Hello all,

As you have probably seen in the news the previous government wanted to make changes to benefits such as Personal Independence Payment and Universal Credit.

Changing the benefits system would mean a huge challenge to some of the most vulnerable in society. Making claimants worse off.

The benefit changes which I am going to focus on are Personal Independence Payment. This is because as as a Disabled person this is something which I am more aware of.

I fully understand the Labour government has a deficit which it needs to fix. I fully support the idea of getting people who can work into work, if it is the right decision. But not all Disabled people can work. Not all areas of our society are accessible, which reduces Disabled peoples access to not only work, but life in general.

The fix cannot just be take benefits away and people will work. There are so many more layers to this.
Disabled people need access to specialist equipment, such as wheelchairs, hearing aids, Braille displays etc, which can cost a lot of money, they then ned to be able to access buildings which are not always accessible. The ‘Get Britain Working Again’ has so many different areas to it which need to be addressed it is not as simple as ‘heres a job go do it’. At least not for Disabled people.

The changes being proposed are things like replace money with vouchers. How long will it take to implement this? How many business are going to have to wade through filling in forms to replace a voucher given to them by a Disabled person just so they can exchange goods and services? Business will either stop serving Disabled people, making them even more marginalised, or the business will go out of business because they can’t keep going with lack of money while they wait for the vouchers to be exchanged back into cash. Meaning less services for Disabled people. Leading to more marginalisation.

Disabled people need better access to support and that is not going to come from putting more barriers in their way.

Follow stories of Disabled people online and you will see how unfair the system really is. Follow charities such as Scope (click here for Scope) and read about their campaigns to help Disabled to get the support they need. 

I am on Threads @VisuallyImpairedPip

I am in no way affiliated with Scope, I just think they do a great job.