Harder to care with road closures
- By Brian Leveson
- •
- 17 Nov, 2022
- •
Haringey is making one carers life hell through road closures, denying her family a blue badge and refusing her son a support plan
A quick briefing on informal carers
The Department of Health and Social Care has
described an informal/unpaid carer as: “…someone who provides unpaid help to a friend or family member needing support, perhaps due to illness, older age, disability, a mental health condition or an addiction”, as long as they are not employed to do so.
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7756/#:~:text=someone%20who%20provides%2....
Delivering that care often comes at a cost to the carer
Delivering that care often comes at a cost to the carer
- Increasing hours of care often results in the general health of carers deteriorating incrementally. Unpaid carers who provide high levels of care for sick, or disabled relatives and friends, are more than twice as likely to suffer from poor health - https://www.england.nhs.uk/commissioning/comm-carers/carer-facts/
- 5 million people in the UK are juggling caring responsibilities with work - that's 1 in 7 of the workforce.
However, the significant demands of caring mean that 600 people give up work every day to care for an older or disabled relative - https://www.carersuk.org/news-and-campaigns/press-releases/facts-and-figures
Informal carers and road closures
"I’m sick to death of Haringey Council" writes one informal family carer fed up of the lack of help from them and now road closures making her life harder as she tried to care for four family members with long-term health conditions and disabilites.
Our carer, 47, looks after her Dad 77, Mum 76, a brother with downs who is 52 and her son with autism is 10 years old.
Recently she had to take her mum and dad for blood tests. "Mum and Dad live on Gloucester Road and normally it would take 6 mins to get them to the Laurels Medical Centre on St Anns Road, but not do anymore! We ended up getting blood tests done in the North Middlesex Hospital, close to 5 miles away".
Our carer, 47, looks after her Dad 77, Mum 76, a brother with downs who is 52 and her son with autism is 10 years old.
Recently she had to take her mum and dad for blood tests. "Mum and Dad live on Gloucester Road and normally it would take 6 mins to get them to the Laurels Medical Centre on St Anns Road, but not do anymore! We ended up getting blood tests done in the North Middlesex Hospital, close to 5 miles away".
On top of all that Haringey Council have refused the family a Blue Badge and her son an educational, health and care plan - you just couldn't make it up.
End the injustice of the road closures now!
If you thought SEND was bad - the NHS is seemingly prepared to throw away money to private companies
About 3 or 4 times a year we get the euphemistic message 'Parents please note we have put a letter in your child's bag' - its a world away from how a child's death was handled in my child's first school
More of a trial by ordeal than a well organised clearly set out administrative process for moving the care of vulnerable young adults from Haringey's Children's Services to Adult Services. We have been failed at every stage of the process.
Never EVER get on the bus without a camera running if you need the priority wheelchair space
The reality of using a London Bus in the teeming rain on a Sunday afternoon is no joke when the parents of a paraplegic person in a wheelchair clash with the self-entitled buggy-pushing parents of toddlers.
At 3pm today I received some barefaced lies from Haringey Council Adult Social Care in response to a photograph I published online yesterday and the media interest it generated
Haringey SEND Transport are insisting that a 17 year old minibus with no air conditioning is a suitable vehicle to transport my paraplegic son in this heatwave. The appalling conditions inside the minibus inside the bus is something they knew about last summer, yet they have to date done nothing whatsoever provide a suitable minibus this year nor appropriately mitigate the temperatures inside the minibus.The conditions inside the minibus are so bad that they triggered multiple seizures during the heatwave as my son has epilepsy, which they SEND transport department know about and they also know that they are triggered by heat.It is not just son who is impacted: last year we know of one child who died on Haringey SEND Transport in the summer heatwave and another who had seizures.
I am simply asking a question - are we all absolutely certain that the road closure / travel restrictions (commonly know as LTNs) placed on some of the most severely disabled people who are wholly reliant on cars are absolutely necessary
Haringey's road closures exemptions policy for disabled people is not fit for purpose, unduly burdensome and intrusive - it's time to stand up against the pro-LTN lycra-clad cycling bullies
Is the argument for and against exemptions for disabled people in Low Traffic Neighbourhoods really a case of GOOD versus EVIL?
