Your Letters – January 2012

Driving us to distraction

I feel I have to write to express my concerns over the new Motability rules coming in soon, particularly the one about second drivers having to live less than five miles away.

My husband is disabled and can’t drive. We have had a Motability car for many years and our son is the second driver but we only call on him on rare occasions if I am unable to drive for any reason.

Occasionally I have had to go into hospital for a day or two. The problem now will be that I can’t have my son as second driver as he lives about eight miles away, but I have no one else to call on.

This is a big worry for me and my husband. Who will take him for appointments if I am unable to drive on a particular day? It seems to me that able-bodied people who sit behind their desks and make the rules have no understanding of our needs.
Cynthia Dodson, Plymouth

I was about to write to you about the changes to Motability but Helen Dolphin got there first with her excellent article “The great Motability cave-in” (Disability Now, December 2011). Helen’s article exactly describes my outrage and frustration over the changes to Motability. How can they and the Government take away a disabled person’s ability to choose? Can you imagine the outcry if they tried this on the able-bodied population.

I am a 47-year-old stroke survivor. I set up my own consultancy after the stroke and I need the adapted vehicle to work (yes, work! – contrary to the tabloid view of us as scroungers). I had the stroke three years ago, and my first three-year Motability lease is due for renewal in March 2012.

I chose an Audi A5 for my first vehicle. It has served me excellently, both in terms of my personal needs and in my function as a managing director. I was lucky enough to be able to afford the advance payment, but I have to stress that I had the choice.

Having had the right side of my body and my self-esteem taken away overnight by paralysis, I’ve come to feel that one’s ability to choose should be a right because it makes daily life a little easier to bear.

Why then should Motability (set up to help disabled persons get mobile again) change their rules without consultation, effectively taking away disabled people’s rights? Our horizons are already limited by our disabilities. The fact that Motability are not really saving money dumbfounds me.

I’m also driven to despair by the new rule on second drivers.

My girlfriend lives more than five miles away and my bouts of tiredness and neurological pain means that there are times when I need her to drive my car when we’re out together. Why should we be penalised because of where we live?

Another spin-off of this ruling is that the premier car dealerships may have to make Motability staff redundant, as fewer of their vehicles will fall in to the nil advance payment bracket, with the inevitable on-cost to the Government’s job-seeking bill.

Having become one of the disabled community three years ago, I find a lot of agencies that were set up to make our lives better and easier have little or no positive effect.

Hopefully, Motability and the Government will rethink if enough people complain.
Peter Nicholls, by email

I’m the wife of a disabled driver who cannot walk, and I’m writing in support of Mick Higham’s comments about parking charges (“Letters”, Disability Now, November 2011).

Mr Higham is perfectly correct in saying that the primary purpose of the Blue Badge is ease of access to and from vehicles. Like him, we are also quite happy to pay for a space. The purpose of the parking space is accessibility, not financial gain, as he rightly says.

The two issues here are: (a) who gets to use the bays and (b) what benefits disabled drivers/passengers may have. These are two distinctly different areas. Only by being kept separate can arguments for both be made easier to manage.

Incidentally, it is hugely annoying to find disabled spaces occupied by four-wheel drive vehicles unequipped for mobility-impaired drivers or passengers.

Drivers of such vehicles are often rude when we’ve asked them why they are using these spaces. In one case, a woman using a supermarket disabled bay yelled at my husband “you disabled people think the world owes you a living” when he blocked her in and wouldn’t move the car until I’d come out with the shopping!
Name supplied, by email

The vicious circle of DLA reassessment

For a number of years I’ve been coping with spinal stenosis and secondary neurological disorders.

Last year, when we were first threatened with being reassessed for Disability Living Allowance, I gave back my Motability car for fear of its being taken away at any time and being left stranded.

Because of my symptoms and the fact that I cannot live without a car and don’t want to give up independ­ent living, which is what the Govern­ment was previously encouraging, I then took out a loan and bought a second-hand car which I pay for with the mobility component.

I’ve now been told that I wouldn’t meet the points needed to keep my mobility component. As a result, I have now acquired a severe anxiety disorder and depression, resulting from my acute fear of being stranded with no means to pay for a car and therefore no means to be close to my family and friends.

My life is in my car, but it appears that if I don’t stop the car every so often to get out and move, then I’m not disabled, and if I can have a conversation on the phone then I am not disabled.

I’ve started to feel that what little life force I have left in me is being squeezed out. I’m just waiting for the phone call (that I’m not supposed to be able to receive) asking me to drive to an examination (that I’m not supposed to be able to get to, because I should be getting out of my car every 15 minutes to recover), or for the letter (that I’m not supposed to be able to pick up or read), asking me to fill in a questionnaire (that I’m not supposed to be able to reply to).

Frankly, this has pushed me into a further state of dysfunctional anxiety about scenarios that haven't happened yet but are likely to. I see myself struggling to get out of the house to do a full-time job that I’ll only manage to turn up for about three weeks before I fall flat on my face with chronic pain (that I’m not supposed to have).

Where does one’s life go from here? Do we end up getting rounded up and marched into a field?
Gail Dutton, by email

Recycle now with Wheels

I was saddened by Norman Taylor’s letter (Disability Now, December 2011) about our failure to recycle medicines and equipment after the people who’ve been using them have died.

Wheels for the World is a Christian charity that recycles wheel­chairs after getting them reconditioned, if necessary, by prisoners at Parkhurst Prison. The chairs are shipped to countries in Africa, particularly Kenya, Ghana and Uganda. Teams of therapists go out to these countries and fit the chairs to the people who need them. Many of the people will have crawled all their lives, so receiving a wheelchair transforms their lives and gives them diginity.

We urgently need children’s manual chairs and adult self-propelling chairs, although attendant-propelled chairs are usable, as are other mobility aids such as walking frames, crutches and sticks. Power chairs cannot be used.

Anyone who owns and no longer needs any of the above and isn’t required to return them to the NHS can contact the charity on Through the Roof’s web site: throughtheroof.org.
Pam Parker, Wheels for the World