Left Out In The Cold Press Release

On the eve of the second reading of the government’s controversial Welfare Reform Bill, on 9 March, disabled activist Kaliya Franklin stripped off to demonstrate what the result would be for disabled people across the UK if disability benefits are slashed to the bare minimum.

The photo shoot depicts a naked Franklin lying on the sand on a wintry beach, next to her empty wheelchair.

“I was absolutely frozen when I took my clothes off for the photo shoot,” says Franklin, “but it was nothing like as cold I and other disabled people will be if the government removes our essential benefits.”

The Left Out In The Cold awareness-raising campaign is being organised by disability rights group The Broken of Britain, of which Franklin is a founder and director.

Says Franklin, “It’s vital that every able-bodied person remembers they are just an accident or illness away from being disabled themselves. Many people think if they do become disabled that the state will look after them.

“But the fact is that even under current provisions, disability benefits are not enough for disabled people to live on. If the Welfare Reform Bill is passed, the situation will become unimaginably worse.”

In January, Franklin released a video on YouTube that explained how able-bodied people would be in for a major shock if they found themselves needing to apply for disability benefits. The video can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7EXSpmrVMU.

The Broken of Britain group has been campaigning since summer 2010 to raise awareness of the government’s wider anti-disability policies. The group has consistently drawn attention to disabled people being the target of unjust government rhetoric and sham consultations, tabloid slander and political myths.

It says: “We are now the targets of deep and damaging cuts to disability services that are contained in and symbolised by the Welfare Reform Bill. The Bill disguises cuts and changes to a number of benefits, from housing benefit to Income Support that will punish disabled people.”


Notes for editors

1. Kaliya Franklin and other case studies are available for interview.

2. A high resolution version of the campaign photograph is available on request.

3. For more information, contact Rhydian Fôn James at rhydian@thebrokenofbritain.org or 07774021785, or Kaliya Franklin at 07714208602

4. Contribution-related Employment Support Allowance will be restricted to 365 days, meaning that a married claimant would be unable to claim after a year if their spouse works. 

5. The Welfare Reform Bill confirms that Disability Living Allowance will be replaced by the Personal Independence Payment which will use unfair assessment and conditions to disqualify 20 per cent of the current DLA caseload. 

There is no evidence that supports government’s claims that DLA is “broken” and in need of reform. In fact, most evidence suggests that DLA is an efficient and popular benefit, and this support includes the vast majority of the DWP’s own research.

The inclusion of this benefit change in the Welfare Reform Bill took place before the consultation on DLA reform was completed. 

6. Other cuts to disability services not included in the Welfare Reform Bill are:

• Plans to remove security of tenure from social housing tenants, as costly adaptations are a barrier to moving regardless of size of property.
• Many changes to the provision, entitlement to and charges paid for receiving social care and disability services provided by local authorities.
• The Independent Living Fund which provided for the highest level support needs in combination with the local authorities is now to be scrapped without consultation. 
• Access to Work reform redefines what it is "reasonable" to expect an employer to provide for disabled staff, meaning it is likely to push many currently employed disabled people out of work and back onto benefits. 

7. Disabled people are more likely to live in poverty than any other group in the UK and more likely to be unemployed or in low paid jobs. 60% of those with a work-limiting disability are unemployed, with 25% wanting to work.


Left Out In The Cold by Kaliya Franklin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://thebrokenofbritain.blogspot.com/.

A Good Writing Day - With Links!

Last week, Mike from Artist Inlet Press contacted me to ask if I would write something for that site.  His only request was that I should write about something I'm passionate about.

I've been trying to do lots of writing and make progress with it over the last few weeks so I jumped at the chance to write that piece.  It's not a site I'd been to before but I've been reading some of it since then and it's got some very well written, lovely essays on there.  I'm pleased to have been asked to contribute and know that more people are seeing my writing.  I've been working on that today and as I wrote about sailing, really enjoying it.

Sail Away is now posted over at Artist Inlet Press.  I would welcome your feedback on it.

In terms of other writing, I also posted Don't Cut Us Out about a Scope campaign over on the Disability Voices blog yesterday.  If you live in the UK, please consider taking part in that campaign, it doesn't take a few minutes to do so.

Scope sent me a tweet saying they love the Disability Voices blog and telling me they follow my blog.  Then they did a Follow Friday of "some great disability related bloggers" and included me in that list.  I was incredibly flattered and pleased by that.

Finally I've set up pages on the sidebar which have links to all my guest blogs and articles which are online and also to my book reviews.

Why is the R word so offensive?

A few days ago an anonymous comment was left on one of my entries asking why the R word is more offensive to me than idiot or moron.

For some reason that seemed to be a bit of a difficult question for me to answer; I'm not sure why.  I think for me it's an obvious thing (not that I mean to suggest the person who asked the question is wrong, I should probably make my points clearer when I write).  I've been wanting to respond but not sure how to.

I think that both the I word and the M word aren't used as deliberate insults designed to target and hurt a specific group of society any more.  I'm not sure of their origins as words.  The R word however, that's no longer used in it's correct/original useage - to describe someone with a specific type of disability in a medical way.  It's used to ridicule and to hurt a specific group of people. Disabled people.  And it's unacceptable.

If you're going to take one thing away from this entry, you could take anything I've written above, I hope I've made it clearer than I did before.  But I'd much rather you went and looked at this post about a much loved daughter and the R word.  It says it much better than I ever could.

Or you could go and read about the battle Nicky Clark had with Ofcom and Channel 4 about the R word being used.  750 Mencap members gave evidence of the hurt and hate they'd encountered from the R word. Yet it still took a protest and multiple appeals before anything was done.  As Nicky wrote in her post, if the terms used had been racist or anti religion the apology would have been immediate.  This isn't a small problem, it's a big one.  Unfortunately however it's a big one not many people take seriously.

And I'm one of a group of people who want to change that.  That's why the R word bothers me more than the I word (idiot), the M word (moron).

The Resistance Campagn

If you're in the UK, please take the time to sign this Not Dead Yet petition.  It's asking MPs to take the time to sign up and say they support the Resistance Charter.  By signing the charter they will be declaring that they will support palliative care and independent living services and also that they will maintain legal protection for disabled and terminally ill people.

There is also the option on the website to e-mail your MP about the issue - which I've done

Basically a lot of people are concerned about what might happen to the rights of disabled and terminally ill people - and the services a lot of people rely on if euthanasia was legalised.  Personally I see it as potentially being a bit of a step backwards in terms of awareness, inclusion and disability rights.

Here is the link The Resistance Campaign

Equality and Disability Rights

I just received an e-mail from Scope about their equality campaign.

National disability organisation Scope is calling on the Government to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities as a matter of urgency.

The Convention is the first treaty in history to give the millions of disabled people across the globe comprehensive human rights and recognise that disabled and non-disabled people share a common humanity.

The Convention is the first human rights treaty of the 21st century and was the fastest negotiated convention in the UN’s history. Negotiations involved individual disabled people and their governments from all over the world, but at present the Convention is not enforceable.

20 countries need to ratify the Convention before it becomes legally binding. So far only five have done so. The UK is not among them.

The UK should demonstrate its full and lasting commitment to disabled people’s human rights by being one of the first 20 countries to ratify the Convention and sign the optional protocol.

If you are British or are resident in Britain, you can sign Scope's petition calling for the convention to be ratified here

And in other news, Katie Thorpe will NOT be having a hysterectomy. That was in Scope's e-mail too.

I find a lot of that article disturbing and think it could have been a lot better written. Of particular disgust/concern to me is the the headline "Teenager refused hysterectomy". It's not exactly a bad thing that the hospital said no, is it?!?! They have said that when Katie does get her periods they will consider doing a partial hysterectomy IF a clinical case for doing so can be proved. Her mother claims in the article that they have proved a need for Katie to have the "necessary evil" removed. Obviously the NHS Trust don't agree.

In other words, the excuse "She's got CP" ain't enough.

I am pleased by this development but saddened that it's not made more of a splash in the news - it's HUGE. I also want to note that I think this equality issue becomes more and more of a feminist issue too as the stories come out. We've still heard nothing about boys having their growth halted prematurely or puberty prevented due to disability - but I'm sure we will someday and that they'll be more of an outcry than there has been for Katie and for Ashley. Cos they aren't just disabled, they are girls too.