Your Letters – December 2011

Soldiers: not cared for then, not cared for now

I read Ian Macrae’s editorial (“Casualties of more than war”, Disability Now, November 2011) with some interest. In my experience, no disabled ex-serviceman has ever received proper help. Nor have I.

I was injured defusing IRA bombs in Northern Ireland and dumped in an NHS hospital where staff were told I’d probably die. Shoved into a side room out of the way, I spent four days in a coma and got minimal care. When I regained consciousness, a penpusher from the MOD told me I should have died and should not expect any compensation for living. He was right: since then I have received no benefits and no pension.

That was 26 years ago. It’s only in the last two years that I’ve managed to get DLA. They even tried to take my Incapacity Benefit off me last year, on the grounds that I should have been getting a government pension, and the local authority wrongly included a war pension in my income when assessing me for housing and council tax benefits on the basis that

I ought to be getting one. They wouldn’t listen even after I sent them the MOD’s letter of refusal.

I still don’t get the NHS help that I need because they can’t supply it, and so I live in chronic pain. Only in the last two years has my income gone above £100 since my accident.

There is no covenant of any kind between service personnel and government, and the current Government is trying to rip us off even more than the last lot.

It’s been over 360 years since Oliver Cromwell introduced professional soldiers and we’re no closer to getting real help now than we were then.
Ken Walters, Ormskirk, Lancashire

Recycling? No thanks

My wife recently passed away after 15 years coping with a brain haemorrhage, and I’ve had to throw away the valuable things she left behind.

These have included unopened sealed tablets, sealed bottles of medicines delivered just before her passing, six sealed bottles of feeds (18 to a case), seven unopened packs of incontinence pads (28 to a pack) that I fought to get but which the district nurses now have no interest in taking from me.

These are things that many people have to pay for, and that I could have given them for free. It makes me feel that this country has gone mad. We can’t even send them to Third World countries.

Anyone know how to recycle a wheelchair?
Norman Taylor, Neath, Glamorgan

ALS's 'misleading' signs

We read with interest Anne Wollenberg’s piece (“Signs of better access in court”, Disability Now, November 2011) about the recent outsourcing of interpreting and translation services to one supplier, ALS, by the Ministry of Justice.

In this piece, Ms Wollenberg quoted Anthony Walker of ALS on purported discrepancies in assess­ment standards between spoken language interpreters and BSL practitioners. While we support our deaf and deaf-blind interpreter colleagues, we feel we must respond to these.   

Spoken language interpreters are most commonly assessed as fit to practise by the Chartered Institute of Linguists’ associated charity, IoL Educational Trust, through an examin­ation called the Diploma in Public Service Interpreting (DPSI). The DPSI is a professional qualification that has been developed and tested since the Institute recognised the need for regulated public service interpreters in the UK in 1983.

The qualification is robust and rigorous and tests an interpreter’s ability to operate to the highest standards of professional practice. It is accredited by Ofqual and entered on the Qualifications Credit Framework (QCF) at Level 6, the same level as the Signature Level 6 NVQ Diploma in Sign Language Interpreting, the qualification certifying fitness to practise for those who want to become a British Sign Language/ English Interpreter.

For Mr Walker to state that BSL practitioners have “faced and met far higher standards of assessment and scrutiny of their skills than those working with foreign languages” is therefore not only misleading but false.
Sarah Heaps, Marketing, Communic­ations and PR Manager Chartered Institute of Linguists

Getting a ticket can also be a problem

I get really annoyed when people presume that because we walk we do not need a Blue Badge.  

I live alone and cannot afford to pay someone to come with me when I go out once a week. When I go out, I have to do everything for myself. The trouble is, I find it almost impossible to park, then walk to the ticket machine, then queue to use it, then walk back to the car with the ticket, and only then walk to wherever I wanted to go in the first place.  

This means I only go to places where there is free parking, and that means driving 13 miles rather than to my nearest shopping centre just over a mile away. Even then I have to use a wheelchair-accessible café for a good sit-down before I start browsing the shops.

Hospitals also cause me problems as they require the purchase of parking tickets. I dread going and feel that my health is suffering consequently.

I have emailed the NHS about this problem. So far, nothing has changed.
Iris Hendry, by email