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On 9th December 2009 Disability Alliance, with a range of national partners, launched Tackling Disability Poverty - a 'manifesto' of recommendations for routes out of poverty for disabled people and their families.
The launch was held at Westminster with:
Vanessa Stanislas, opened by describing the work of Disability Alliance, our commitment to anti poverty and collaborative work with member organisations, the Disability Benefits Consortium, Get Fair and the Coalition on Charging.
She then outlined the evidence and particular problems that disabled people face in terms of poverty, emphasising that Government targets fail to address disability poverty specifically. Vanessa focused on two specific Manifesto recommendations:
Terry Rooney congratulated Disability Alliance on the manifesto launch. He expressed concerns that currently disabled people face a cycle of poverty from childhood to old age.
He wants to see the rate of benefit for those on employment and support allowance (ESA) who are placed in the support group to be the same as that for pension credit and would also like to see a more generous streamlined permitted work system.
He would also like to see a take up campaign to encourage the claiming of disability living allowance (DLA) and attendance allowance (AA).
Kevin Caulfield saw part of the solution to disability poverty in the removal or reduction of local authority home care charges - as recommended in the manifesto. The Audit Commission found that charges discourage people from accessing support. At no point is the disabled person's higher costs of living taken into account.
In addition he believes that the reduction in service provision is having a profound effect on the health and well being of disabled people. Seventy three per cent of local authorities only support those with the highest care needs.
The result of this is that disabled people face various forms of poverty - financial poverty, poverty of self esteem, poverty in terms of expectations from life.
Kevin welcomes the manifesto because it outlines a route out of poverty if all parties are willing to follow it.
It was noted that the Equality Bill is now moving in the direction of wider interpretations concerning equality of outcome. Vanessa Stanislas welcomed anything which promotes the debate and results in improved outcomes for disabled people is to be welcomed. She was mindful of the current economic climate but stressed that some of the recommendations in the manifesto would actually produce financial savings.
There were questions concerning the expectations of manifesto stakeholders with regard to the Government and Opposition (the House) and how stakeholders could ensure the manifesto appealed to a broad coalition. Vanessa and Neil Coyle (Disability Alliance Director of Policy) emphasised that the manifesto is non-political. We intend to present a proper picture of disability. We can do this by focusing on examples of case studies.
There was also praise for Disability Alliance's social care green paper response. Disability Alliance would like greater clarification of the meaning of equivalent support for those on AA/DLA over age 65 who might lose their benefit as a result of social care reform.
There were concerns about the potential loss of AA/DLA, particularly for those who are blind, who are usually unable to access social care services.
The Spinal Injuries Association was less interested in allocating more money for disabled people but did want to see better targeting and more efficient use of existing funds. For example people under 60 are unable to access the Winter Fuel Payment.
Mark Harper, Conservative Work and Pensions spokesperson and shadow Disabled People's Minister also attended the launch and spoke briefly on defending Attendance Allowance and the Government's apparent u-turn on disability benefits potentially being used to fund care services in Government care reform proposals in a Commons debate on 8 December.
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