‘Austerity’s Victims’, just been published
Its aim is to show how adults with a learning disability have been affected by government austerity measures since 2010 and to bring their situation into the open. It concentrates on five men in Cornwall with a learning disability, precisely comparing their income and spending with national and county averages so that the extent to which they have been left behind becomes clear. It also examines their quality of life as the support they are given shrinks.
I quite appreciate how busy you must be but if you were able to read the book and liked it, needless to say any help in promoting it would be gratefully received!
All the best.
Neil Carpenter
I work with a team of people supporting adults with learning disabilities who all live independently in Northamptonshire, We have been told our service will close in 1st October due to more austerity in the County. This is due to the miss management of finances at Northants County Council, they have decided to stop funding our service and many others. The Company we work for will not continue the Housing and Community team without funding, they are a national “charity” organisation. They have left us to find alternative services to advise our clients to contact, We have been supporting people who do not meet Adult Care criteria, as they continue to move their goalposts, more and more people are overlooked and neglected, falling victim to financial abuse, losing benefits and facing eviction. We have found no one yet who can offer support to the intensity we do, these people are going to be totally lost, I have notified our local MP who forwarded my email to the Under
secretary of State for Mental Health and Inequalities, I am still waiting for her response.