“My name is Jan Thomas. I'm Chief Officer of the FDF, Centre for Independent Living. We support disabled people of all ages, pan-disability, across six counties in North Wales to live independently, where they want, how they want, and with whom they want.”
Jan recently sat down with us to discuss how the cost-of-living crisis affects people reaching out to the FDF. Due to a noticeable increase in referrals and requirements for support, Jan sees first-hand what the crisis is doing within vulnerable communities. “People are just not coping. I'm involved with other organisations, both across Wales and across the UK. We're all hearing the same thing that disabled people are being left out when it comes to considerations for the cost-of-living crisis. Our workload has increased by more than 100%. Much of our work has to do with benefits.”
The FDF provides advice, information, and advocacy on all issues related to disability. “We actually do full benefits checks and are able to secure 1000s of pounds in previously unclaimed benefits for people who didn't know those benefits were available. Benefits like pension credit, attendance allowance, carers allowance etc.” Jan and her organisation help people find the right aid available for them, signposting possible grants and funds alongside giving practical advice and benefit checks. “We have an office in Mold, and we have an outreach worker in each county in North Wales. We guarantee to respond within 72 hours.”
As soon as a referral is made be it a self-referral, medical referral, social services or local authority referral, the first thing that is done by the FDF is a benefit check to make sure the individual is getting what they're entitled to. Once this is done the FDF then investigate what else can be done to help. “So, it might be they're not able to warm their home, for example, in which case we would speak to other people who can provide grants.”
Jan shared one example of someone that reached out to them desperate for help. “A family living in rural Wales reached out. They had a disability in the family, and children at home. They were living in a stone cottage, off-grid and couldn't afford to buy heating fuel, so no hot water or heating. They went to a relative’s home once a fortnight for a bath. As a family, they were living on microwave meals, and they were going to bed early, seven o'clock at night, wrapped up in all sorts of blankets, because the house was so cold. There is an organisation that hands out grants of £200, but the minimum amount of oil that the family could have delivered has increased from just over £300 pounds to over £1200. Nobody will deliver it for the £200 pounds.”
Jan knows that there are a lot of discussion needed around the crisis and how to reach the families most in need.
“The cost of food has gone up enormously, especially for children who are on special diets or must eat certain foods.” Food parcels and food banks aren’t the answer to the crisis for everybody. “Some people do not have the ability to open a tin, they don't have the strength in their hands to open tins. Others maybe cannot eat some foods such as gluten – most food parcels supply tins and pasta. It's just not appropriate. It would be far better for the government to address the whole issue of supermarkets and the high costs today.”
The crisis isn’t only affecting food and household bills, Jan says lots of things need to be looked at. “We could be looking at the cost of children's clothes, particularly for school uniforms, the fact that we've now got kids, not only disabled children, but all children, who are wearing secondhand school uniforms, living off handouts of free school meals. Now it's become the norm, that people cannot feed their children during the school holidays because of food poverty without free school meals. We're what, allegedly one of the richest countries, yet we are actually treating our children appallingly.”
Warm hubs are another ‘support’ that was put in place in Wales. The government-funded these. They were not the best way to spend money. £4.5 million pounds was spent on warm hubs.
“I understand, but I haven't heard it officially, that the Welsh Government has actually said that it was a complete disaster. We don't encourage people to go to warm hubs, because they're going out in the cold winter months in the freezing cold, leaving their warm home. Yes, it will be warm and they can sit and drink cups of tea and biscuits, make jigsaws etc. and then they have to go back to a freezing cold house because they haven't turned the heat on. During the day, they share germs with everybody else in that warm hub and also, it's an ideal opportunity for slips, trips and falls on frozen pavements. That’s not to mention getting there and back paying what little money you have for a taxi or spending time standing in the rain and or cold waiting for a bus that may or may not turn up. It is just ill-thought-out vanity politics by a government that actually doesn’t have a clue what they're doing.”
Jan believes that consulting with people with lived experience of how the cost-of-living crisis actually hits them would help give a better understanding to the decision makers. “The people who are making the decisions don't have the lived experience. I attend many government meetings and sit around with people on large salaries, most of whom wouldn't have a clue what it was like to sit in a cold office. They sit in a warm local authority office, all tucked up, making decisions about people. They're sitting there in their ivory towers, making these decisions, not understanding what it's like in the real world. Some people don’t actually know whether they’ve got enough money to feed their kids at the end of the day, it really is no way to live.”
Another aspect of the crisis is mental health. How this crisis is affecting the psyche of the country is something Jan sees as being important.
“One of the other situations that we're dealing with mostly now is mental health. We have had the pandemic, and now we have the cost-of-living crisis, these families have lived like this for three or four years now. They cannot continue living in this state where they depend on handouts. What about dignity and respect for these people? One example I have is a gentleman who accessed the service, he had to give up a senior job in a power station, to care for his wife. Once a month, they used to go out for a meal, which was a big treat. Now, he can't even do that because he can't afford the meal and the cost of the petrol together. He said his wife now never goes over the doorstep.”
The battle for good mental health on the back of this cost-of-living crisis is going to be a huge calamity.
Lack of understanding for people on benefits is a huge issue today, as the media often portrays people on benefits in a poor light, which is unhelpful and prejudiced. Most people on benefits would prefer to work or not to need the benefits system at all, but the reality is much different for them. “The other thing that we need to be is non-judgmental because there are too many people out there who say, benefit scroungers. I read it all the time, people are just living off the state, or they want something for nothing. There is no reason why they can't look after themselves. So, it's that lack of understanding of how the cost of living has really affected the people who have nothing to start with. You can't draw water from a well that's dry and these people were already living in abject poverty.”
The other issue that Jan spoke about is the people that aren’t digitally connected, that struggle to get internet service or don’t understand it. A lot of today’s help is accessed online, which isn’t always practical. “Not everybody is digitally included, or able to get in a car and go out and about. Many of them don't know where to turn to for help. We've just started a project where one of our workers is going out to social groups, church groups, women's groups, etc., and advertising our services, and on average, in four days, they are speaking to 50 people each. We're getting at least 15 to 20 new referrals a week from people who are just not getting their blue badges, not getting their benefits, not getting their mobility vehicles, because they live on their own. They haven't got the internet, and they have no idea. In North Wales, where do you go for the internet? Because the signals are rubbish, even if you've got the technology you might not be able to plug it in.”
A good start in Jan’s opinion is to talk to the people being affected the most. Not just tick the boxes as a token gesture but to actually include the voices and opinions of the disabled community in a meaningful, equal way. “We use disabled people, or their carers to serve on boards or be consulted but they are not expected to contribute, and I think what we need to do is something that we didn't do during the pandemic, we locked out disabled people, but we need to hear their voices and valuable insight into how the cost-of-living crisis impacts them.”
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The FDF - Centre for Independent Living (CIL)
TheFDF is an independent, not for profit, charity based in Mold, with over 20 years experience of delivering free pragmatic advice, guidance, comfort, support and help to all disabled and disadvantaged people. In 2017 TheFDF was granted CIL (Centre for Independent Living) status by Disability Wales as a recognised organisation for the delivery of services within the Social Services Act Wales (2014).
Their in-house staff and management team are experienced and knowledgeable specialists who recognise that the problems facing all disabled people, their families and carers are many, varied and often monumental.
To learn more about The FDF - Centre for Independent Living (CIL), click here.
Source: https://thefdf.org.uk