Costs of disability

Scope’s report ‘The Disability Price Tag 2019‘ shows how disability benefits are much too low to live on (as well as the DWP cutting off and sanctioning people like Jodey Whiting).

At the same time, councils and other authorities are wildly undercounting people’s disability expenses, and making people pay more charges for homecare and support services from our benefits. They often leave out some disability expenses, and/or set a low estimate per week, instead of recognising the actual amount we have to pay for things we need, such as special diet, extra heating, therapies, water bill. 

When Councils assess our ability to pay charges, they make us prove all our costs and produce receipts or bills, which is an overwhelming and unfair amount of paperwork and stress.  This report shows how many expenses we have, on average.

Hammersmith & Fulham Council is the only Council in the whole of England to abolish charges.

Key findings for disabled people (extract from Scope):

• On average disabled people face extra costs of £583 a month
• On average, a disabled person’s extra costs are equivalent to almost half of their income (not including housing costs)
• 1 in 5 disabled people face extra costs of more than £1,000 a month
• Disabled people’s money doesn’t tend to go as far. On average, £100 for a non-disabled person is equivalent to just £68 for a disabled person.

Key findings for families with disabled children:

• On average families with disabled children face extra costs of £581 a month
• For almost a quarter (24%) of families with disabled children, extra costs amount to over £1,000 a month.