On Thursday 23 November from 2pm, Micheleine Kane will be giving evidence to the Scottish COVID-19 Inquiry in Edinburgh. This is part of the Health and Social Care Impact sessions, hearing from bereaved relatives. (Day 15 afternoon) Watch live or later on YouTube (captions available): https://t.co/tYGvqNxZtx Micheleine is best known as a leading grandmother kinship carer with the Scottish Kinship Care Alliance. She joined Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice, and WinVisible, with the pandemic. COVID-19 UK Inquiry: WinVisible is one of the disabled-led organisations who together won that the UK Inquiry must address the disproportionate impact … Read more
Today we went to the COVID-19 UK Inquiry to hear testimony by Disability Rights UK and disabled researchers into disability, poverty and ill-health. The hearing was under Module 2 focussing on decision-making by central government, and addressed “structural inequalities and disability”. Warning: distressing content below. In the public gallery, we met several women from COVID-19 Bereaved Relatives for Justice, who had brought photos of their loved ones to the hearing. At lunchtime they joined our protest outside. Many of the bereaved relatives in the campaign have lost disabled family members. Kamran Mallick from Disability Rights … Read more
The COVID-19 UK Inquiry meets today 28 February . The Module 3 Preliminary Hearing will look at “the impact of the pandemic on healthcare”. The Inquiry invited us to send in draft evidence on our views on emergency planning and preparedness up to January 2020. Sue Elsegood* writes about how people already using ventilators were treated: “I have muscular dystrophy and rely on breathing support. During the COVID-19 pandemic I was put in the unenviable position of needing to threaten legal action against the hospital which I am a patient under for respiratory health … Read more
The independent COVID-19 Inquiry launches this week. All through the pandemic, we have been speaking out against deliberate policies by the government, medical authorities and Councils amounting to a cull of older and disabled people, disproportionately hitting women and people of colour.
This Saturday, we’re delighted to be joining our friends in Scotland and Ontario, Canada for an online discussion organised by Action Against Austerity. WinVisible will be sharing news of how we are winning individual benefit cases, and our welfare demands under the pandemic as disabled women/of colour/mothers and family carers, immigrant and UK-born. Register free here. Email us if support needed. ** Read our conversation with John Clarke and his criticisms of the Basic Income pilot which was run in Ontario. ** Read about Edinburgh Coalition Against Poverty‘s campaign to “Stop the Reviews” of disability … Read more
WinVisible supported the campaign by Legal Action for Women and Payday men’s network, pressing the Royal College of Psychiatrists to withdraw their endorsement of “Close Supervision Centres” as “enabling environments”. Close Supervision Centres are prison units where people are kept in solitary confinement, sometimes for years. Their open letter to the RCP, which we (among many others) signed, also referred to the mistreatment of people in mental distress in prison. Many people connect this with the scandal of people with autism, learning disabilities and mental distress with “challenging behaviour” being locked up in solitary confinement … Read more
MPs concerned about food supply under COVID have issued their latest recommendations today 7 April. The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs MPs’ committee held a follow-up inquiry as problems with food supply continued during Lockdown 3 in January. WinVisible was among 42 concerned organisations and individuals asked to update our previous testimony. Highlights of the MPs’ recommendations: “The Government must call on retailers to ‘recognise their responsibility’ to assist clinically extremely vulnerable (CEV) people to access food if advised to shield, including the removal of delivery charges and minimum online spends for them. The report … Read more
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