Campaigners fought for more than 60 years so people with a learning disability can make their own choices in life and be part of mainstream society. However, I fear we are about to go backwards on decades of hard-fought victories which secured disabled people’s rights and inclusion in society.
I have seen great strides since the 1950s, when I was advised to “put away and forget” my late daughter, Shelley, who had Down’s syndrome. However, expected £12bn cuts to social security, combined with huge reductions in funding for local government, and therefore social care, are causing fear and anxiety among the 1.4 million people with a learning disability in the UK, and their families.
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By the time Robin Kitt Callender died, she had endured eight weeks of intermittent vomiting and diarrhoea, and her weight had fallen to five stone. In the four months before she collapsed at her Essex care home, the 53-year-old had visited her GP six times and A&E twice, but her inflammatory bowel disease remained undiagnosed.