Paper highlights government-created barriers to work for people with disabilities
Brick wall: Wheelchair-user Abbi Brown may have felt that using public transport was like running up against a similarly-impenetrable barrier.
This is a pleasant surprise.
I had expected an article in The Express about the way people with disabilities are kept out of jobs to be an attempt to pressgang them into inappropriate positions; it isn’t.
Instead, it highlights the problems faced by people who want to work but are hampered by attitudes to their disabilities.
So we read the story of the woman behind the Maltesers “disability” advertising campaign, whose journeys to work took twice as long as anybody else’s because rail operators have failed to make their journeys accessible for people with disabilities.
We learn about the man who struggled to get job interviews until he stopped mentioning that he is almost totally blind.
He works in information technology using adapted software and magnifiers that mean the quality of his work is not affected.
He was even put off attending an interview by one firm’s illegal attitude to his guide dog! While he did take part, after reminding the company representative of their legal obligation, the experience convinced him that he would not want to work there.
Finally, we were told about the man who tried to use the Tory government’s ‘Access to Work’ scheme – only to struggle with asphyxiating bureaucracy and the short deadlines it demands.
These are real problems for people with disabilities who want to get into work, that the Tory government has done its best to ignore.
For example, nine railway operators have had the deadline for making their trains accessible extended after failing to do anything about it. What happens when they break the new deadline? Will it be extended again?
A fat lot of good that will be for people with disabilities.
And what happens to those who are blocked from work through no fault of their own?
They have to claim state benefits – and readers of This Site should know very well how badly the assessment systems are rigged against them.
We end up with a situation in which some of our brightest and best people may be thrown onto the street to curl up and die, simply because they are slightly different from the rest of us.
This is a timely article from the Express.
It reminds us that, while the UK is becoming demonstrably racist amid the controversy over Brexit, there is a terrifying undercurrent of disablism going generally unreported.
Source: How one million disabled people are shut out of employment in the UK | UK | News | Express.co.uk
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Rather amazing that these things are only now being noted in MSM. Well after a GE that should have highlighted this appalling state of affairs. How strange they bother now.
There is another angle to it though that I’ve noticed. All of a sudden there seems to be more JCP advisers/Work Coaches with obvious disabilities, and whilst there’s nothing wrong with that it does make me wonder if it’s an unofficial policy intended to make the unemployed look bad whilst signing on or being interviewed about their jobsearch and inability to find employment, so as almost to remove the excuse of age and/or health problems as being barriers to finding work, if you see what I mean. It’s like them ‘saying’ by their very presence in the role, “well I’ve got a job and I’m more disabled than you are, so what’s your excuse, why haven’t you got a job?”.
This has been a common attitude because the D.W.P are only interested in meeting there targets, regardless of the out come or circumstances we are used as a group of people who have not got the capacity to understand what is going on with this Government Body.
We as a group of people try our best to try to tick the boxes that are put into us trying to meet the Job Centre time that are set out by the D.W.P.
But this is to make sure we don’t have our benefits sanctioned.
We are never listened to about appropriate jobs or how our disabilities or difficulties affect us.
I have a disability and a difficulty but I can also speak from experience were organisations say they are Positive About Disabled People.
This is very common because organisations are since AUSTERITY things have changed due to peoples change in attitudes. Because one of the Conservative past M.P.S said we are Liabilities rather than Assets.
So there has been a big move backwards to the discrimination that is now very common, and just want you out of there department or area,its not nice but is very common with the use of Occupational Health.
([email protected]).
The Tories closed down Blindcraft and Remploy – both were really good for ordinary people and for management training if people wanted to progress further,. Not many disabled people are Cambridge graduates, rather than families with a smaller income than they might have had due to caring, and the simple extra costs of disability. So many disabled people could only hold down a part time, flexible job due to their being disabled by a long term condition, which flares unpredictably. . Back in the day when they gave (not loaned) people things iike beds they were in desperate need of we (the social security, but it is so far from that now) used to get all beds from Blindcraft. Employment and support going hand in hand, to the benefit of local economies. Of course we must support our young and super talented disabled people, and I may be cynical thinking this is another Tory divide and conquer ploy, since no mention is made of the majority of disabled people, and how to support them. I remember reading heartbreaking pleas from the people who had been working in Remploy, their identity and support had been taken from them, and there was nothing to replace it. We need a revolution in transport, and we need a revolution in our ways of thinking of the disabled. Sadly I don’t think this will come from the Tories, who are increasingly in thrall to big business, and have a negative attitude to “state interventions” like Remploy.
there is a group of people who, while not that noticeably disabled, still are. ive been classed as disabled since i was 49yrs old. now 77 . in the years since first diagnosed with 3 of the conditions i have, others have been added on, plus age problems (which occur collectively in most elderly people and which creep up on you many times without you noticing till one day something happens to stop you doing yet another thing you took for granted.) Back end of last summer i went to Leeds. on a train. didnt realise till i came to stand up at my stop , there was no grab rail with which to pull myself up.. i had got on the train in my home town no problem. as the train came to a standstill in Leeds a young man offered his arm for me to use as a grab rail. thank you whoever you are/were. i got off the train then with no problem. but going home, i couldnt get ON the train. the platform edge was around a foot away from the step and no rails near enough to grab to pull myself up onto the train. no porter we could find either. landed up being pushed from behind by a middle aged man and pulled from the front by my arms by my grandaughter who was with me. having put her toddler in her pushchair on the train first.most undignified,not to mention a tad embarrassing.i refused to sit down all the way home. and was glad to get off in my home town.the middle aged man was there to help me get off the train though i didnt actually need it getting OFF the train. but little things like that can get the better of you. my world is shrinking more now because i can no longer go on a train anywhere and riding a bus to these places takes around 3 times as long and plays hell with my back and shoulders. im ok on short journeys though still need that grab rail to pull myself up. i maybe should have written to the transport people in Leeds or York. but didnt think of it till just now. though i doubt they can do anything about it. obviously from my experience that day i concluded that not all station platforms are so far away from the train doorways/step. maybe it was a one off. but i was far too tired that day, and not breathing too well , to think about checking other alternatives. at my age you want to be sure a journey will run smoothly (barring accidents of course which cannot be helped)…… a lot of whats spoken of in these forums etc deal only with the big problems disabled people face. but the little ones can be just as bad if it means that person not being able to do that journey again or even do any by train.