“F***k off back to where you came from. Some of us have jobs to get up for.”
This is the abuse I was met with upon collecting my adult, autistic offspring from their home. An emergency visit made necessary due to lengthy GP waiting lists and an overdue review, creating a temporary blip in an otherwise, stable life.
This verbal onslaught seemed to me, lifted directly from the comments section of any number of English tabloids. The disabled community are the current targets for politicians wanting to make easy polling gains. But at what cost?
Disability hate crime is currently recorded as roughly 14,000 incidents per year. The true figure is likely to be much higher as many disabled people (myself included) just do not have the spare capacity to report every piece of hate hurled at us. Attempting to explain why being called a “weirdo” by your neighbours is directly related to being autistic, to an average police officer, expends more energy than I am willing to give.
I have been observing for weeks, the steady ramping up of hostile language used by politicians and mainstream media to describe disabled people – a “surge” in claimants who are creating “burden” for tax payers. The general public are being directed to blame us for so-called economic failings.
We are being framed as economically burdensome; we are now a problem that must be quickly rectified. Yet many disabled people do work in paid employment and do pay taxes. Many others prop up the charity and voluntary sector, providing vital services that are not adequately funded by government. Many other disabled people provide unpaid care for others, spending large parts of their lives caring for others because no-one else can. Our voices are so rarely represented in the mainstream that we are given few opportunities to correct misinformation or ignorance.
But this rather misses the point, disabled lives are human lives and all human life has value. By labelling a whole group of people as less valuable is to de-humanise, which in turn makes it easier for politicians to pass laws making our lives harder not fairer – because who will speak out against this, once we have been designated as undeserving or as exploiting the system?
With every politician who conflates out-of-work benefits with PIP, or suggests that we must be issued with deeply stigmatising vouchers (and I must quickly point out that any voucher for payment scheme removes a person’s right to choose if and how they disclose a disability), the realities of living as a disabled person are being distorted past the point of correction.
It is neither easy nor smooth to apply for a PIP award. I manage three awards and the supporting evidence for which fills upwards of four underbed storage units. The interviews are intrusive and humiliating, causing anxiety and distress by having to share the most intimate parts of your life with a stranger. Currently, around 50% of new PIP claims are dismissed, yet 70% of those claims are successful at tribunal. This suggests to me that the assessment process is already overly ‘robust’. But with little media attention given to our disabled stories it can feel frightening to be under attack in such a way.
Already, social media support groups are discussing how life will be should any of these proposals materialise. Stability for many people will be lost. And with lost stability comes increased anxiety and fear.
My eldest child, beginning their independent, adult life (largely) away from me, is currently existing in a state of fear. Not just through fear of losing the financial support needed to balance the additional costs that disability incurs (currently calculated as £975 per month more than a non-disabled person) but fear of presenting as autistic in a climate of hostility.
Whether reforms to PIP and out-of-work benefits progress, damage to disabled people has already accrued. Collectively our anxiety has risen, and our self-confidence hit. We are in the process of being ‘othered’, and the dangers of this are beginning to feel all too real.
The-Aut-Vocate 