Internal memos obtained by FOI from DWP reveal fresh attacks on UK benefit claimants and job centre workers

Please read the below article and the internal memos (obtained via FOI) which follow.  Feedback would be appreciated.

http://socialistworker.co.uk/art/36746/Internal+memos+reveal+fresh+attacks+on+benefit+claimants+and+job+centre+workers

 https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4DDIATl4FpJejM5Mm1VZkE2Vjh6Y083V0ltaVBXNUtwNk1B/edit?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4DDIATl4FpJRXNKamExeG1OUVBVUWRPOFlzWXk1WDhqX2lj/edit?usp=sharing

Wonderful disability film, When I Walk, screening at 4 PM Sunday in New York City

*WHEN I WALK*

2013 | 85 minutes | U.S., India
Director in Attendance/**

**Sunday, October 20, 2013/4 – 6 pm/ Linder Theater/

American Museum of Natural History/ 79th and Central Park West
Click here for tickets:
http://www.amnh.org/explore/margaret-mead-film-festival/films-a-z/when-i-walk

*For* *Discounted tickets*
call the Museum’s ticketing dept at (212) 769-5200 and mention the NYU
Council for the Study of Disability

Seven years and 3,600 hours of footage after being diagnosed with multiple
sclerosis, Jason DaSilva brings us an intimate portrait of his own physical
transformation. Through his cinematic talents, DaSilva sheds light not only
on his struggles with the disease, but its impact and influence on his
creative process and his relationships. *When I Walk* is an intimate
depiction of a disability that is rarely portrayed on film, and a rousing
example of storytelling at its most direct, personal and affecting.

*Copresented by New York University’s Council for the Study of Disability*

<http://www.amnh.org/explore/margaret-mead-film-festival/films-a-z/when-i-walk>


[image:
http://www.amnh.org/var/ezflow_site/storage/images/media/amnh/images/explore/mead-images/2013/films/when_i_walk_1/1046804-1-eng-US/when_i_walk_1_dynamic_lead_slide.jpg]

When I Walk i*s my personal journey, filming myself transforming from
able-bodied to disabled over seven years. Obviously, the main reason why I
started this project was to document my progression. When I first started
this journey, I found there to be a deficit in films that explored the
social model of disability. Most often, media around disability is created
under the guise of the more traditional medical model. As an artist and
media practitioner, I felt it important to honestly portray my thoughts and
emotions, and not only the physical transformation*.
*—Jason DaSilva | Director, When I Walk*

Centre for Culture & Disability Studies Seminar Series: The Voice of Disability

CCDS Seminar Series:

The Voice of Disability

The last CCDS seminar series ran at Liverpool Hope University over a number of years and culminated in Changing Social Attitudes Toward Disability: Perspectives from Historical, Cultural, and Educational Studies, an edited book that we are now completing for Routledge.

Building on this success, we are hosting a new series entitled The Voice of Disability and can now confirm a number of guest speakers:

18^th Dec – Cleavings: Critical Losses and Deaf Gain. Prof Michael Davidson (University of California, San Diego) 

15^th Jan – Creative/Critical Research: The Poem sequence ‘Phantom/Sex Ontology’. Dr Cath Nichols (University of Leeds)

12^th Feb – Oneself as Another:  The Problem of ‘Voice’ in Alzheimer’s Life Writing. Dr Lucy Burke (Manchester Metropolitan University)

12^th Mar – Narrating Disability Inside and Outside the Clinic: Or, Beyond Empathy. Prof Tom Couser (Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York) 

21^st May – The Reality and Rhetoric of Pupil Voice: Exploring the Educational Journeys of Young People Labelled with Behavioural, Emotional, and Social Difficulties. Dr Marie Caslin (Liverpool Hope University)

25^th Jun – Young DaDa: Evaluating Participation in the Arts. Dr Claire Penketh (Liverpool Hope University)

These Wednesday seminars will all be held at 2:15-3:45 in EDEN 109, Liverpool Hope University, United Kingdom. 

Admission is free and all are welcome.

For further information, please contact:

Dr. David Bolt

Senior Lecturer, Education and Disability Studies

http://www.hope.ac.uk/staff/boltd.html

Director, Centre for Culture & Disability Studies

http://ccds.hope.ac.uk/

Editor in Chief, Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies

http://JLCDS.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk

Editor, Literary Disability Studies

http://www.palgrave.com/products/SearchResults.aspx?s=LD&fid=338267

Founder, International Network of Literary & Cultural Disability Scholars

http://www.facebook.com/pages/International-Network-of-Literary-and-Cultural-Disability-Scholars/174137315933446

http://twitter.com/#!/INLCDS

Email: boltd@hope.ac.uk

Telephone: 0151 291 3346

Office: HCA 0100

Postal address: Faculty of Education, Liverpool Hope University, Liverpool, UK, L16 9JD.

New Book: The Metanarrative of Blindness: A Re-reading of Twentieth-Century Anglophone Writing.

http://www.press.umich.edu/5725818/metanarrative_of_blindness

 

Re-blogged, with some changes, from http://kittysjones.wordpress.com/2013/09/13/3883/

[Note from Samuel Miller] I am a 57-year-old Disability Studies specialist and disability activist from Montreal, Canada who has been reporting frequently and voluntarily, since January 2012, to senior United Nations officials on the crisis for the United Kingdom's sick and disabled. Austerity measures, consisting of draconian welfare reforms and "sham" means-testing (Atos Healthcare U.K. and the Department for Work and Pensions) are ostensibly to blame for their plight—with disability hate crime and inflammatory media attacks factored into this mix.

The below should be considered an open letter to all sick and disabled persons in the United Kingdom—especially disability campaigners, whom I am requesting to re-blog it.  Thank you for your cooperation and assistance.

UK Government wrongs, Human Rights and a call for evidence from UN Special Rapporteur Raquel Rolnik

“My hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Katy Clark) mentioned the legality of the Government’s legislation. Let me be clear that our Governments have been condemned by the International Labour Organisation and other international organisations for two decades now because of their trade union legislation.

It is not just about the right to strike; it is about certain basic and fundamental trade union rights. The clause, yet again, imposes further duties that I believe to be completely contrary to ILO (International Labour Organization conventions).

 Yet again, this country will be isolated in the world and condemned for its attack on trade union rights, which are incorporated in all those international statutes and conventions as a basic human right” -John McDonnell.

This was the third day of Parliamentary debate regarding the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill: it breaches human rights, specifically articles 8 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

An additional concern for me was the lack of transparency and opportunity for pre-legislative scrutiny of this Bill. The Government deliberately withheld details – the Electoral Commission had not see the draft Bill, nor had the Select Committee seen it in full.

Cameron is also attempting to limit judicial review. If Select Committees are excluded from the legislative process, a case can be challenged under judicial review as that means the legislation is being created on an undemocratic and procedurally unfair basis. Select Committees are part of the constitutional area of law-making, they simply cannot be ignored.

The withholding of key details of drafted Bills from Select Committees means that effective and organised challenging from the opposition is stifled, too. We most certainly have an authoritarian Government that arrived unannounced and unauthorised, one that has very clearly spent some time out of Office spitefully planning an attack on civil society, and the dismantling of the means of redress. The contents of the Lobbying Bill highlight this further.This was a carefully calculated move, and such tactics have become increasingly common since this Government took Office. It would be an enormous mistake, if not academic dishonesty, to pretend that we now live in a first world liberal democracy.

As I have said elsewhere, the purpose of Government in any democracy is to reflect the needs of a population. This Government seems to believe that the population are here to fulfil their own needs, and they are exploiting the vulnerable, stealing lifeline benefits from them – which we have all paid for via taxes – to profit the very wealthy. This is authoritarianism, and not democracy.

The disclosure from the opposition of yet another contravention of our human rights in Government policy-making comes at a time when the United Nations (UN) have found that the welfare reforms are also in breach of international human rights statute.

The bedroom tax constitutes a violation of the human right to adequate housing in several ways. If, for example, the extra payments force tenants to cut down on their spending on food or heating their home.  There are already a number of legal challenges to the bedroom tax under way in British courts. In principle the judiciary here takes into account the international human rights legislation because the UK has signed and ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

The right to adequate housing is recognised in a number of international human rights instruments.

Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognises the right to housing as part of the right to an adequate standard of living. It states that:

“Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control”.

Article 11(1) of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) also guarantees the right to housing as part of the right to an adequate standard of living. The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities CRPD was ratified by the UK on 8th June 2009. With the possible exception of European treaties, the CRPD is the most important international treaty on disability.

The Government welfare “reforms” (cuts) undermine the right to live independently and to be included in the community - Article19 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The Joint Parliamentary Committee on Human Rights conducted an enquiry and found that CRPD did not have a significant role in the Coalition development of welfare policy and legislation, as is required by the Convention.

I heard Grant Shapps attempt to trivialise the issue of the Government’s breach of our human rights with their Bedroom Tax policy by pointing out that other countries are breaching human rights. The Government here have breached International human rights standards and law, regardless of whether or not other Governments in the world have done so.

The fact that this Government have been found to infringe upon our fundamental human rights by an independent assessor, using international legal standards didn’t seem to faze him one bit. His response and anger was directed only at the fact that the assessment had happened at all.

People are dying here, many are made homeless, we are seeing a massive increase in food poverty, and people are committing suicide because they are so very desperate. This is because of the Government’s welfare “reforms”. Human suffering, loss of dignity and death may have many facets, but all of them are equally unforgiving, and when imposed by humans on fellow humans, all are equally unforgivable.

Unabashed by this, and the fact that this Government are actually found to be guilty of human rights violations, Shapps made an outrageous and personal attack on UN envoy Raquel Rolnik. The right-wing media have followed in pursuit, using shameful racism and diversionary character assassination techniques to try and discredit Raquel.

Raquel Rolnik, UN special housing rapporteur has made an initial recommendation about a number of issues – all of which have been highlighted by the media, politicians and advocates working on housing related matters, in particular:

(1) the bedroom tax breaches human rights
(2) regulation of the private rent sector is needed, and
(3) social housing stock needs to be increased.

She also expressed concern about the impact of welfare reforms and austerity measures on the most vulnerable and highlighted that she had seen signs retrogression in the enjoyment of the right to adequate housing.

The UN aide also wants the Bedroom Tax to be investigated fully, as the scheme was never piloted and already constitutes an assault on human rights.The Bedroom Tax is an unfair piece of legislation which has disproportionately negative consequences on disabled people, and those already on the lowest incomes and is therefore discriminatory, as outlined in Labour’s Equality Act, 2010.

She said: “If one life is lost because of these reforms it is one too many“.

Raquel has also hit back at the aggressive behaviour and language of the UK Government following her criticisms of the “bedroom tax”, or “spare room subsidy”, which she recommended be immediately suspended in a press release yesterday. Shapps has claimed Ms Rolnik of being “politically biased” but of course UN Officials are apolitical when it comes to applying the LAW, which is the same, regardless of whether or not a person investigating a breach of that law is liked by the Government, our media, and regardless of alleged personal characteristics.

Raquel Rolnik acted within her remit and did meet the members of the Government, despite the Tory chairman’s claims to the contrary. Although Shapp’s complaints about Ms Rolnik’s failure to meet face-to-face with the ministers responsible for welfare and housing – and hence an alleged lack of balance in her statement – seem somewhat ironic and grossly misplaced, given that it was the Government who did not act on her pre-visit request for those meetings.

She also pointed out at a press conference she held yesterday that she was invited by the Government to be here and that she did speak to Government ministers, including David Foster, Eric Pickles, officials from the Department of Work and Pensions, and she had a list of all the meetings.

She has rightly criticised the deplorably aggressive behaviour of the UK Government:

“It was the first time a Government has been so aggressive. When I was in the USA, I had a constructive conversation with them accepting some things and arguing with others. They did not react like this.”

Nor did Croatia, Algeria, Maldives, Argentina, United States, Israel, Rwanda, Palestine, Kazakhstan and Indonesia. In none of these countries did she experience the same level of hostility and aggressiveness from the Government, Raquel informs us.

This truly is a Government of bullying authoritarians that shame us internationally, and this lady was a guest in our Country. It’s atrocious that the Government could not extend courtesy, respect and good manners to this UN envoy. The utter disregard the Government showed the findings of this inspection shows the world how little regard our Government has for vulnerable citizens, how little concern they have for their welfare and rights, and that they couldn’t even put up a pretence of “best behaviour” and polite engagement with an international audience.

Raquel Rolnik wants to hear about all of the human rights abuses currently occurring in the UK, particularly those related to the welfare reforms. She is also interested in any experiences involving suppression of a right to free speech and protest. I wrote to the UN Human Rights Council recently about the implications of legal aid reform and also about the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill. Previously I have written about the welfare reforms, and had some discussion with the Commission, who have condemned the whole raft of reforms as “retrogressive”.

At her press conference in London, Raquel Rolink once again criticised the Government regarding the the bedroom tax and the benefit cap, and said that Government are clearly violating our human rights, attacking those who needed the support. She has called for an immediate suspension of the bedroom tax and the benefit cap. She said the bedroom tax was not piloted, either.

She mentioned the personal testimonies of people affected by the bedroom tax, the lack of affordable housing the long waiting lists for social housing. Raquel recognises that people cannot move, and cannot afford to pay moving costs. She acknowledged that people with both mental and physical health conditions were dreadfully affected, and that low income workers are also desperately struggling. She can see that those affected are at substantial risk of their health deteriorating as a consequence of the stressful circumstances raised by the bedroom tax, and she acknowledged that people are dying because of the terrible impact of these measures, and that people cannot afford to eat, and heat their homes in order to pay it and keep a roof over their heads.

Raquel stated clearly to the representatives from the media that the policies introduced by this Government do contravene our human rights. She then asked for an immediate suspension of the bedroom tax, for more social housing and private rental housing to be built, for rents to be lowered so people can afford to live and the rents to be capped.

Representatives from Atos Miracles asked if Raquel would look at evidence regarding Atos Healthcare and the Work Capability Assessments (WCA) and the Employment Support Allowance (ESA) related deaths. The numbers of the people who have died due to a deterioration in their condition and all of the related suicides within 6 weeks of their ESA claims ending were mentioned. Racquel Rolnik said she would examine all of the welfare changes and welcomed personal stories about the WCA and how it is affecting people.

Therefore Raquel wants to collate accounts from everyone affected, and this evidence will be presented to the United Nations General Council in March. Personal stories will be included in the report she presents.

Raquel was made aware of the Parliamentary debate regarding the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill currently going through parliament. She made it clear that the people of the UK have a democratic right to protest and to freedom of expression, as the Government signed the agreement at the UN Convention to allow this freedom.

The UN will not permit the UK Government to prevent people from speaking out, as is their democratic right. Racquel is interested in any experiences you may have regarding any prevention you have experienced in exercising democratic rights. These experiences, for example, may include being stopped from speaking out on the streets at events or meetings, as well as being restrained or curtailed during a protest or demonstration.

Towards the end of the conference, campaigners handed Racquel two boxes of personal testimonies and accounts amounting to well over 2,000, from people adversely affected by the bedroom tax. She was shocked by the sheer volume of accounts. Raquel said that she will read every single one.

You can email Raquel Rolnik regarding Atos and the WCA and any other issue related to welfare reform. She also wants to know about any experiences that have happened when you have not been allowed or able to speak out, as is your democratic right. I think that the poll tax-styled council tax benefit cuts are also having a dire impact on many people and this would be worth including, too. As would any experience with difficulties accessing legal aid, as that reform also breaches  Article 6(1) of the European Convention of Human Rights: the right to a fair trial.

Raquel Rolnik’s email address is: srhousing@ohchr.org

You can also write to:
His Excellency Mr Ban Ki Moon
United Nations Secretary-General
UN Headquarters
First Avenue at 46th Street
New York, NY 10017
USA
E-­mail: sgcentral@un.org

New Issue of the Canadian Journal of Disability Studies

Dear Friends and Colleagues:

Please share!
A new issue of The Canadian Journal of Disability Studies is now live.

http://cjds.uwaterloo.ca/index.php/cjds/issue/current

If you have a few minutes this afternoon, please have a look at the first article in the issue, Kate Rossiter and Annalise Clarkson's "Opening Ontario’s “Saddest Chapter”: A Social History of Huronia Regional Centre." This article acts as a great primer for the historic class action lawsuit beginning this coming Monday in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Then, come back and read the other excellent articles in the issue as well, including:

Disability and Poverty: Stories that Resist Attitudinal Barriers to Inclusion
Randy Johner

Reflections on Personhood: Girls with Severe Disabilities and the Law
Sheila K. Jennings

Buying time: The S/pace of Advocacy and the Cultural Production of Autism
Anne E. McGuire

Commentary: When Bureaucracy and Policy Leave Ethics Behind: Our Nineteen-Day Battle with Alberta Health Services to Save Our (Independent) Lives
Heidi Janz

Review of Disability Politics & Theory by A.J. Withers
Jaime R. Brenes Reyes

As always, the CJDS is free, open access, and accessible.
In just over a year of existence, we have had over 8000 unique readers, and articles published in the CJDS routinely get 2000 reads/downloads.  So submit your own scholarship, too!

Jay

Jay Dolmage, Ph.D
Editor, Canadian Journal of Disability Studies
Associate Professor of English
University of Waterloo
Department of English
Hagey Hall of Humanities Building
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G1
Tel: 519 888 4567 x31035
Fax: 519 746 5788
dolmage@uwaterloo.ca
______________________________

__________

A Prayer for Sue Marsh, British Disability Campaigner (@suey2y on Twitter)

May the One who was a source of blessing for our ancestors, bring blessings of healing upon Sue Marsh, a healing of body and a healing of spirit. May those in whose care she is entrusted, be gifted with wisdom and skill, and those who surround her, be gifted with love and trust, openness and support in her care. And may she be healed along with all those who are in need. Blessed are You, Source of healing. Amen.

Re-Membering: Putting Mind and Body Back Together Following Traumatic Brain Injury

I wanted to announce the publication of my memoir, Re-Membering: Putting
Mind and Body Back Together Following Traumatic Brain Injury.  Here is a
description:

Re-membering is a memoir about being congenitally physically disabled and
experiencing traumatic brain injury.  Millett-Gallant recounts her accident,
recovery, and discoveries by engaging multiple genres of research and
writing. Each chapter is composed of: personal narrative, research on brain
injury and art therapy, disability studies and other critical theory,
information from medical records, and voices from other relevant memoirs, as
well as examples of her artwork.  She underscores the vital roles of her
family and friends, as well as art, in her recovery and provides hope and
direction for others with a brain injury, based upon one survivor's
first-hand experiences.



And here is a link to the book on amazon.com:


http://www.amazon.com/Re-Membering-Putting-Together-Following-Traumatic/dp/1490524738/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8

Please let me know if you would like more information or if might be
interested in writing a review of the book.

Thanks!

Ann