The care component ensures Disabled people can employ a support worker or personal assistant to help with a whole host of daily activities including personal care. This may also include home adaptations, mobility aids, clothes adaptations, and additional electrical costs, for example, charging breathing equipment or power wheelchairs, etc.
Benefits such as PIP were created to allow Disabled people to have autonomy in their lives. It’s not special treatment. But this invaluable funding barely covers our basic needs to survive, never mind thrive. PIP does not cover the additional cost most Disabled people and their families face, which, according to the leading Disability charity Scope, is at least £975 per month.
There is a huge perception gap, which leads many pre-disabled people to believe that Disabled people get handouts left, right, and centre. Need a new wheelchair done? Unfortunately, this is not the case, especially when individuals reach adulthood.
I am a full-time wheelchair user and use both a manual and an electrical powerchair. My manual costs close to £5000 and my electric chair almost £10,000. There are very limited resources to finance bespoke equipment on the NHS via wheelchair services, which means Disabled people have to fund them themselves or ask for donations from kind-hearted strangers or charities.
Targeting Disabled people by threatening to take away their independence, safety and health care is not only cruel but inhumane. We are not a burden nor a drain. We are people who are simply trying to keep our heads above water in a world that really does not like that we exist.
Do you know there are more fashion lines for pets than for Disabled people? As a petite stature woman, I have many of my clothes altered, which adds to my personal costs.
I am not allowed to fly on my own because airlines do not have accessible bathrooms therefore any flight I take I have to pay for my companions fees.
Not having PIP would mean I’d almost entirely lose my independence and my ability to work freelance and socialise within my community.
PIP also covers emergency care if I have a fracture. At the moment, I have twenty hours of support from my local authority via Direct payment, but if I have a serious fracture and need 24-hour care to safely get to the bathroom or dress and prep food, my twenty hours a week wouldn’t even cover an overnight stay. I know my mum worries about me and what support I will get once she is no longer around. Losing benefits such as PIP has a ripple effect. It puts whole families into turmoil.
I’d be living a half-life – I wanted to date, travel and be seen. PIP facilitates me to be seen. To be your friend, colleague and neighbour – without PIP, we are condemning Disabled people, myself included, to stay at home and be invisible.
My message to the Labour party and the government: we are all going to experience Disability in our lifetime, including you, and when the time comes, I hope people show you more compassion and mercy than you are showing us with this proposal.
For my Deaf, Disabled and Neurodivergent friends who feel frightened, hopeless and sick to their stomachs right now. I hear and see you, and if I could give you all a massive hug, I would. Remember, we are stronger than we know. We are no stranger to the injustices of the ableist bullshit that seeps through our society. The disability discrimination that tells us we aren’t good enough. We are less deserving or less valuable. I hope you know that you are not alone. That you are loved, and we will get through this.