A little story for you about the current govt and the cuts to Welfare/disabilities ,

There's been much publicity over the closure of many day centre facilities over the last year of two, for people with learning disabilities.

In a certain area of England, a council shut down basically all day centres in the area except for one place. These day centres are where people with all sorts of learning difficulties go and socialise and earn a little money by working in any capacity that they can, often helping in the community somewhere.

The final remaining centre was instructed by the govt to close late last year. As part of the process, all of the people who attended the centre were taken into a room individually and notified of the closure. They were in for 2hrs and told to sign release forms that basically recognised that they understood what was happening. Most of these people have cognitive ages of between 1 and 3 years old and have no understanding of what was presented to them, let alone even know how to sign questionnaires and forms. They were told were and what to sign. All of these people live with carers or family, none of which were told until after the people affected had 'signed' all the forms.

What this actually meant was that the people with disabilities had nowhere to go, they lost a number of payments including the wages they earnt, travel benefits that they were paid to pay for not only travel to their daycare but travel for anytime they left the house as they all needed a carer to support them. The carers were forced to keep the disabled people at home, with no extra pay of compensation for the extra time that they were working while having the people at home with them. The carers and families were took into a meeting with the day centre management and local council and just told over and over that the people with the disabilities signed the forms so there's nothing that would be done, that they understood completely what was going on.

Then they were stripped of more entitlements and benefits because they were staying at home all day and not contributing or volunteering.

So in summary the people with learning difficulties are getting screwed, as are the carers, as are the families and nobody can do anything about it or publicise it otherwise they will lose their jobs and the people they care for, they've been told that specifically. Hence why I've mentioned no names or people, many of which involved I know on a personal level.

What a f**king lovely underhand bunch of c**ts this government are. God only knows what's coming if they get back in.

Posted By: I Am Hoot, Apr 9, 11:48:53