New welfare reform proposals will result in many disabled children facing a cut of up to £1,400 per year (£27 per week) compared to their current welfare entitlements.
By Sam Royston, Policy Adviser the Children’s society
A coalition of 30 national organisations and charities, led by The Children’s Society, are calling on the Government to reverse their planned cut to support for disabled children under the new Universal Credit.
The organisations have identified that new welfare reform proposals will result in many disabled children facing a cut of up to £1,400 per year (£27 per week) compared to their current welfare entitlements. By the time a disabled child reaches 16, this could cost the family £22,000.
Raising a disabled child is extremely expensive. The range of costs can include higher travel costs, increased fuel bills, extra childcare and loss of income due to hospital appointments.
The government estimates that 100,000 disabled children will be hit by this change.
The £27 lost per disabled child a week (which could double or triple if there are two or three disabled children in a family) is more than half the average family’s food budget. This can make the difference between a family coping or falling below the breadline. This shift will force families into poverty.
So why is the government making this change? It claims that the measures are being introduced in order to align child and adult rates of disability support.
But the group of adults with whom support is aligned are at some point likely to be able to move back into work. Children cannot work to raise extra money to increase their income, so have no way to escape poverty. It must be recognised that disabled children face additional barriers to escaping poverty and therefore require extra support.
It is absolutely crucial for people to join us in petitioning the government to understand the significance of this change for disabled children and their families. For many low income families already living on the breadline, this will make the difference between meeting their children’s basic needs and finding themselves unable to cope.
Click here for more information and to see the list of organisations that have signed up.
77 Responses to “Help stop government changes to welfare penalising disabled children”
KAAL Group
RT @leftfootfwd: Help stop government changes to welfare penalising disabled children http://t.co/FvzYXOs
Citizen K
RT @leftfootfwd: Help stop government changes to welfare penalising disabled children: http://t.co/kMfLGPb @childrensociety 's @raficooper
DavidG
“these households will receive full cash protection against this change to ensure that there are no cash losers at the point of transition.”
Mr Mouse’s inevitable attack on Labour is undercut by his own words. The proposed transitional protection is fixed at the point of transition, so will be continually eroded by inflation, meaning families will lose each time their fixed transition sum is not updated to counter inflationary rises. Meanwhile the transitional protection will not apply to new claims and, assuming constant population, those 100,000 affected children with transitional protection will soon roll over into a new set of 100,000 affected children with no transitional protection whatsoever, simply a £27/week reduction in family income. Ministers were very careful to always specify no losses ‘during the period of transition’ when speaking in the House, but, unlike them, the families of disabled children do not have the luxury of relying on short term pedantism to escape the consequences of the government decision.
To quote from the government’s own impact assessment:
“This Impact Assessment provides an assessment of the costs and benefits once Universal Credit has been fully implemented and transitional protection has been exhausted.”
“Around 1.7m households will have lower entitlements under Universal Credit.”
Patty
UK #hcr>RT @kathgreenwood:RT @leftfootfwd: Help stop government changes to welfare penalising disabled children http://t.co/3ZMF3tC #prolife
Nabeel Ul-Haq
Help stop government changes to welfare penalising disabled children: http://t.co/RJhumaN @childrensociety 's @raficooper