Disabled people's lives will be ruined by sweeping cuts to services

[LeftishBrit]

...Imagine for a moment that you rely on a carer coming to your home just to help you get out of bed. Without them, you can't get dressed, can't prepare a meal or have a wash. Yet as local authorities try to cope with eyewatering 25% cuts, social care has been slashed up and down the country.

Imagine that day the doctor diagnoses terminal cancer or lupus or a broken spine. You can hardly take it in, let alone think about going to work. You will need time to adjust, to put away those lifetime ambitions or cherished dreams. Yet our politicians aim to remove employment and support allowance (ESA) from up to a million devastated lives.

Imagine you cannot walk well around your own home. You can shuffle a few painful steps, but no further than the end of the drive. You rely on your car for everything, for getting out to see friends, for getting to work, without it you would be completely isolated. Yet this government plan to remove disability living allowance (DLA), the benefit that provides sick and disabled people help to fund transport, from half a million people....


Now just imagine what might happen if all of these cuts affect you at once. No carer to help at home, no ESA to replace your lost income, no car to get about and no support to stay in your own home. What might have been manageable becomes the most terrible, frightening scenario possible. Without these vital elements of your life, you are left with nothing; bedridden, housebound, isolated and living in crushing poverty. Add in cuts to housing benefit and the NHS, and it doesn't take much imagination to see that the results could be devastating...



http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jul/09/disabled-people-cuts-cumulative-impact?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487


(The viciousness of this government toward sick and disabled people is perhaps the thing that I hate most about it!)