theory at that point we'll have a clearer picture of what's been going on, and what our next steps should be.

We'll update you as soon as we have any news - and please do let us know if you hear anything of interest, either on this thread or by starting a new one in campaigns.

Watch this thread for updates

Tap "Watch" to get all the latest updates

End of posts

There are no more MNHQ posts on this thread