If you haven’t been following my tale of woe on my personal journal, I have a terrible ear infection and can’t hear out of either ear. But now I have antibiotics to treat the middle ear infection, so any day now I should be able to hear something. I hope. (Woe.)

Today’s Recommend Reading is not entirely about the budget cuts and slashing of disability-related funding, but a lot of it is. I really recommend following Where’s the Benefit? for more in-depth discussion of these cuts.

Disabled People Protest Against The Cuts That Will Kill

Data from Family Resources Survey and the National Equalities Panel found that:
· 75% of disabled women and 70% of disabled men are already at the bottom end of Britain’s income distribution scale living in poverty.
· A tenth of disabled woman have incomes below £31 per week and a tenth of disabled men have incomes below £59 per week including earned income and benefits.
· Under the coalition government’s economy drive disabled people are set to lose at least £140 per month through direct cuts to disability benefits (initially devised to pay the extra costs of being disabled) alone.
· The Tories have threatened to remove our DLA saying that the number of claimants must be reduced by one-fifth.

rich at arbitrary constant: Osborne: Welfare cheats are “like burglars”

I’ll start by reminding people that most disability benefits are not work- or sickness-related. For example, Disability Living Allowance (DLA) helps with the additional costs of disability, primarily related to personal care. It is for people under 65, though you can continue to be in receipt of DLA over the age of 65 if you have it before you are 65. (Attendance Allowance is the equivalent for people over 65. Both are non-means tested.)

And rather than pejorative statements that play to Osborne’s prejudices, let’s introduce some facts.

CripChick’s Blog: thoughts on national coming out day

today is national coming out day. as i think about what this means for me as someone who is so out, yet so so closeted, friends and i are on a conference call going over notes from a recent summit where self advocates with developmental disabilities worked to create policy recommendations on community living. (sadly this is needed because too many providers use gov’t dollars set aside for community living to do things that are really hurtful to disabled people).

we asked people to talk about what group homes and other residential facilities for disabled people often look like. this is what the notes reflected.

Kali at Brilliant Mind, Broken Body: Disability services – hit or miss

Now, one of the interesting things I have to point out here when talking about how my law school handles my disability is that my law school is semi-autonomous from the greater university. It creates an…interesting…situation for disability accomodations. Not bad entirely; it’s had pros and cons for me. The way getting accomodations works for me is like this: I bring my doctor’s letter to the law school’s disability coordinator, who we’ll call W. The disability coordinator faxes the letter over to the university’s disability resources center. ( I officially have a file there and a counselor, but I’ve only really interacted with her over one issue.) The disability resources center sends back its evaluation of what accomodations I’m to be accorded. W and the law school student resources secretary then arrange for the accommodations.

Corina Becker at No Stereotypes Here: Adults Count Autism Survey

Not long ago, I heard about a survey being done by the Redpath Centre on the needs of Autistic Adults. Looking at the website, I see that the purpose of the survey is to gather materials in order to advocate for better services. Curious and always willing to help out, I emailed them, and received this reply.

In the news:

UK: The Guardian: Disabled people among the hardest hit by spending review: Osborne limits employment support allowance to one year. “After one year, people with assets, savings or partners who work will no longer receive benefits. Single people with no assets may be able to qualify for a means-tested safety net, but everyone else will have to manage on their husband or wife’s salary – no matter how low it may be – or dip into any private savings they may have.”

UK: The Guardian: A whirlwind of hatred against the disabled: Just how far are we, as a society, prepared to let violent crime against the disabled spiral upwards? [Trigger Warning for discussions of violence against disabled people, including sexualised violence] “The statistics should shame us all. Nine out of 10 people with learning difficulties have suffered bullying or harassment.”