ROOF Blog

The UK has ratified a United Nations convention enshrining the human rights of disabled people. The government minister for disabled people Jonathan Shaw said there are more than 10 million disabled people in the UK whose rights would be strengthened.

HMP Parkhurst on the Isle of Wight has been described as a ‘troubled institute’ by the chief inspector of prisons after a report found a litany of problems. One disabled prisoner was unable to wash property for more than a year because staff refused to take him to the showers, while for another disabled offender it was six months because there was a lack of staff trained to push his wheelchair. The report has also said prisoners were poorly supervised by staff, violence was endemic and there was widespread abuse of prescription drugs.

Families with disabled children feel alienated from their communities and suffer because of a lack of services, a new report from charity Contact a Family says. More than 65 per cent of those questioned said they believe understanding and acceptance of disability is poor and described feeling stigmatised and shut out. A further 40 per cent said they lacked support services such as access a key worker, or childcare, and 64 per cent said they did not feel valued by society in their role as a carer.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has produced a new guide on housing disabled children. The guide lists ways of adapting a family’s existing home, outlines the role of frontline workers, and has a summary of the relevant law in England.

A new report has found that white working class people are losing out in areas from housing to health – and it is class rather than colour that makes discrimination more likely. The Runnymede Trust argues the current school system is skewed in favour of middle class children, working class children do not have access to the material support of other classes and the rich benefit from better quality housing.

A study of attitudes to immigration has found a widespread sense of resentment, unfairness and disempowerment among white working class communities in England. Poor white people living on some of the country’s most deprived estates felt that immigrants were treated more favourably in the allocation of housing and other resources, while the indigenous working class were now the group most heavily discriminated against. Research from Communities and Local Government found that some members of the white working class felt ‘betrayed’ and believed politicians had washed their hands of them. Hazel Blears, communities secretary, said that politicians had to make a greater effort to challenge the myths created by the far right, such as immigrants getting priority in social housing, and needed to reconnect with white working class people to respond to their ‘real and perceived sense of unfairness’.

Public sector bodies, including councils should tackle discrimination on the grounds of socio-economic grounds as well as other types of unfair bias such as race, gender and religious belief, the head of the equalities watchdog said. Trevor Phillips said in a speech to the Fabian Society that class, parental occupation and where someone lived where the best predictors of life chances – or lack of them.

Following a ruling by the Employment Tribunal yesterday, millions of carers will have the right to claim against employers who discriminate against them in refusing to offer flexible working. The worker was forced to resign because she wanted to spend more time to care for her disabled son and launched a ‘discrimination by association’ claim. The result has paved the way for approximately 2.5 million people in Britain who are carers as well as maintaining jobs will be entitled to the same treatment as other staff.