Whose quality of life?
I was 10 years old when I made a return visit to the neonatal intensive care unit where I was treated after my premature birth. I stared at the tiny occupants in the incubators, seemingly unaware of their sterile, plastic,...
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The Remploy Saga: the provider state isn’t providing and the enabling state doesn’t enable.
I saw Government Minister Mark Harper interviewed on my local television news the other day (BBC Look East, Jan. 12th 2015). He was talking about how, in his opinion, the closure of the last publicly owned Remploy factories was, somewhat...
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Children in Need of Charity?
Each year the country comes together in mass acts of philanthropy, raising money in all kinds of inventive, extraordinary and impressive ways to help children who are less fortunate than they are. Each year a significant amount of money is...
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Disability and austerity
In the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008, disabled people in the UK have been hit disproportionately hard by austerity. Austerity measures have had a strong impact on economic redistribution, in terms of widening income inequalities between disabled and...
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In search of a label
There have long been calls to stop labelling children as having special needs. Department of Education figures released in 2012 show that 19.8% of pupils in England have special educational needs, of which 2.8% have statements of SEN. And yet...
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From victims to heroes to scroungers: changes in the public perception of disabled people.
Disability and disabled people have regularly featured in the media over the past few months. Radio 4 is currently running a series exploring disability across history, we have had extensive coverage of the Oscar Pistorius court case in South Africa...
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Inspiring a generation….?
The Paralympics in London 2012 were heralded as championing new attitudes towards disability in the UK, with Prime Minister David Cameron, saying they would “inspire a lot of people and change people’s views on disability”. Similarly, the press coverage of...
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Measuring Ideology