Leaves, leaves, leaves
- By The Difficult Parent
- •
- 02 Mar, 2019
- •
Madness, madness, madness: How the cumulative impact of policy changes can disproportionately impact on disabled people.
As Cilla would ask ... ... What's it all about Alfie?
Cumulative impact of
- Reduction in street sweeping
- Loss of nursing care
- Rubbish no longer collected by Haringey / Veolia
- Increased need to work and care
- Wheelchair vehicle needs an appointment at the dump
The story is ...
The reduction in the number of times our street is swept regularly leads to piles of litter and leaves blowing in off the street and into our garden. Our garden is tiny and we don't have a tree. The leaves have blown in from the heavily tree-lined street. On top of the rubbish from the street, rubbish blows in from the overflow of the rubbish bins that are next to our house from 'development' where we live.
We are the parents of a severely disabled child and we now have less free time to deal with this on going issue. The criteria for nursing care in home has changed and as a result we have lost 35 hours nursing a week. Due to various austerity inspired benefits changes, we both now have to work full time as well as sharing between us the care for our son 24/7. Two of us spent 40 minutes clearing up this mess. We don't have the free time for this.
We don't have a big enough garden nor the disposable income to justify buying into the Haringey / Veolia garden waste scheme - where your garden waste will be collected if deposited in a special bin that you have to buy from Haringey / Veolia at a cost of £55 a year. If we did that we would be paying for Harigney / Veolia to come and take away leaves from a tree that is their responsibility.
So we loaded up our wheelchair accessible vehicle (WAV), only to find out upon arrival at the dump we are not allowed access to the dump because our vehicle is a van. We would have made an appointment at the dump to dump other peoples rubbish / Haringey's leaves.
However, there is money for body-cams for the staff at the dump! Enabling them to film me persuading them that their policy is discriminatory towards wheelchair users who have to use WAVs.
We are the parents of a severely disabled child and we now have less free time to deal with this on going issue. The criteria for nursing care in home has changed and as a result we have lost 35 hours nursing a week. Due to various austerity inspired benefits changes, we both now have to work full time as well as sharing between us the care for our son 24/7. Two of us spent 40 minutes clearing up this mess. We don't have the free time for this.
We don't have a big enough garden nor the disposable income to justify buying into the Haringey / Veolia garden waste scheme - where your garden waste will be collected if deposited in a special bin that you have to buy from Haringey / Veolia at a cost of £55 a year. If we did that we would be paying for Harigney / Veolia to come and take away leaves from a tree that is their responsibility.
So we loaded up our wheelchair accessible vehicle (WAV), only to find out upon arrival at the dump we are not allowed access to the dump because our vehicle is a van. We would have made an appointment at the dump to dump other peoples rubbish / Haringey's leaves.
However, there is money for body-cams for the staff at the dump! Enabling them to film me persuading them that their policy is discriminatory towards wheelchair users who have to use WAVs.
The lesson to take away...
This vignette illustrates how the cumulative impact of policy changes and changes in service provision can disproportionately impact on people with disabilities. Are Haringey properly considering the cumulative impact of policy changes when they carried out their Equality Impact Assessments?
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?
