Concern over bill that offers new rights… but only to people with Down’s syndrome

In this Disability News Service article Andrew Lee, director of People First (Self Advocacy), said he was concerned that the bill “just singles out a small group of people with learning difficulties… and forgets the rest of us”.

He said the disabled people’s movement had been telling the government “for a very long time” that the answer to the social care crisis was through a new National Independent Living Support Service, but that it has “not been listening”.

Lee said the bill had taken a medical model approach to addressing the barriers faced by people with learning difficulties, and disabled people in general, because it focused only on people with a particular impairment.

He also said the bill’s call for councils and other public bodies to have due regard to government guidance was “not strong enough”, as it would only be saying “please can you” rather than “you must”, “you’ve got to” or “you have to”.

And he said he was worried that people with Down’s syndrome would worry about other people with learning difficulties not having access to services that they might now have access to because of the legislation.

You can read the full article here