Welfare cuts must come alongside large-scale social change if disabled people are to gain access to work.
“What about me, what work am I going to do?” A protester said wryly outside 10 Downing Street, on the 26th March. She gestured to her arms, which ended just below her elbows, in explanation. She was one of over a thousand disabled people who came to Whitehall to protest cuts to Welfare on the day of the spring statement. Real-terms reductions in incapacity benefit, and tightening of eligibility for Personal Independence Payments are among the measures which disabled protesters objected to most vociferously.
“There’s no way I can do most jobs.” the protester told her interviewee, and I was reminded not of a particular moment, but of a feeling. A summation of moments in my life too great in number to count, this feeling that’s like a slow, small aggression continues over many years. It is for some people, myself included, something to be rejected, and rebelled against. For others it takes its toll, and grinds them down to a state of acceptance.
Like most children, I grew up with a series of unrelated but equally outlandish dream-jobs – singer, paralympian, mad scientist, etc. I didn’t think about the fact that working could be difficult for me, as a wheelchair user, anymore than I thought about the terrible stage fright I got (and still do get – thank you, karaoke) at the sight of a microphone. Around my teenage years something changed – as all my friends started to talk about the jobs they might actually, seriously want to do, people started talking to me about benefits, support packages and the like. Social workers, medics and other disabled people began talking about how hard it all was to gain access to essentials. Working was, apparently, not an essential, and necessarily paled into insignificance in conversations where securing the absolute minimum of support to live was the primary outcome.
Fast forward a good few years. I work, and I love my job – as a disabled employee I am, however, treated uncommonly well. I’m one of the 10% of working disabled people who found it easy getting necessary workplace adjustments put in place, according to the most recent data. And I love my job all the more, when I compare it to previous employment where, safe to say, I was not in that illustrious 10% of people who had what they needed.
I think about my previous work which, quite frankly I hated every second of, with an odd sense of pride. A job where I couldn’t use the bathroom, and where on one occasion a boy – young, but old enough to know better – looked at me with such horror he ran away to his mother, and pleaded and begged to go home. Yet I treated it like my dream career. I’m off to work, I’d say determinedly as I felt nauseous at the thought of the hours ahead. I valued myself more, working on an under 21s minimum wage, than I ever had. I somewhat perversely respected myself for doing what everybody around me was doing – putting up with a job I didn’t like. I would look at my measly payslip each month intently, knowing it was nowhere near enough to live on, but feeling some sense of a future. A confusing, cloudy one, but a future nonetheless.
I realised the other day that I have never been asked what I do for work. Do you work? Is the closest I’ve gotten, a question asked exclusively by fairly progressive people who are willing to at least entertain the notion that a person who can’t walk can contribute to society.
And I enjoy it – seeing people’s faces change as I tell them what I do. Oh! They react, their shock evident. I work in politics, I’ll say – and maybe I am a little proud, maybe I do brag a bit, but it’s that same pride I felt with my first job. The happy and content end-product of years of bubbling anger at being treated like a person with needs and not someone with something to give.
I think I needed that anger, really, and the energy it gave way to, to find a way into employment. I didn’t think it significant at the time, but a social worker checked in with me a year or so ago, and asked me various questions about my life. I talked about my horrible, amazing job, and my hopes to work somewhere I did enjoy eventually. I talked about politics and about journalism. They nodded along enthusiastically as I poured out these cautious optimisms, before replying that I should consider going on incapacity benefits. It wasn’t until recently, as I told a friend about it, that I remembered the fear those words stirred in me, and realised the connection between that moment and my sudden stubborn determination to find a good job that treated me well.
“There’s very little work out there for some of us” the protester went on to say, simply yet profoundly, outside Westminster last week. I think about my current job, which I got following a spate of good luck, a lot of drive and an unusually inclusive employer. A little afterthought pulses away, as it always does when I think about these things: I’ll hold onto this as long as I can. I’d cling to it with my fingernails if I had to.
The fact of there being “very little work” is further compounded by the ambiguity of difficulty in disability. Across the board, prejudices entangle with practicalities. In the case of employment, it has become near impossible to differentiate between the inability to work, and the refusal of institutions to welcome disabled people into the workplace.
The ‘why?’ is important, of course, but the ‘what now?’ more so. This is where my issue comes in. I do believe that it’s vital to protect disability benefits – restricting PIP in particular, frequently cited as the benefit which covers the extra costs a working disabled person faces, does nothing to encourage disabled people into work.
But we are undeniably at a crossroads – we saw, last month, the political mobilisation of thousands of disabled people across the UK in response to benefits cuts. But what were people protesting for – a reversal of the cuts, or a reversion to the status quo? This moment of pain, surely, poses a huge opportunity. These reforms are being labelled as part of a package presenting “pathways to work” – why not hold the Government to this commitment? The green paper on welfare reform commits to involving disabled people, as those with lived experience, in the fleshing out of reforms. I think now of what really keeps us out of work – of transport, labelled an area where disabled people are treated as “second-class citizens”, or of employment discrimination, where recent research found significant discrimination in the job application process for wheelchair-users. These barriers won’t disappear in tandem with benefits – surely this is the moment to push for this sort of large-scale change?
I suppose what I’m getting at is that things weren’t fine before, but they are changing now. Disabled people understandably feel, and are certainly portrayed as, vulnerable people whose support is being forcibly removed. But we hold a tenuous opportunity to push for huge, positive reform. For many of us, a hostile society has created barriers too great to be overcome by investment in employment support alone. It’s for this reason people must take this opportunity to be heard, for all that it’s worth.
Perhaps I feel so strongly about this because I have been very, very close to becoming locked out of work. Or maybe it’s because I believe that our exclusion from work is the hinge that our exclusion from broader society is allowed to rest on. Whatever the reason, change is sorely needed – whether this knife-edge moment is the start of something better, or worse, remains to be seen.
I love my job, against all the odds
Welfare cuts must come alongside large-scale social change if disabled people are to gain access to work.
“What about me, what work am I going to do?” A protester said wryly outside 10 Downing Street, on the 26th March. She gestured to her arms, which ended just below her elbows, in explanation. She was one of over a thousand disabled people who came to Whitehall to protest cuts to Welfare on the day of the spring statement. Real-terms reductions in incapacity benefit, and tightening of eligibility for Personal Independence Payments are among the measures which disabled protesters objected to most vociferously.
“There’s no way I can do most jobs.” the protester told her interviewee, and I was reminded not of a particular moment, but of a feeling. A summation of moments in my life too great in number to count, this feeling that’s like a slow, small aggression continues over many years. It is for some people, myself included, something to be rejected, and rebelled against. For others it takes its toll, and grinds them down to a state of acceptance.
Like most children, I grew up with a series of unrelated but equally outlandish dream-jobs – singer, paralympian, mad scientist, etc. I didn’t think about the fact that working could be difficult for me, as a wheelchair user, anymore than I thought about the terrible stage fright I got (and still do get – thank you, karaoke) at the sight of a microphone. Around my teenage years something changed – as all my friends started to talk about the jobs they might actually, seriously want to do, people started talking to me about benefits, support packages and the like. Social workers, medics and other disabled people began talking about how hard it all was to gain access to essentials. Working was, apparently, not an essential, and necessarily paled into insignificance in conversations where securing the absolute minimum of support to live was the primary outcome.
Fast forward a good few years. I work, and I love my job – as a disabled employee I am, however, treated uncommonly well. I’m one of the 10% of working disabled people who found it easy getting necessary workplace adjustments put in place, according to the most recent data. And I love my job all the more, when I compare it to previous employment where, safe to say, I was not in that illustrious 10% of people who had what they needed.
I think about my previous work which, quite frankly I hated every second of, with an odd sense of pride. A job where I couldn’t use the bathroom, and where on one occasion a boy – young, but old enough to know better – looked at me with such horror he ran away to his mother, and pleaded and begged to go home. Yet I treated it like my dream career. I’m off to work, I’d say determinedly as I felt nauseous at the thought of the hours ahead. I valued myself more, working on an under 21s minimum wage, than I ever had. I somewhat perversely respected myself for doing what everybody around me was doing – putting up with a job I didn’t like. I would look at my measly payslip each month intently, knowing it was nowhere near enough to live on, but feeling some sense of a future. A confusing, cloudy one, but a future nonetheless.
I realised the other day that I have never been asked what I do for work. Do you work? Is the closest I’ve gotten, a question asked exclusively by fairly progressive people who are willing to at least entertain the notion that a person who can’t walk can contribute to society.
And I enjoy it – seeing people’s faces change as I tell them what I do. Oh! They react, their shock evident. I work in politics, I’ll say – and maybe I am a little proud, maybe I do brag a bit, but it’s that same pride I felt with my first job. The happy and content end-product of years of bubbling anger at being treated like a person with needs and not someone with something to give.
I think I needed that anger, really, and the energy it gave way to, to find a way into employment. I didn’t think it significant at the time, but a social worker checked in with me a year or so ago, and asked me various questions about my life. I talked about my horrible, amazing job, and my hopes to work somewhere I did enjoy eventually. I talked about politics and about journalism. They nodded along enthusiastically as I poured out these cautious optimisms, before replying that I should consider going on incapacity benefits. It wasn’t until recently, as I told a friend about it, that I remembered the fear those words stirred in me, and realised the connection between that moment and my sudden stubborn determination to find a good job that treated me well.
“There’s very little work out there for some of us” the protester went on to say, simply yet profoundly, outside Westminster last week. I think about my current job, which I got following a spate of good luck, a lot of drive and an unusually inclusive employer. A little afterthought pulses away, as it always does when I think about these things: I’ll hold onto this as long as I can. I’d cling to it with my fingernails if I had to.
The fact of there being “very little work” is further compounded by the ambiguity of difficulty in disability. Across the board, prejudices entangle with practicalities. In the case of employment, it has become near impossible to differentiate between the inability to work, and the refusal of institutions to welcome disabled people into the workplace.
The ‘why?’ is important, of course, but the ‘what now?’ more so. This is where my issue comes in. I do believe that it’s vital to protect disability benefits – restricting PIP in particular, frequently cited as the benefit which covers the extra costs a working disabled person faces, does nothing to encourage disabled people into work.
But we are undeniably at a crossroads – we saw, last month, the political mobilisation of thousands of disabled people across the UK in response to benefits cuts. But what were people protesting for – a reversal of the cuts, or a reversion to the status quo? This moment of pain, surely, poses a huge opportunity. These reforms are being labelled as part of a package presenting “pathways to work” – why not hold the Government to this commitment? The green paper on welfare reform commits to involving disabled people, as those with lived experience, in the fleshing out of reforms. I think now of what really keeps us out of work – of transport, labelled an area where disabled people are treated as “second-class citizens”, or of employment discrimination, where recent research found significant discrimination in the job application process for wheelchair-users. These barriers won’t disappear in tandem with benefits – surely this is the moment to push for this sort of large-scale change?
I suppose what I’m getting at is that things weren’t fine before, but they are changing now. Disabled people understandably feel, and are certainly portrayed as, vulnerable people whose support is being forcibly removed. But we hold a tenuous opportunity to push for huge, positive reform. For many of us, a hostile society has created barriers too great to be overcome by investment in employment support alone. It’s for this reason people must take this opportunity to be heard, for all that it’s worth.
Perhaps I feel so strongly about this because I have been very, very close to becoming locked out of work. Or maybe it’s because I believe that our exclusion from work is the hinge that our exclusion from broader society is allowed to rest on. Whatever the reason, change is sorely needed – whether this knife-edge moment is the start of something better, or worse, remains to be seen.
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