#institutional disableism

[enbycrip]

Timms doing everything possible to block attempts to uncover and expose the ways the DWP is hamperimg and preventing disabled people from getting and keeping work, despite Labour rhetoric

Timms goes back on his word by refusing to provide crucial evidence of Access to Work cuts

The disability minister has gone back on his word by refusing to provide crucial information that would help expose a “perverse”, secret pro

[enbycrip]

Been reminded again about “absence policies”.

I don’t work atm because I’m chronically ill, disabled and studying a Master’s degree, but a friend posted about how he’s being fucked by his and the stupid trauma landed on me again.

There is not an illness in the world that is improved by inevitable stress about something you cannot control. Most of them are massively impacted and worsened by it, especially if you have any form of anxiety, which, let’s be real, the odds of you having a chronic illness under capitalism and *not* having are breathtakingly low.

So you’re already massively penalised by chronic illness. Absence policies - especially the ones in use by the NHS and many other institutions of the “three absences of any length trigger things” - are literally penalising you for being penalised.

Write this across the back of your head in fire. It’s an institutionalised marginalisation of people due to our existing marginalisation that acts to further entrench that marginalisation.

It’s not you. It’s the system.

Burn that in there and light it up again every time you need to.

[enbycrip]

Attempted to enquire about making a claim on a critical illness cover I’ve been paying for over a decade now because it was a precondition of getting a mortgage back when I was (apparently) healthy. Which my benefits go in to pay my half of now but if my OH didn’t have a job with a salary that can effectively subsidise me we’d have lost our home long long since.

There is of course no listing for hEDS or any other fatigue-based condition. The closest they’ll cover is Total Permanent Disability and they don’t cover that if you *ever* have any capacity to walk with any mobility aid, or can *ever* climb stairs, or can *ever* do the fucking stupid lift a 2kg weight thing.

I’m 85-90% bedbound depending on how I’m doing at any given time - usually summer-winter but also based on whether I’ve had a recent dislocation and how much it’s damaged me coming out and going in again.

This policy pays out immediately on loss of a foot. £88k.

The fucking *things* I could do with my life with a prosthetic or no foot that I can’t do now that would make me incredibly employable are literally too numerous to mention.

(I only mention the foot because that’s there clearly on the policy and the difference that would make to my pre-morbidity functioning vs the things I can actually *do* regularly now is just so fucking vast.

MS is in the policy. Anyone with ME or fibromyalgia would be in the same boat as me.)

Once again, the way abled people conceive of disability fucks disabled people over.

[enbycrip]

[enbycrip]

Another case of “department uses tool that they won’t allow to be interrogated that seems to flag people on protected characteristics without actually interrogating *if* those characteristics actually do equate to a risk for an individual case” being used against marginalised people for something as incredibly essential as whether they’re allowed to care for their kid.

Without *anyone* in the system interrogating whether the incident that brought the family into contact with CPS was caused by something that isn’t related to quality of parental care, like another medical condition, or whether being in the *foster care system* is in fact damaging the child in and of itself.

I am incandescent on reading this. Yes, I am aware media can slant things, but a) story they focus on shows *so* many characteristics of systemic issues we see all over the place, and b) the statistics quoted in it about 80% of disabled parents in that state having their kids removed speak for themselves.

They focus on AI in the article because it’s a hot button issue rn, but the only real relevance of it is that the algorithms it uses are not being divulged, which suggests to me that they are *absolutely* using protected characteristics as risk factors without interrogating *why* those effects are seen or exploring ways to mitigate them that don’t involve violating the human rights of everyone involved, including the kids that are supposedly being protected.

It’s *incredibly* notable that CPS services using such risk assessment systems, whether AI is involved or not, remove children from IBPOC parents, *particularly* indigenous parents and families, at an enormously inflated rate without addressing how removal from their cultures and communities in childhood affects those children for their entire lives

Not magic: Opaque AI tool may flag parents with disabilities

PITTSBURGH (AP) — For the two weeks that the Hackneys’ baby girl lay in a Pittsburgh hospital bed weak from dehydration, her parents rarely