Monthly Archives: November 2013

Bedroom tax campaigner takes protest to Westminster

November 19, 2013   Carers, kinship carer, ukcuts

Pembrokeshire bedroom tax campaigner takes protest to Westminster

10:02am Tuesday 19th November 2013 in County News

 Campaign: Paul Rutherford outside the Houses of Parliament.

BEDROOM tax campaigner Paul Rutherford has taken his case from Pembrokeshire to Westminster.

The 56-year-old grandfather and his wife Sue provide round-the-clock care for their profoundly-disabled grandson, Warren, aged 13.

Their case, first highlighted in the Western Telegraph, has now been put forward by the Child Poverty Action Group as the very first judicial review challenge of the discretionary housing payment – known as the bedroom tax – on behalf of children who need overnight care.

Although the Rutherfords, who live in Clynderwen, have been successful in an appeal to Pembrokeshire County Council over the ‘spare’ bedroom in their housing association bungalow, Mr Rutherford has vowed to keep on campaigning against what he says is the injustice of the levy.

Read More

Improving dementia care: ask those who have lived with the illness

November 18, 2013   Carers, dementia, Social care

Personal experiences are often ignored by the social care system, but professionals can learn a lot from patients and their families

 

An understanding of what dementia is really like both for the individual and their family is often missed in care training. Photograph: Burger/Phanie / Rex Features

 

Dementia care training is a competitive marketplace, populated mostly by people from academic and scientific backgrounds. They can tell you the statistics, what the latest research has discovered, and the widely recognised methods we should all be following when we provide care to a person with dementia.

What is often missed is the understanding about what dementia is really like – both for the individual and their family.

I’m not an academic. University wasn’t an option for me; my dad needed me and there was nowhere else I was going to be other than by his side. He lived with vascular dementia for 19 years, going 10 years without a diagnosis and then spending nine years in three different care homes. Dad’s dementia began when I was just 12 years old, and went on to dominate my teens and twenties. He passed away in 2012 aged 85.

Read More

Food bank Britain: Thousands need charity handouts because of welfare system failings

November 17, 2013   Carers, disability, family, poverty, welfare

THOUSANDS of people are relying on food banks to survive because of failings in the welfare system.

By: Lucy Johnston

 Volunteers sort through some of the food donated by people to the Rochdale Foodbank

A Sunday Express investigation has uncovered scores of cases in which people need charity handouts after being denied benefits because of administration errors and punitive sanctions.

As many as 580,000 cuts to benefit payments were made between October 2012 and June 2013, a six per cent rise on the same period a year earlier, before rules were toughened.

Employment Minister Esther McVey said the sanctions, or cuts to benefits are used only against those who were “wilfully rejecting support for no good reason”.

Read More