Welfare Reform – The Dread of Things To Come

Tomorrow the Tories will try to push through their new Welfare Reform Bill. Read the story about welfare reform in our new Soundings free-to-download ebook Welfare reform – the dread of things to come

Contributors: Peter Beresford, Kaliya Franklin, Declan Gaffney, Steve Griffiths, Sue Marsh, Jonathan Rutherford

Please help distribute the link via your twitter accounts and your work and social media networks. With your help we can get tens of thousands of downloads.

Sign the petition
People with disability and their carers have been reeling from the attacks on benefits and services and so far their voices have been largely discounted.

Please sign Pat’s petition click here

If we all get behind Pat’s petition we can register our voices in one place and make the government listen.

details taken from LWbooks newsletter

Carers need statement from Coalition Government re Carers Allowance

In support of Carers Week 2011, CarerWatch set up an information stand in a local Gala hall covering the period Wednesday 15th June through to Sunday 19th June 2011.  

The theme was the True Face of Caring and facts and figures can be found here

It has always been important to reach carers, to provide advice and information, and this year it has become even more vital.

Changes proposed within the Welfare Reform Bill, coupled with cuts to Social Services are going to have a massive effect on many familys.

Families providing care are a necessity and as the number of elderly increases and medicine breakthroughs continue, many people with illnesses will live longer…and the country will rely even more on the foundation that family carers provide.  Carers are a group of people who provide a vital service, yet governments past and present have taken them for granted, have taken their Love for granted.

Carers seem to have been completely forgotten, as benefits are changed around them. Both ‘Refresh Carers Strategy’ and ’21st Century Welfare’ – failed to address the issue of Carers Allowance and now the WR Bill is repeating that mistake. The only detail we know is that CA will remain outside of the Universal Credit.

 However, it still remains the lowest of all benefits, claimed by a group of people that contribute immensely to our society. We cannot and must not allow this opportunity to fully reform CA pass us by.

Carers are used to words of praise, more of which can be heard here from David Cameron last week  but it is NOT enough. No matter how much understanding he says the Coalition has, no matter how many times he says…Thank you, it is NOT enough.

Carers need action and they need it now

We need an election on the cuts

Letter in the Guardian   24th Feb 2011 supported by  Carer Watch

The government’s implementation of welfare reform is destroying the covenant of care between disabled people and the welfare state (Report, 23 February). The most vulnerable people in our country are being subjected to cruelty. The work capability assessment is not fit for purpose. It is denying employment support allowance to those whom the 2007 Welfare Reform Act deemed it not reasonable to require to work.  

The assessment lacks public and medical accountability. Criteria about what constitutes an “illness” and a “disability” have been increasingly narrowed over the years into a set of descriptors that fail to recognise the complex problems and needs of those who are mentally ill, or who have intermittent illnesses or communicative conditions. 

We want a system that is flexible and supportive of disabled people and which helps people into good, appropriate jobs with decent wages. One that values and supports those who are unable to work, and that insures us all against the misfortunes of illness and disability.

Jon Cruddas MP Labour, Dagenham & Rainham,

Neil Coyle Director of policy, Disability Alliance,

Anna Healy Labour, House of Lords,

Gavin Hayes General secretary, Compass,

Professor Jonathan Rutherford Middlesex University,

Professor Peter Beresford Brunel University,

Steve Griffiths Researcher and Consultant,

Rhydian Fôn James The Broken of Britain,

Frances Kelly, Rosemary O’Neill Carerwatch,

Alison Wiles, Anna Kennedy, Carole Rutherford co-founders, Act Now – Autism Campaigners Together

Budget fightback – Save DLA

Please come join us build this campaign to to protect Disability Living Allowance here

Support from groups

Responses already coming in include…

Mixed messages in the coalition’s plans for social care

by Peter Beresford  

The new government’s hardliner welfare team strikes fear in mental health service users and disabled people

Our comment can be read below Peters’ article.

Care system’s last days

While none of the big three parties have the answers, it is clear that massive change is ahead for the adult social care system.

Hopes that social care would be a big election issue seem to have faded. But it now looks even more likely that social care funding will be one of the big post-election problems that any new government will have to sort out. Worryingly, there still seem to be big questions for all major parties to answer about social care if they are to carry conviction

.

Read full article by Peter Beresford , professor of social work at Brunel University and chair of service user organisation Shaping Our Lives

Means-test welfare reform is a costly waste, says Peter Beresford

Once, when people talked about welfare reform, it meant trying to improve the lives of people as service users, citizens and claimants. Now it is more likely to mean another attack on people on benefits or a search for an easy way of making public spending cuts. But we can expect to hear much more about welfare reform in the coming months, with a general election pending and politicians on the lookout for easy targets for party-political points scoring and economies.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/oct/28/means-test-welfare-benefits