“Justice for Jodey” mum Joy Dove backs Disabled Mothers’ Rights Charter

We are delighted that Joy Dove, great-grandmother & campaigner for justice for her daughter Jodey Whiting* is adding her name to the Disabled Mothers’ Rights Charter.   

The Charter calls for disabled mothers’ rights to start a family, keep our children and be supported, not to be treated as unfit mothers and have our children taken by social services and the Family Court.  We want an end to cruel benefit cut-offs and other discrimination against mothers and children. 

Since Jodey tragically took her own life in 2017 after her benefits were stopped, Joy Dove has fought tirelessly to hold the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to account.  Her legal case won a second inquest investigating the responsibility of the DWP, which the first inquest had excluded. 

Joy is calling for a public inquiry into the way the DWP treats claimants.  In support of the Disabled Mothers’ Rights Charter, Joy says:

“I’m backing disabled mothers all the way, and I’m still fighting for Jodey.  It should never have happened, and the coroner was right, it was the trigger to her suicide.”

We say: “Mothers, overwhelmingly the primary carers, must never be cut off benefits. Disabled mothers must be guaranteed sufficient benefits for disability costs and our children’s needs, as well as a Care Income for the work of raising children. Including mothers who share care with ex-partners. Child poverty is deliberate state neglect, not neglect by mothers.”

We spoke out on 4 March at the monthly picket of the Family Court outside Central Family Court, held by Support Not Separation, which we are part of, marking the ninth anniversary of this protest.

Together with Joy Dove, we’re defending our benefits and right to live in the face of the government insulting us as “economically inactive” and calling the health element of UC a “perverse incentive” not to work, to be cut by 50% from April for new claimants.  At the same time, the government’s Move to UC policy is cutting off thousands of sick and disabled claimants unable to complete a fresh claim for Universal Credit, while UC work conditions and harsher sanctions target single mothers and leave children hungry. Thousands of mothers and children have already been cut off Child Tax Credits without a replacement, among 356,000 low-waged and unwaged claimants who have not moved to Universal Credit (ref).

 Welfare Not Warfare – No more deaths from benefit cuts!

Contact us: mumsrights@winvisible.org  Tel: 020 7482 2496

*Info:

Jodey Whiting was a loving mum of nine children, and grandmother.  She became physically disabled, had chronic pain and mental distress. She tragically took her own life aged 42 in February 2017 after the DWP wrongly stopped her benefits for “failure to attend” a Work Capability Assessment — leaving her without money for food, rent and heating.  Around the time the appointment letter arrived, Jodey had been in hospital with pneumonia and was diagnosed with a brain cyst after suffering intense facial pain.  Two DWP decision-makers dismissed her appeal that she had been ill, in hospital and didn’t know about the interview. 

We remember all the disabled mothers and sometimes also their children who have died after their benefits/asylum support were brutally stopped: Tamara Logan, Philippa Day, Elaine Morrall, Lilian Oluk and her two-year-old daughter Lynne Mutumba, domestic violence survivor Moira Drury and many more, most we don’t even know about.