Covid-19 and disability: a catalogue of failures and abandonment
Ian Malcolm-Walker, a disabled activist for over 25 years writes that just over a month ago came the first warnings from disabled people and their organisations about the potential impact of Covid-19 on people with long-term health conditions and high support needs, particularly those who employ their own personal assistants.
Disabled People’s Organisations (DPOs) work to the Social Model of Disability which says that disability is caused by the way society is organised, rather than by a person's impairment(s) or difference(s). It looks at ways of removing barriers that restrict life choices for disabled people.
Wrapped up in that is a general and long-term weariness at the way the word vulnerable has been used. Generally, it means we are inherently vulnerable and all the crap we must put up with just happens because we are who we are and, of course, we cannot change that.
The only possible changes are to remove the impairment medically. This is the Medical Model, which DPOs reject.
We do accept treatment for our various medical conditions. It certainly does mean we are at risk – a high risk in many cases.
Government language is misleading – often deliberately so. They talk of social distancing. Of course, it makes sense to be physically distanced but along with that should go social solidarity. It was the ‘look after yourself’ mentality that led to food shortages caused by stockpiling. In two weeks, the supermarkets pocketed an extra two billion pounds whilst ignoring those who could not get out at all.
Whoever came up with the term social isolation or, even worse, social shielding needs an English lesson as quarantine and extended quarantine would have been better understood.
Disabled people’s concerns come on a small list of areas.
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) tops the list.
Then come issues around human rights, social care (including the use of Personal Assistants and Direct Payments), Work, Medical decisions and the Medical Model and finally Keir Starmer.
We have plenty of experience of the DWP including over the last month.
Panorama revealed that the DWP has lost more disability discrimination cases at employment tribunal than any other employer in Britain since 2016.
Disabled campaigners are pushing the human rights watchdog to take legal action against the DWP. The Reclaiming Our Futures Alliance (RoFA) and Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) have told the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s chair, David Isaac, that the watchdog needs to act urgently to prevent further deaths.
Ministers handed more than a billion pounds to discredited private sector outsourcing giants so they can continue to provide disability benefit assessments.
Jobcentre staff told a Tory MP of their “grave concern” about the people who carry out disability assessments for the DWP during a visit to the jobcentre in Totnes.
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has been described as “callous” and uncaring by its own disabled employees. One disabled employee said he was told by a DWP manager: “For all the use you are to me, you might as well not to be here.”
Somehow, it took them six weeks to realise that their helpline for deaf claimants was not working.
All that is before we get to Covid-19 - and all in the last month.
The DWP announced the suspension of face to face assessments but they could be replaced by phone calls or more paperwork. Claimants who tell DWP “in good time” that they are staying at home or have been diagnosed with Covid-19 will not be sanctioned.
However, a woman on immunosuppressants ordered to stay at home for 12 weeks was told by a Job Centre they could not help if she did not get her forms in on time and fears losing her benefit.
The DWP has been refusing to allow many of its own staff to work from home during the crisis, even if they live with people with long-term health conditions or must travel to work on public transport.
Human Rights are a major concern for disabled people as is the failure of politicians to understand this.
The Coronavirus Act threatens to attack our rights to Social Care by suspending a council’s duties under the Care Act 2014 except in cases where the human rights of disabled people will be breached.
The European Convention on Human Rights is silent on disability save for the right to use Article 14 (against discrimination) when a right elsewhere is being applied in a discriminatory way. The best protection that disabled people have is the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities. The government claim it’s not binding. It is, however, a treaty signed by the UK, and the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties makes its provisions applicable in domestic law.
Catalina Devandas Aguilar, the UN’s special rapporteur on the rights of persons with disabilities, said disabled people feel as though they have been “left behind”.
Moreover, it is clear the government is in turmoil. On 12 March, the government performed a second U-turn in two months as it agreed to extend support to disabled politicians who need help with the extra costs of standing in May’s local elections.
Then on 2 April, the government blamed the coronavirus crisis for its decision to close the fund (called the EnAble fund) that was set up to support disabled people with the extra costs of running for political office.
I think three U-turns is a record even for this lot.
One disabled politician has described the permanent closure of the EnAble fund as a “kick in the teeth” and accused the government of “locking disabled people out of politics”.
Human rights have an international dimension. Indeed, it was egregious breaches such as the Sharpeville Massacre in apartheid South Africa that brought human rights up the agenda.
The European Disability Forum (EDF) has raised concerns that segregated residential institutions for disabled people across Europe are becoming “hotbeds of infection and abuse” during the coronavirus pandemic due to a lack of personal protective equipment (PPE) for disabled people and staff; a lack of care due to staff shortages; and forced medication and restraint measures taken “under the pretence of preventive measures”.
The Commonwealth Disabled People’s Forum has issued a statement and recommendations for how governments can ensure disabled people throughout the Commonwealth “are not disadvantaged and have their needs met” during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Food too is a human right.
The government could face legal action if it does not reconsider its strategy on how to ensure the delivery of vital groceries and food to disabled people, it has been warned by a leading disabled people’s organisation.
Disability Rights UK (DRUK) has written to health and social secretary Matt Hancock to express its “grave concern” about the measures he has taken, and his failure to consult with disabled people’s organisations.
Failure to consult is itself a breach of the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) set out by the Equality Act 2010.
Right at the beginning, the concerns of DPOs were focussed particularly on those who employ their own personal assistants.
Under Social Care law a person entitled to care can take money instead (a direct payment) and make their own arrangements, usually by hiring staff called personal assistants (PAs), often giving them more flexibility than direct provision.
Disabled people who use PAs are worried what happens if the staff become unwell or go into self- isolation.
The government has failed to publish guidance to help disabled people survive the coronavirus pandemic if they use direct payments to employ personal assistants (PAs), nearly three weeks after ministers provided advice for the wider social care sector.
Disabled people are also raising concerns about the way the DWP is running its Access to Work disability employment scheme during the coronavirus crisis.
The scheme – which funds support such as personal assistants, travel costs and aids and equipment – helps tens of thousands of disabled people find and keep employment.
But a series of concerns have been raised by disabled people about how the scheme has been functioning since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Ministers have been warned that their lengthy delay in publishing guidance to help disabled people who use direct payments survive the coronavirus pandemic will cost lives across the country and will not be forgotten.
Coming to work, there are issues over and above the unconscionable way the DWP treat their own disabled workers and Access to Work.
A black disabled woman – who is risking her health by working in a pharmacy during the coronavirus pandemic – was refused assistance to board a train three times by rail staff as she tried to travel to and from work.
Rail company South-Eastern has apologised to Osayuki Igbinoba.
Now we come to treatment and issues arising from the medical model.
Horrified disabled activists have raised concerns about an NHS consultant who appeared to suggest publicly that he and his colleagues would not attempt to resuscitate many older and disabled people if they became seriously ill with coronavirus.
New guidance for the NHS on which coronavirus patients should receive intensive care treatment has heightened fears among activists that many disabled people will be refused life-saving treatment if they are admitted to hospital.
The guidance from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) says that all adult Covid-19 patients should be assessed for “frailty” when admitted to hospital, and that “comorbidities and underlying health conditions” should be considered.
Following alarm and outrage from disabled people and allies, the government body announced that it had produced updated guidelines.
But the new version has not eased all those concerns, with one disability campaigner warning that disabled people who need support would still be less likely to receive critical care if the guideline was followed and one grassroots group of disabled people saying that it was “not reassured” by the amendments.
In a rare victory, senior health figures have promised that the NHS will “always seek to fully protect” the rights of disabled people during the coronavirus pandemic, after responding to concerns raised in a statement by scores of disabled campaigners and user-led organisations.
The response from Professor Stephen Powis, the national medical director of NHS England, and Ruth May, NHS England’s chief nursing officer, came just two days after the open letter warned that disabled people’s rights were “not always being upheld” during the crisis.
And finally, Labour has insisted that its new leader’s decision to remove the party’s social care spokesperson from his first shadow cabinet does not mean the issue has been “demoted”.
The move came as Keir Starmer announced his new shadow cabinet.
Starmer is set to face pressure from the disabled people’s movement to commit his party to keep a series of pledges he made during his leadership campaign.
Amongst the most striking of those pledges was to back calls by disabled people’s organisations for the introduction of free social care and a legal right to Independent Living.
During his leadership campaign, Starmer called for “radical action” on social care.
