Last year, when George Osborne swiftly laid out his benefit cuts on the table, he threw a small bone to disabled people living alone who require occasional overnight help from carers. He passed an exemption that meant from April this year, these people could receive the two-bedroom rate of housing benefit to pay for a room to be used by carers as required. For those who would find this extra allowance useful, it seemed like a small reprieve among the announcements of slashes to housing benefit; maybe those who need the most help and care wouldn’t do so bad after all. Osborne and Grant Shapps, the minister for housing, also said that the worst off and most afflicted would be looked after, and be free of the clampdown on housing benefit. Before the election, David Cameron promised to “protect the most vulnerable” – an assurance he has broken.
Category Archives: mental health
A Week has Gone By after the Listening Reforms on Mental Health ended
A Blog that says it as it is for Mental Health, with permission.
Jun042011
A Week Gone By


Well the Government have finished their Listening Exercise on NHS Reforms but it’s all smoke and mirrors, because apart from a few tweeks I suspect they will do exactly what they want anyway. It’s a great shame they didn’t bother to listen in the first place and consult more widely, instead of just being guided by the ‘usual suspects’ and bureaucrats.
Actually given the whole debacle, I am surprised that nobody’s head has rolled – but we can live in hope. It must have been six to eight months ago when I wrote in Mental Health Today expressing my concerns. If somebody like me could see it coming, I am surprised that those supposedly far smarter people didn’t.
Respite breaks for carers across the UK at a Caister–on–Sea holiday home
Edited by Jane Hill editor@wellbeingnorfolk.co.uk
Carers are being offered the chance to take–a–break beside–the–seaside in a holiday home that has just opened. The newly refurbished house at Caister–on–Sea, offers respite breaks for carers, and is run by mental health charity Great Yarmouth and Waveney Mind.
The three–bedroom holiday home is the first of its kind in the region and is available for rent by any person or family who cares for a relative and is need of a respite break. The holidays are specifically aimed at offering carers a break, though they can choose to bring those who they care for on the holiday too.
Hitting the poor and sick again!
Housing benefit cuts undo a positive move on disability
For disabled people, the government is giving with one hand and taking with the other in its changes to housing benefit
- Lucy Glennon
- guardian.co.uk,
- Friday 27 May 2011 14.29 BST