Two can campaign as one

The disabled and old age lobbies have so much in common that they should campaign together on the social care funding crisis, says Andy Rickell

I have been amazed. An issue which is all about disabled people’s support has been in the headlines for several months and disabled people and disability were hardly mentioned in the mainstream media coverage.

I am of course talking about the “social care” funding crisis and the intention of the government to review it.

If you were a member of the public not generally knowledgeable about disability, you would be entitled to think that social care was only about older people, and all to do with age.

Your mindset would be thinking about elderly parents and old people’s homes, people having to sell their houses to pay for “care”, and the “demographic time-bomb”.

The Independent Living Strategy, or supporting disabled people into work or to be parents, would be ideas and words that were unknown to you.

As a consequence, I think that the politicians, either accidentally or deliberately, have separated the two things.

They can and may intend to tackle social care funding, but only in some parallel universe separate from the rights of disabled people to independent living.

The politicians know that older people and age is a powerful political lobby.

Older people tend to vote and so do their middle-aged children. Most older people only need state support in old age, so they are used to political participation and getting their voices heard.

They see their needs to be due to age, rather than disability, and for lots of understandable reasons don’t see themselves as disabled people, even though they make up half of the disabled community.

In comparison, people who have acquired impairments before or during birth, childhood and early adulthood – those more ready to see themselves as disabled people and who are advocated for by the disability lobby – are seen by politicians as a weak lobby.

They are more diverse in identity, they are generally much poorer because of the consequences of lifelong discrimination than older disabled people and they have less access to the means to get their voices heard as individuals.

So it is absolutely in the interests of disabled people to build links with their more powerful older colleagues, even though older people may not see themselves as “disabled”.

This, of course, is not without problems. The disability lobby and older people’s lobby do not always see their issues as common.

In both worlds, large organisations exist that are run for people rather than by disabled or older people, and so the opportunity for direct dialogue between disabled and older people has been limited.

The age lobby seems to be more dominated by a few big organisations than the disability lobby, which for impairment and ideological reasons is more fragmented.

I am sure that the big disability organisations will see the benefit of working with the big age organisations.

But a key issue for all of us disabled people, whether or not we are older people, and whether or not we call ourselves “disabled”, is for us to work together directly, possibly even building new and exciting campaigning groups to champion independent living for all and a rights-based “social care” funding settlement.