Your Letters – May 2011

European Disability Forum fails us

As a Green Party candidate in May’s local elections, I oppose the main parties’ approval of “massive cuts to local services” in the nation’s effort to “slash spending and cut the deficit”.

But I am also concerned that taxpayers’ money for the purpose of helping disabled people is being wasted on the European Disability Forum (EDF).

Less developed Eastern European countries have been represented by people promoting outdated methods of dealing with disability. For example, the Slovenian representative to the EDF is Boris Sustarsic.  Mr. Sustarsic tries to promote Slovenia as an Eldorado for the disabled and continually attacks organisations supporting aspirations to independent living of disabled people, even in other EU countries.

Kapya Panayotova, from Bulgaria, is co-chair of the European Network on Independent Living (ENIL) and agrees EDF should be abolished. She complains that Bulgaria holds the record in institutionalising disabled people, and children in particular. She is particularly critical of many of EDF’s Bulgarian members: traditional disability organisations, impairment based, charity oriented and heavily funded by the Bulgarian Government, they receive direct subsidies and then apply for additional funding for special projects.

Her view is that many of these bodies are already quite well off.  Their constituency is made up mainly of elderly and inactive people happy to cadge a free dinner, free vacation or just a day or two’s excursion to some famous place or social event.

Millions of euros go into institutional care; research reports have been produced and publicized. The impact has been nil.

I have had a head injury and my wife has spina bifida. The EDF is happy to describe most of us, prejudicially, as “people unable to represent themselves”, as if this kind of language can justify the institutionalisation of disabled people.

The EDF is not an organisation that exists to improve the quality of lives of disabled people but to enable organisations for disabled people to enhance their own role and status, even if it is to the detriment of the rest of us.
Tony Kellsall, by email

Austistic guidance

My son is autistic and I wrote to you in February about the failure of the system to support him.

In short, I educated him at home until the age of six and then again from the age of seven to eight years. During that time he made real progress in all aspects of his educational and social development.  

From six to seven and eight to 16 years, however, he attended specialist schools for autistic children, funded at great expense by local authorities. While in the educational system, not only did he fail to progress any further, but in many respects actually regressed.  

It is my contention that specialist schools are more like expensive child minding services due to a lack of appropriately skilled staff. I have now been left to pick up the pieces, in order to make up for all my son’s lost years. The challenges I have had to endure in starting a home education programme show that my decision, although absolutely a last resort, is already showing real results after just six months.

I am more than happy to talk to other families in a similar situation, should anyone wish to contact me.
Sandy Howarth, London W3

Disabled actors can act, actually

I would like to make my views known on actors in Hollyoaks (cover feature Disability Now, April 2011). That only a disabled person with a disability should play a disabled character.

To give an example, the character of Jackson Walsh (played by Marc Silcock) in Emmerdale is paralysed from the waist down, as a result of being in a train crash. An able-bodied actor was needed to show how Walsh ended up in his situation. Does that makes sense?

On the other hand, Emmerdale has brought in a character called Steve Kelly, played by Andy Walker, who was paralysed in real life as a result of a diving accident in Goa in 2006. The Back-Up Trust contacted Andy, who’d never acted in his life, but gave it a go. That’s more impressive than can be said for Bryan Kirkwood, who dropped Adam Best (played by David Proud) from EastEnders the minute he came on board as producer. Kirkwood used to work on Hollyoaks.

My mum thinks Andy is a hunk. How about having him in your magazine?
Alan Fox, by email

Where should disability cuts be made? Remploy could be one starting place

I read your online article on welfare cuts (“Hard times ahead”) and started to think that, since cuts are inevitable, we need to act pre-emptively, before cuts in essential areas are imposed upon us by others. Messrs Cameron and his friends in the Big Society project want all of us to be involved in the change. After all, “we’re all in this together...”

So who spends the largest chunk of money? Disability Living Allowance (DLA) is being looked at, and disabled people on Incapacity Benefit are moving over to a more strict regime, but what about the state? 

In these austere times where every penny counts, should the coalition Government continue to fund Remploy to the tune of over £150 million a year, given that so many social enterprise firms now deliver a similar and possibly better service, and provide a better fit to Cameron’s Big Society? It may not be on the same scale, but then they’ve not had secured funding for a lifetime like Remploy.

If user-led organisations and social enterprises could grasp the opportunity, would there still be a need for such a centralist government-funded body? If so, Remploy could be carved up and allowed to operate on a more flexible basis. (But could Remploy grasp such an opportunity?) 

It is a shame that such a large body, with resources to make a significant impact on society, doesn’t attempt to be braver in its actions. Instead we only hear of the company when it is either defend­ing itself or making stupid mistakes by insulting its own employees and having to settle the matter at a tribunal.

Such problems occur in all companies, but Remploy gives every indication that, having restructured its business, it hasn’t changed its behaviour. It continues to act as if it is looking after or taking care of disabled people, rather than empowering disabled employees to step up and manage its future.

That would be a model worth developing

Graham Hughes, by email