Helping disabled to live in dignity at home

By Peter Nolan
More than a million people in Britain are seriously handicapped, but only 5 per cent. of them enjoy as of right an income helping to meet the needs of their disability.
Last week the Anglican Bishop of Bristol, Dr. Oliver Tomkins, a patron of the Disablement Income Group, raised the cause of the disabled in a debate on a Social Security Bill in the House of Lords. DIG, a voluntary organisation now 12,000 strong, has been fighting for a better deal for the disabled since it was started in 1965.
Mrs. Mary Hoperoft, DIG's general secretary, said: "We are the only organisation in the country concerned with the economics of the disabled. Only the war disabled and those disabled in industrial accidents get government help as of right.
"They can ask for supplementary benefit, but you would have to be pretty well on the poverty line to get it Life is more expensive for the disabled, who usually need special aids and extra heating. For many, disablement means poverty. The majority of the physically and mentally handicapped are over 65 years old. Because people are living longer, every year more fall into what DIG has called "The Disability Trap."
Mr. and Mrs. Charles Dickson of Newcastle are among those who DIG believes fall into this trap. Mrs. Dickson is confined to a wheelchair with rheumatoid arthritis and is married to a man who is partially paralysed and unable to work. They receive an income of f 15.80 a week, made up of sickness benefit and supplementary benefit.
Mr. Dickson is incontinent and his wife has to buy soap, disinfectant and aerosols to try to get rid of the smell. "Things like this can really wreck your budget," she said. Her husband's clothes have to be replaced frequently because the disinfecting rots the cloth.
Both buying and cooking food present problems for them. Mrs. Dickson said: "If it's a good week. I try to buy extra food to cover the bad weeks. I'll maybe buy an extra packet of cornflakes." Groceries have to come from expensive corner shops. ihe cheapt.r supermarkets will not deliver.
For Mrs. Dickson, things are not getting any easier. "I'm getting older, You've got to be sensible about it, and because I've had arthritis for 45 years, my body isn't young. It's the body of an old woman.
"How long I cart go on looking after a disabled person, I don't know. it's not an easy thing to put a person into care — particularly if it's your own husband."
DIG is fighting for a national disability pension to allow the disabled to live out their lives with dignity in their own homes. France, West Germany, Holland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark already have such pensions. Mrs. Hoperoft said: "Very many of the disabled often have to choose between buying a meal or heating the house," If they earned more than £4.50 a week in a part-time job they lost their pension, even though it was higher than what they earned. she said.
Disability affects not only the life of the disabled but that of his whole family. Mrs. Sylvia King, whose husband contracted multiple sclerosis at the height of his career., described how life dosed in on herself and her three young children.
She said "As time went on our friends, though most sympathetic, gradually lost touch. Wives would chat to me when the occasion arose, but husbands found it so difficult to converse with someone who could barely make himself understood." Their eldest son, aged six when the disease struck, found a father who had been a keen sportsman, now refusing to play games. Mrs. King said: "To a child, this was almost a rejection, and I admit that even to me it seemed a case of 'would not' rather than 'could not'. Gradually, in the next five years, contact was lost between father and son."
After Mr. King, who has since died, had to retire from work, he became tied to a wheelchair and the house had to be transformed to accommodate him. The dining room finally became a bedroom, rails were put in the bathroom, special crockery had to he bought and an inter-corn was installed.
Compared to many, Mrs. King was lucky, her husband being retired on half pay. She was unable to work herself, having to look after him and a very young child. But her husband, an engineer, helped to design many things that made life a little easier.
Life would have been easier still if her husband's insurance cover had included disablement — also if the disabled could have a single code number.
Mrs. King said: "I lost count of the number of forms I filled in over the years of disablement ... I completed the same form three times for different departments of the county council within two weeks at one stage."
When the founders of DIG, Mrs. Megan Du Boisson and Mrs. Bent Moore, both suffering from multiple sclerosis, wrote in 1956 to The Guardian suggesting founding the group, they received thousands ot letters ot response. The need having been highlighted, DIG began at Mrs. Du Boisson's home in Godalming, Surrey.
This year it moved offices to Tottenham Court Road, London. Voluntary labour by boys from the City of London School soon had the grimy premises transformed into rooms gleaming with light and white paint. Archbishop Cowderoy of Southwark and Mr. Michael Flanders, the broadcaster — himself a polio victim — are among the group's many distinguished patrons. The national executive cornmittee has three M.P.s as vicechairmen — Mr. Jack Ashley, Labour member for Stoke-on-Trent; Mr. John Pardoe, Liberal member for Cornwall North, and Miss Joan Quennell, Conservative member for Petersfield.
DIG is a society with two faces. One, benevolent, is a charitable trust, operating an advice service staffed by a specialist and publishing such booklets as "An ABC of Services for Disabled People." DIG's political group agitating for government help for the disabled, has a more militant appearance. DIG has 50 branches throughout the country, and a meeting called by a disabled woman in Bexley, Kent, last week will lead to another branch opening there in August. This year regional meetings have already been held in Manchester, Southampton and London.
It is in the political field that DIG has scored its most obvious successes. The annual report for 1972 noted: "Between 1959 and 1964 (the year before DIG was formed) there was not a single parliamentary debate on disablement. In 1972, disablement, under one head or another, figured in Hansard on more than a hundred days . . . "
In December 1971 an attendance allowance was approved for the first time for those needing attention night and day, to be paid to the disabled. Pressure from DIG helped lead to an extension of the allowance to those needing partial attention being made available in stages this year. Over 90,000 have so far qualified for the full allowance and 250,000 are expected to receive the partial allowance. The allowances represent a channelling of £70 million of national income towards the disabled.
Mr. Jeremy Harrison, DIG's publicity officer, explained the difficulty of obtaining the special help needed for the disabled. He said: "Social welfare payments are entrenched in the anomalous position which exists today. It has never been accepted that disabled people need different pension treatment. "The 1971 attendance allowance was a breach in the structure, but the help was by no means generous or generously handed out."
The original full allowance of £5.40 a week will rise to £6.20 in the autumn and the partial allowance comes to £3.60 Mr. Harrison added that the disabled were becoming "a good deal more militant."
Sir Kieth Joseph, Secretary of State for Social Services, left the annual meeting of DIG on May 5 "in a far worse humour than he arrived inN he said. "You will find people at DIG meetings whom you would not think could get out of their own front doors."
Another DIG member reported that as Sir Keith was getting into his car after a 90-minute debate with members, he was heard to say: "I'm going home to he down."
DK; is considering a proposal that a "storm troop" of three of the group's officials should visit different areas throughout the country to contact the disabled and offer them help and advice.
But the most hopeful sign for the future of the group was the compliment paid to it by Sir Keith. Asked at the annual meeting what he would do if he were disabled and reduced to living on supplementary benefit, he replied: "I should certainly join DI.G."
Further information is available from: The Disablement Income Group, 180 Tottenham Couri Koad, London, Wll