Displaying items by tag: special needs

Despite recent increased spending on Continuing Healthcare, staff shortages and rising prices mean people with complex medical needs are lacking the help they need. Sometimes family members are so exhausted from providing continual care that they’re concerned over their relative’s safety. Declan is one of the 16,000 people needing Continuing Healthcare. He has severe, progressive muscle wasting and cannot move unassisted. He requires a ventilator to breathe and has chronic heart and respiratory failure. The care he needs to be able to live at his family home should be met by NHS’s Continuing Healthcare scheme that enables people with high complex needs to live outside of the hospital. Declan is entitled to 24/7 support by experienced care workers plus extra help mornings and bedtime. His mother has been asking for care overnight and during her working hours - but repeatedly faces shortfalls in meeting Declan’s needs.

Parents have spoken of the 'unbearable torture' of being separated from their disabled children and young adults living in care facilities. Tens of thousands of special needs children have been unable to touch or hug their parents and siblings since March. Many have severe disabilities which mean they are unable to speak. They cannot communicate properly through Zoom calls, only through eye contact and touch. But this is now impossible. Distraught parents, banned from seeing their children for months due to care home visiting rules, have pleaded with ministers to allow reunions before Christmas amid fears that thousands of vulnerable youngsters are suffering long-term harm. The youngsters are the hidden victims of what seems a callous policy that campaigners say is killing through loneliness. The Daily Mail is highlighting their plight in a Christmas campaign for all care residents to be allowed proper visits. 

Apulstock is a safe music festival in Sussex, for people with special needs. It is organised and run by volunteers whose sole aim is to inspire and entertain people who don’t have the opportunities or support to attend the larger annual music festivals. Apulstock is a mixture of music and dance slots led by professional rap, rock and roll, and alternative musicians plus lots of fun bands encouraging audience participation in Zumba fitness and funky dance routines. Every week, across the country, there is an army of volunteers using their talents to touch the lives of the hidden 2% in our communities. They deliver special church services, discos, karaoke, sports, arts and crafts, gardening, etc to develop people’s individual strengths and support them to overcome their weaknesses.

Mental health units and units with people with learning disability are often full, operating under massive strain, having to make use of agency staff, risking violence, using force and restrictive interventions and even seeing patient-on-patient assaults. Last summer, NHS England announced £76.5million of investment in the Transforming Care programme, to move people with learning disabilities out of hospital and into the community. Experts, however, warn that unless funding is properly pooled between local government and the NHS, problems will continue and thousands of people stuck in hospital settings will continue to be left without protection and without a voice. People with learning disabilities are being forgotten. It is a hidden problem. We have a responsibility to treat everyone as equal citizens. It is intolerable for people with special needs to be locked up, breaching their human rights, when they are capable of living with support in the community.

11-year-old Adam has weakened muscles, speech impediments and autism, and is a full-time wheelchair user. Adam wants to go out with friends, but this depends on whether he has access to a suitable toilet and changing room. Standard disabled toilets are small and do not provide the changing benches or hoists to meet his special needs. He and his family risk health and safety by changing him on a toilet floor and manual lifting. Adam represents thousands of people with special needs who are not having these needs met, and is taking a theme park to court for not providing ‘reasonable’ disabled facilities. He wants the term ‘reasonable’ to include the space and equipment needed for a disabled person’s personal care. It is now expected that everyone has a right to live in the community and access all its facilities. Government policy promotes ‘community participation’ and ‘active citizenship,’ but for some disabled people the lack of a fully accessible toilet is denying them this right. See: