the country's only news agency specialising in disability issues
The Department of Health (DH) has been asked whether a senior civil servant – later arrested over two separate rape allegations – helped block tougher laws on the sexual abuse of people with learning difficulties in the 1980s. Disability News Service […]
Disabled campaigners have welcomed new NHS plans to extend the number of disabled people with high levels of care and health needs who can control all of their own support. Simon Stevens, chief executive of NHS England, said the scheme would […]
Disabled activists held a vigil outside the Royal Courts of Justice this week as legal efforts to force the government to reduce the discriminatory impact of its controversial “fitness for work” test approached their conclusion. The long-running case has been taken […]
An exhaustive and “timely” new report has laid bare the coalition’s failure to meet its human rights obligations to disabled people under international law. The report suggests that the UK has gone from being an international leader in disability rights to […]
Disabled campaigners have raised concerns about the “worrying” and “disturbing” decision to give more than one million pounds of public lottery money to the sister charity of the main organisation lobbying for assisted suicide to be legalised. The disabled people’s organisation […]
Disabled activists have criticised the government’s policy of turning up unannounced at the home of social security claimants to check their benefit payments are correct. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) insists that such visits have been government policy for […]
A government minister has criticised the “intolerable” failure of the NHS and local authorities to remove people with learning difficulties from out-of-area assessment and treatment units and return them to their home areas. The Liberal Democrat care and support minister Norman […]
The Supreme Court has ruled against three legal challenges that would have relaxed the laws on assisted suicide, but the complicated series of judgments has done little to reassure disabled activists fighting the threat of new legislation. The three appeals were […]
More than 99 per cent of disabled people who use the Independent Living Fund (ILF) believe that it improves their ability to live independently, just as the government is preparing to abolish it. The coalition is planning to close ILF in […]
Experts commissioned by the equality watchdog have told Disability News Service (DNS) that it is possible to assess the overall impact of coalition spending cuts on disabled people, despite ministers repeatedly claiming such a project would be impossible. Disabled activists and […]