Your Letters - December 2010

Save our specialist schools!

In the October issue of Disability Now, your “one2watch” Dan Daw states that if he was Prime Minister he would abolish “separatist” special schools, and even special education in mainstream schools. This is reflective of a prevailing view among a number of disabled people that is as baffling as it is damaging.

I have Asperger’s Syndrome and up to the age of 16, I was educated entirely in mainstream schools. Throughout my education, fellow pupils bullied me because of my differences and teachers ignored my differing needs.

Even after formal diagnosis, my time at secondary school was spent having to deal with the negative attitudes of staff and pupils. At one point I was even barred from going on a school trip because my presence was termed a health and safety risk.

My experiences made me feel like a stranger in the world and increased the sense of social isolation inherent in my condition.

Then, at 16, I began three years in the special needs section of a nearby sixth-form college.

It was a life-changing experience. At last  I had found somewhere I belonged, surrounded by disabled people (most with very different conditions to my own) and sympathetic and understanding staff who were universally positive and enthusiastic about people with disabilities.

I felt more comfortable with people there than I have felt my entire life. It was there that my feeling of solidarity with my disabled brothers and sisters first took hold. And yet it is precisely this sort of environment that would be abolished if some sadly misguided disabled activists had their way.

I am a mentally high-functioning person without physical impairment. If I can experience prejudice and negative feeling in mainstream education, I shudder to think what a person with a severe learning disability or conspicuous physical deficiency would suffer if forced to run the gauntlet of mainstream school.

Far from Dan Daw’s “curricular isolation”, special education will always have a role, not only in providing a welcoming environment for all kinds of disabled people, but in the collective celebration of our differences from the general public.

As I write this, stories abound in the news about people affected by mental illness waiting three years to speak to a professional. Few people understand that the failing community mental health system is a direct consequence of the systematic destruction of dedic­ated mental hospitals in the later half of the 20th century.

Then, in-patients of such hospitals were pushed into isolation and largely abandoned. Now, disabled children are dumped into mainstream schools that are unable or unwilling to cater for their needs.

Then, as now, slogans about “inclusion” and “rehabilitation” were used to mask cost-cutting closures of specialist services for the vulnerable. Then, as now, the very people who should have challenged such rhetoric and thrown their weight behind the retention of special services were the ones found opposing them most vehemently.

Save our special schools!
James M. Brierley, by email

Child benefit cuts will do damage

As the parent of a disabled child, I am worried about cuts to Child Benefit. I stay at home and my husband earns just over £44,000. We will therefore no longer receive child benefit. This will affect us as a family. It will also disproportionately affect parents of all disabled children, especially where one parent has to stay at home to provide childcare. What can be done to address this issue?
Rachel Bridgeman, by email

I'm an occupational therapist: trust me

I’d like to comment on Alan Bernstone’s letter (“Has the Government really thought out its cuts?”, Disability Now, October 2010) about the impact of proposed cuts in the benefits system and pressure on work capability assessors to get clients off benefits.

In my experience, occupational therapists are best qualified to complete assessments in these situations. They look at their clients holistically – physically, psychologically and socially – and at how each individual functions in different environments.

I had a back injury and was off work for six months, but have made such a good recovery that I have decided to train as an occupational therapist myself.
Helena D’Mello, London

Think we're an easy target? Think again

Hundreds if not thousands of us have had letters from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) announcing cuts in Support for Mortgage Interest (SMI). SMI is being reduced to the Bank of England base rate. That means I am losing £30 per week.

I called the DWP who say they have had hundreds of calls and advised me to contact my lender. When I did so, I was greeted with a recorded message telling me that they had received hundreds of calls and telling me to contact the DWP. I rang Downing Street and was told that hundreds of people have written in and was referred to the DWP’s website.

The DWP website says that if you disagree with a decision, you can appeal against it and have a legal right to a written statement. I disagree with the funding cuts decision but the DWP refuses to provide a written statement. All it can say to justify this decision is: “The Treasury told us to do it.”

We are caught in a policy row between the DWP and the Treasury. If we lose our homes, the Government will end up paying out more money in Housing Benefit.

Am I the only one fighting this? We’re not being treated fairly because the Government think they have picked on a group with very little fight in them. Well, I think we have a moral obligation to follow this through. I used to work as a Housing Officer but I work harder now spending all my time fighting such decisions and trying to survive. I want other people out there who are feeling scared to know that they are not alone.
Mrs Findlay Judge, by email

Nadine Dorries MP: woeful and uninformed

Regarding your news story, “MP’s blog sets web a-twitter” (Disability Now, November 2010), I can’t help but think that Ms Dorries has missed the point, which is woeful, given her position in government.

“Disability benefits” (by which she presumably means Disability Living Allowance, as Employment Support Allowance is not commonly known as such) has nothing to do with the ability to work.

I find her attitude disturbing. It only goes to fuel misconceptions about disability, work and benefits, as well as adding to the disablism that we are facing every day.

Emma Reeves, by email