Why Do Some Disabilities Get Statutory Entitlements & Others Don't?

TommyK

Hello All:

I'm just curious about something: Why is it that some clases of disabilities get statutory entitlements and others don't?

For example, take blind people: blind people can apply for a grant to employ a "personal reader" to provide them with assistance with reading at work.

But then why, for example, can somebody with a speech difficulty not obtain grant aid to employ a "personal speaker"?

Or a deaf person obtain grant aid to employ a "personal listener"?

Not trying to pick on blind people... I'm just curious about how the situation arises; is it powerful lobby groups? A numbers game? Personal opinions of politicians? Or something else?

Has anybody got any thoughts on this?

Regards,
Tommy.

Rev Hellfire

TommyK wrote:

Hello All:

I'm just curious about something: Why is it that some clases of disabilities get statutory entitlements and others don't?

I'm not sure what these disabilities you're taking about are ? Perhaps you'd name them.

For example all disabled persons who are employed can apply for the workplace equipment/adaptation grant.

The services offered are tailored to the particular disabilities, the individual and the degree to which they are effected.

As for the idea of powerful lobby groups for the disabled, hee good one.

TommyK

Rev Hellfire wrote:

I'm not sure what these disabilities you're taking about are ? Perhaps you'd name them.

For example all disabled persons who are employed can apply for the workplace equipment/adaptation grant.

The services offered are tailored to the particular disabilities, the individual and the degree to which they are effected.

As for the idea of powerful lobby groups for the disabled, hee good one.

I gave one example.

Another would be the Blind Person's Tax Credit... Why not also A Deaf Person's tax Credit? A Dumb persons Tax credit?

Or the tax relief allowance for people travelling to and from hospital for kidney dialysis... why not have the same relief for other patients who must travel long distances for treatment?

I know there are grants that aim to cover as wide an area of disability as possible but there are also a number of specific disbilities that receive *additional* allowances and entitlements.

How does THAT happen, if not a result of lobbying from groups representing people with these disabilities?

Tommy.

TommyK

Rev Hellfire wrote:

As for the idea of powerful lobby groups for the disabled, hee good one.

The Irish Wheelchair Association is a fairly prominant advocate for persons in wheelcairs.

Tommy.

FranknFurter

Tommy, dont be fooled, the IWA "talk" about positive change, they even make some money on the back of "making changes"..... but they are (these days anyway) as dependent on the government as anyone else, and won't kick up too much of a fuss either. Show me one single thing they have done in the last 8 years that has made a *real* change for EVERYONE.
(Yes they provide a lot of "services", but thats not the same as a real "equality" change).

Tbh, the entire area of "benefits / grants / allowances / misc" needs badly to be re-evaluated and reformed.

Many of the disability & equality pressure groups and even working groups have known and been pushing for this for years with very minor success.
(And most of the changes they have won are,imho, token gestures by a social "welfare" system trying to "calm a potential storm" by throwing out tid-bits when things look like they may go somwhere).
Then they too, run out of funds and have to turn to "grants" etc. and become so scared of losing "next years funding" that their whole agenda slowly but surely changes from "lobby" to "push a bit for"...

Most also btw, are heavilly reliant on CE worker schemes and Fas grants, which in itself is a major choke-chain.

I've at one point or another been involved in most of them in some way or another and over the years I got very jaded at the way some organisations developed amazingly good policy change suggestions and then when a tiny part of one was implemented, forgot about the rest of them.

Change will happen, when it will happen? Well, that depends on when "lobby groups" and "action groups" stop accecpting compromises.
When it comes to TRUE EQUALITY, "compromise" in my opinion is NOT equality.

Look at the big equality changes in history (esp USA) the REAL changes only happened when people stopped accecpting compromises. (Racial equality (such as it is), sexual equality (such as it is), etc etc........

*shrug* I got tired of trying, probably think I should be ashamed of that, but I'm not, I did my best, I wasted so many years trying and got tired of getting nowhere for over a decade, and stepped back.
But some time, somwhere, somone will have the drive and energy, and change WILL happen.

The_Conductor

On a related note- some people suffering from long term illnesses are entitled to free medication, while others are not. E.g. if you suffer from diabetes (type 1 insulin dependent diabetes) you are entitled to free medication- but if you suffer from other diseases such as Crohn's (which may require medication costing 400 or 500 a month) you have to pay E85 per month towards this (it adds up to over a thousand every year- and thats before GP fees for visits twice a month, consultants fees on average 3 times a year, regular tests etc- possibly costing in the region of another 4500 or 5000 per annum). This can be 20-30% of your after tax income. Some people have it waived- because they have a particular illness, others that have other lifelong illnesses that require ongoing medical treatment have no recognition of this. On the contrary- they are often discriminated against in work and find it very difficult to get time off work when seriously ill (e.g. they made be required to visit a company doctor to be signed off as sick- despite the fact that they are actually in hospital- not at home, and definitively not abusing anything). Surely it makes far more sense to try to get these people into productive employment and assist in keeping them there, than have them on longterm disability benefit- and all for the sake of pedantics.......