Showing posts with label Independent Living Fund. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Independent Living Fund. Show all posts

Austerity and the Independent Living Fund - Inhumane Bureaucracy and Lies.

A friend of mine, who is wheel chair bound as a result of her life long disability, has been told that both her care provided by care workers and her Independent Living Fund will be reduced.

Savings must be made. She must live a more austere life for the sake of the Nation's Finances.

The Independent Living Fund is being cut back, for purely ideological reasons. Her life is being curtailed for purely ideological reasons.

Here is her statement:

"I am an absolute wreck today! Finally saw a Social Worker yesterday about the impending closure of the Independent Living Fund, which Social Services are supposed to replace - they are proposing to not only Not replace my ILF Care (7 hrs per day), but to reduce the care they themselves currently give me, from 5 hrs per day to just three, and worst of all to put me into adult nappies to 'increase my independence'(!), as I won't then have to depend on anyone taking me to the toilet during the day or the night!

I am devastated! They say they will also refer me to the health team as they may be able to provide some other interventions and may even provide me with some care....

It's all so demeaning, dehumanising & wrong & utterly, devastatingly traumatising! I don't know how I or anyone else is supposed to function. Saying that, I think that is exactly the point! They don't want us to function, so we cannot challenge & contribute to society and the debates on welfare, the NHS, etc., etc! They want us to be dead, or at the very least to be silent & hidden away from society!

And this doesn't just affect me, but my carers too, who will lose some or all of their livelihood - one of my carers is a single mum: you cannot imagine how bad I feel about how this is going to hit them all, especially her & her daughter! And, as if this isn't bad enough, Osborne is also considering cutting Child Tax Credits, which are paid to people who are already in work, further cutting & hitting poor people with children who are working & struggling to survive & to provide for their children.

I feel like a bear in a trap & want to chew off my own hand so I can escape! I think maybe I should give them what they want & die - what use is living anyway? Thousands have already died* and even still, most people, most of my friends included, are not yet aware of the terror of this situation and are blithely getting on with their own lives oblivious of the fact that their voices & actions are vital & crucial to changing this situation. How many more must die before enough of the population dare to care enough to stop this happening? 

This living on handouts is soul destroying at the best of times, when they propose to start hitting you from every direction & you don't know how hard they're going to hit you, or from which direction, or how long for & how many times and you are trapped & have to just wait in agony of anticipation & fear, it is the most unbearable & exquisite torture. I'm being hit by the closure of the ILF & loss of the care support I depend on to live with dignity & independence & which enables me to participate & contribute to society, as well as the ending of Income Support & DLA, without knowing if I will even get anything from ESA or PIP to replace them....

I don't know how much longer I can keep going, or how I'm going to cope, or how much more pain and loss & fear & worry I can bear! I just keep crying and/or trying not to cry!!

In essence, my friend is being asked to sit with her feces and urine next to her skin until a care worker attends to her, some hours later.

How does sitting in you own feces and urine foster dignity for one's life?

How can this be called ‘support’ and how can anyone suggest that this will increase her independence?

Where is the caring empathy of the strong for the vulnerable?

What kind of bullying bureaucracy can drive an official to even make such a suggestion?

‘Austerity’ translates into willfully ignoring the pain, stress and fear created by the way these policies are being implemented, in the pursuit of purely ideological aims.

This is but one of many tens of thousands of similar incidents, all 100% avoidable.

Our Government is behaving with cruelty towards vulnerable people.

It has no mandate to enact this kind of situation, this kind of cruelty. Nor does it have any evidence that the Austerity Cuts are necessary.

Indeed there is ample evidence suggesting otherwise, published by right, center and left wing media.

Our Government is behaving with cruelty towards vulnerable people in pursuit of ideological aims.

Those Government Ministers, Civil Servants and Advisors who initiate and design the implementation of this policy are acting on personal prejudice and that is a psychological problem, a matter of personal dysfunction intruding into Governance.

We are being ruled by sick people.

And it would appear that morally weak and vulnerable people being put to work to implement that policy.

Would Iain Duncan Smith or David Cameron sit in their own feces and urine as they debated the issues of the day in Parliament? 

Would you?

Why is Iain Duncan Smith fighting a legal battle to withold Government data on deaths of disabled people that are correlated to this 'austerity' campaign?

Disabled people and their carers are trying to hold the Government to account. Will you help them?

Petition to protect the Independent Living Fund

and

Tomorrow, Wednesday 24th June a group of disabled people will go to Parliament to lobby the Government.

You can follow what happens through their facebook page.



Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe