Guest Post: UK Disability History Month – Health and Wellbeing
By Richard Rieser, UK DHM coordinator and General Secretary, Commonwealth Disabled People’s Forum
Each year, for the last 13 years, UK Disability History Month has chosen a theme to celebrate disabled people, challenge disablism (the systematic discrimination and prejudice towards disabled people) and campaign for equality.
UKDHM take a social model view of disablement. Long-term impairment – whether physical, sensory, metabolic, mental (learning and mental health) or psycho-social – is a common part of the human condition caused by disease, inheritance, poverty, war, violence or accidents.
Medical science is limited in eradicating these and curing people. Negative Attitudes, Inaccessible Environments, and Restricting Practices are socially created barriers than can be changed and should be, to create disability equality. During this month all workplaces should concentrate on removing these barriers for staff, customers and the general public. Remember we are 24% of the population or 14.5 million in the UK.
A bit of history about UKDHM logo…
Disabled people were forced to wear a black triangle symbol by the Nazis during the ‘T4′ Eugenics Programme; which was intended to eliminate them. Between 250,000–1 million were murdered by the Nazis’ false hopes of building a ‘master race’. The UKDHM logo has taken this symbol, and in reclaiming our history we have inverted it and filled it with sunshine.
There has been a lot of improvement when looking back 100 or even 50 years, but there is much more to be done. ELBA is on a journey to do more on disability and we want to work with our partners to make positive change.
- 5% of disabled people aged 16 to 64 were in employment compared with 81.6% for non-disabled people. When looking at the type of employment, 13.8% disabled people were self-employment compared to 12.5% non-disabled people.
- 1% disable people aged 16 years and over in England reported feeling lonely compared with 3.6% of non-disabled people.
- 6 out of 10 disabled people’s anxiety levels were higher compared with 3.0 out of 10 for non-disabled people.
(Statistics year ending 2021, sourced from: ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/disability/articles/outcomesfordisabledpeopleintheuk/2021)
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