Disability Now. Our voice, our lives.
32 years ago Disability Now was founded to provide a strong platform for debate and discussion of disability issues – a platform where disabled people had their voices heard. Scope has funded Disability Now for 20 years, and we are proud that in that time the publication has showcased the huge diversity of voices and talent …
Continue reading “An update on the future of Disability Now”
Work and pensions secretary, Damien Green claims to be bringing a more benevolent approach to reforming welfare. But Ruth Patrick argues that the decrease in the benefits cap shows he hasn’t entirely abandoned the old agenda and rhetoric. As a supposedly compassionate conservative, the new Secretary of State at the Department for Work and Pensions, …
Continue reading “Benefits cap calls Green’s ‘compassion’ into question”
Providing support for a blind friend is about more than making sure he avoids obstacles, says Daniel Levene, as he prepares for the onset of his own blindness. When Wayne describes the day it’s like he is describing a Rothko painting. “It’s red with a thick band of yellow across the top and a thinner …
Continue reading “Wayne’s world: a friend and carer’s perspective”
The fictional trial of Helen Titchener for the attempted murder of her abusive and controlling husband Rob has reached its crucial point in BBC Radio 4’s daily soap. Academics Kirsty Liddiard and Katherine Runswick-Cole reflect on how this storyline all too clearly reflects the reality of life for too many disabled women. Over the last …
Continue reading “Archers story is disabled women’s dark reality”
Writer Richard Willis looks back on his experience of mental illness and asks what helped make him better, what made things worse and whether recovery is possible. Yes, I did feel better after that first injection of Clopixol in Woodcote Ward at the Mayday Hospital in London back in 1987. I sat down at a …
Highwayman Dick Turpin once famously preyed on travellers crossing Hounslow Heath. But now wheelchair user Ray Bellisario has found new danger on the town’s highways. It’s a narrow winding road in suburban Hounslow on which cars, buses and rushing delivery vans whizz by. You are in a wheelchair wanting to get to Asda or any …
Continue reading “No dropped curbs on Hounslow’s street of shame”
As a founder member of the UK disabled people’s independent living movement, John Evans finds nothing to celebrate in the result of the EU referendum. 23 June 2016 will not go down for disabled people in the UK as “Independence Day”, as coined by Nigel Farage. In fact, it will go down as the blackest …
Continue reading ““Dismay, horror and heartbreak” over where “Leave” leaves disabled people”
A Body Undone: Living On After Great Pain (A Memoir) by Christina Crosby Reviewing this deeply personal account of life after impairment, Sophie Partridge finds some things with which she can identify and others which trouble her more. As a Born (a disabled person with a full-on congenital impairment), I’m often nervous approaching something written by `an …
Continue reading “Book Review: A Body Undone: Living On After Great Pain (A Memoir)”
Dr Lin Berwick has high support needs, which up till now have been met by the use of 24/7 home care. But following the introduction of the National Living Wage in April this year she’s been alarmed to discover that her care package is unravelling. Let me make it absolutely clear, I have always tried …
Continue reading “Care and the cost of the National Living Wage”
The discovery of one young disabled YouTube blogger lead Rebecca Shewell to do some channel hopping and find who else is pulling in the punters. One day at work as a teacher in a secondary school I noticed during form time that nearly half of my Year 8 students were reading the same book: Girl …
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