• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • About DNS
  • Subscribe to DNS
  • Advertise with DNS
  • Support DNS
  • Contact DNS

Disability News Service

the country's only news agency specialising in disability issues

  • Home
  • Independent Living
    • Arts, Culture and Sport
    • Crime
    • Education
    • Employment
    • Housing
    • Transport
  • Activism & Campaigning
  • Benefits & Poverty
  • Politics
  • Human Rights
You are here: Home / Independent Living / Labour conference: DLA ‘gave me back my life’, says activist
Catherine Scarlett seated behind a table, speaking

Labour conference: DLA ‘gave me back my life’, says activist

By John Pring on 2nd October 2015 Category: Independent Living

Listen

An activist has told a Labour conference fringe meeting how her attempts to secure the support she needed after becoming disabled left her feeling “like a human pinball”.

Catherine Scarlett became disabled four years ago, and has faced an “incredibly steep learning curve” in finding out “what support is available and how to get it”.

She told the fringe event, which was hosted by Scope and the Fabian Society and focused on the extra costs of disability, how it was only receiving disability living allowance (DLA) that allowed her to fund the manual wheelchair with powered wheels that she needed.

Last year, she said, she faced “quite frightening” disability-related costs of more than £10,000.

She said: “If it hadn’t been for DLA payments I would not have had the money in the bank to get the wheelchair; I wouldn’t have been able to carry on working.

“I managed to carry on working for a year after I got it. It gave me back my life. It means I can get around independently.”

But she said that coalition spending cuts to working-age DLA, introduced as part of the move to the new personal independence payment (PIP), needed to be reversed.

She said the PIP process was “designed to stop people getting benefits. It is taking away the money that they need to lead independent lives.”

Scarlett (pictured at the fringe event, watched by shadow disability minister Debbie Abrahams) also said the government needed to remove the “disgusting 20-metre rule”, which has slashed the qualifying distance for the higher rate of mobility support from 50 metres under DLA to just 20 metres under PIP.

She said: “I have heard from so many people who have lost their independence because they have lost their ability to have [a Motability vehicle].

“They cannot work because they have lost their ability to get out of their houses. Those people need to be given their independence back. It is totally wrong.”

Scarlett said that having to deal with DLA – and later apply for PIP – employment and support allowance, wheelchair services, hospital departments, social services and the council’s housing department had left her feeling like “a human pinball bounced around by all different departments”.

She is also taking her employer to an employment tribunal, after facing three years of “really severe disability discrimination at work”.

Scarlett, now a town councillor in Driffield, said: “I feel like in the last three years my life has been scripted by Kafka; it’s been going from bizarre to even more bizarre.”

Share this post:

TwitterFacebookWhatsAppReddit

Tags: Catherine Scarlett Debbie Abrahams dla Labour Motability PIP

Related

Philippa Day: Young mother ‘took her own life after being told to attend PIP assessment’
14th January 2021
Philippa Day: DWP phone agent ignored sobbing claimant who later ‘took her own life’
14th January 2021
Philippa Day: DNS wins legal fight with DWP over ground-breaking release of secret report into benefit death
14th January 2021

Primary Sidebar

Access

Latest Stories

Philippa Day: Young mother ‘took her own life after being told to attend PIP assessment’

Philippa Day: DWP phone agent ignored sobbing claimant who later ‘took her own life’

Philippa Day: DNS wins legal fight with DWP over ground-breaking release of secret report into benefit death

New figures set to provide clearer picture of disproportionate pandemic deaths of disabled people

Peer calls for disabled people to ‘take control’ over PA vaccinations

Rights concerns over major Mental Health Act reforms

High court hears of ‘catastrophic’ impact of ‘fitness for work’ system

Disabled high-rise leaseholders are living in post-Grenfell fear of fire and financial ruin

Disabled people highlight scores of lockdown concerns

Regulator investigates DWP over universal credit ‘cover-up’

Advice and Information

DWP: The case for the prosecution

Readspeaker

Footer

The International Standard Serial Number for Disability News Service is: ISSN 2398-8924

  • Accessibility Statement
  • Privacy Policy
  • Site map
  • Facebook
  • Twitter

Copyright © 2021 Disability News Service

Site development by A Bright Clear Web