‘It’s a tax on disability’: rising UK social care costs force many into debt

Photo of a woman wheelchair user sitting in shadow.  She is leaning her head on her hand and her face is partly hidden.  Stock photo, not a portrait.
Soaring costs are pushing disabled people into financial crisis. Photograph: Ivan-balvan/Getty Images

Today’s article in The Observer by Frances Ryan quotes us and others:

Disabled people are paying “a tax on disability” by being forced to fund soaring care charges out of their benefits as the cost of living pushes care users into financial crisis.

Charities and disabled people’s organisations (DPOs), including Mencap, Scope, the MS Society, Inclusion London, Dimensions, and WinVisible, told the Observer that disabled care users are being pushed into severe financial hardship with some forced to go without essential home care because they can’t afford the fees. Others face up to £20,000 of arrears to their local authority, with some seeing bailiffs called in over care fee debts. One DPO [us] said some disabled women are being coerced into sex by acquaintances after turning to them for care because they couldn’t pay care charges.”

Read more here

WinVisible adds: We want free homecare and support services, as in the London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham. But councils we have written to, must also respond to our individual cases and the financial hardship and stress which sick and disabled women have told them about — including by stopping pursuing the arrears!

1 thought on “‘It’s a tax on disability’: rising UK social care costs force many into debt”

  1. This is great highlighting the issues surrounding disabled women. The Domestic and sexual violence we experience, thrown at us because we can’t afford care charges.

    Reply

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