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Disability benefit cuts 'changing things for the better' DWP's Stephen Crabb says

Article: May 28, 2016

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In http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/disability-benefit-cuts-changing-things-for-the-better-dwp-s-stephen-crabb-says-a7020806.html

Disability benefit cuts are among policies "changing things for the better", the new Work and Pensions Secretary Stephen Crabb has said.

Mr Crabb made the claim at his first Work and Pensions Questions session in the House of Commons, during which he was asked how he differed from his recently departed predecessor Iain Duncan Smith.
Asda held a 'quiet hour' for autistic shoppers - now other shops are doing the same

Article: May 28, 2016

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In http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/asda-held-a-quiet-hour-for-autistic-shoppers-now-other-shops-are-doing-the-same-a7020946.html

An Asda superstore staged a "quiet hour" to help autistic and disabled shoppers over the weekend.

Escalators, in-store music and display TVs were all turned off and customers were given a map of the store featuring pictures instead of words

The Asda Living store at the Manchester Fort shopping centre also opened an hour early at 8am on Saturday.
Benefits cap to be slashed from £26,000 to £20,000 per family: Claimants told 'find jobs or your handouts will be cut'

Article: May 28, 2016

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In http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3578279/Benefits-cap-slashed-26-000-20-000-family-Claimants-told-jobs-handouts-cut.html?ITO=1490&ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490

Parents of families who rely on benefit handouts are being warned they must find work as their claiming limit will be slashed this autumn.

At the moment, families can receive up to £26,000 a year in benefits but that total is set to be cut to £23,000 in London and £20,000 in the rest of the country under new Conservative reforms.
Man With Down Syndrome Opens Cool Snow Cone Shack and Becomes Youngest Business Owner In His Town

Article: May 28, 2016

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In http://rebooti.com/man-with-down-syndrome-opens-cool-snow-cone-shack-and-becomes-youngest-business-owner-in-his-town/

Blake Pyron was born with Down Syndrome. Like all other mothers, who give birth to children with Down Syndrome, Blake's mother was told that her son wouldn't be able to do several things.

Blake went against all odds and other people's expectations and on May 7 he will open his very own snow cone shack in Sanger, Texas. And he is still 20 years old.
Conference registration deadline - Today Friday 27 May

Article: May 27, 2016

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If you've not been before, Conference costs just £60. That's lower than last year and means you can experience a full conference at a great rate. This year we're in Brighton from 17th- 20th September on the seafront.

Since earlier this year every member can now vote on policies at Conference, allowing you to influence the direction that we take as a party. This is especially important after the Europe Referendum - we will continue to rebuild, with our focus on electing more councillors and more MPs. The local elections show we have the power, we just need your input on what we should campaign on.
Do we really have to test our youngsters to destruction?

Article: May 27, 2016

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By Cllr John Marriott - Lincoln, Sleaford and North Hykeham

Testing our schoolchildren has become a bit of a national obsession in recent years.

Whether it's Standard Assessment Tests in Primary Schools, Key Stage Tests and GCSE in Secondary Schools, not forgetting A and AS Levels, BTEC and NVQs, according to successive governments, we couldn't get enough of them - until recently. Now groups of concerned parents have reacted by withdrawing their offspring from recent SATs and some people have finally woken up to the fact that grades at GCSE in particular just cannot keep rising exponentially. We have a saying in Lincolnshire that you don't increase the weight of a pig by just weighing it. Many teachers will tell you that 'teaching to the test' can take a great deal of enjoyment out of the job, both for themselves and the recipients of their expertise.
EU Referendum: Brexit could add £230 to the cost of a European holiday, David Cameron warns

Article: May 24, 2016

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By Charlie Cooper in The Independent

Low-cost airlines have already warned that a British exit from the EU single market for aviation could end the era of cheap flights between European airports

The cost of a one-week holiday in Europe could increase by as much as £230 by the summer of 2018, if Britain votes to leave the EU, David Cameron has warned.
Coalition: Yes or no?

Article: May 23, 2016

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By William Hobhouse in Liberal Democrat Voice

Liberal Democrats quite like to be in government. We like to think that we can make a difference. So when the larger parties find themselves without an overall majority, we - as individuals - are courted.

This article deals with two aspects of the decision to go into coalition - political legitimacy and our party's mandate to govern.
NHS Chief Executive Simon Stevens on Brexit

Article: May 23, 2016

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By Mark Pack

Watch the latest video from the Britain Stronger in Europe campaign:

NHS England Chief Executive Simon Stevens talks on the Andrew Marr programme about Brexit and why the NHS is better off if we vote to remain in the European Union at the EU referendum on 23 June.

If you'd like to know more about the wider topic, see my other European referendum posts, and in particular Nick Clegg's demolition of the anti-EU case.
Norman Lamb: My sister's suicide and son's mental health problems made me determined to push for change

Article: May 22, 2016

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By Bryony Gordon in The Telegraph

Norman Lamb is one of Britain's most tireless mental health campaigners, an MP who doesn't just pay lip service to this most important of subjects - unlike so many other politicians.

I meet the Liberal Democrat MP for North Norfolk in his office in Portcullis House, where he has dashed from a meeting in Bedfordshire with CHUMS, a charity that offers care for young children with mental health difficulties. Lamb may no longer be a health minister, but he remains a passionate crusader on behalf of the mentally ill - he was pleased that David Cameron made a speech on the subject in February, but as Lamb says, "there is a massive gap between the rhetoric and the reality." Promises broken. Commitments cast aside.

This angers Lamb because he knows all too well the devastating impact of mental illness. When he talks about how neglected it is in the health service, how this neglect impacts upon our national productivity in terms of sickness absence, benefits bills and lost tax revenues, this isn't just him wheeling out dreary Whitehall wonkery. It's him talking from the heart.

Lamb tells me that his sister, Catherine, took her own life last year. It isn't something he has felt able to talk about in public before and he is not keen to expand on it now, out of respect to her children. He will say that he took part in a ten-mile charity walk last weekend in her memory (organised by a great organisation called CLASP, which stands for Counselling Life Advice Suicide Prevention). More than anyone he knows the importance of raising not just awareness of mental health, but money for its providers too.

His son, Archie, now 28, has suffered from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder since he was a teenager. "The problem is that OCD and some other conditions are trivialised too much so people think it's just being a bit orderly about things," he explains as we sit in his office. "It is in fact about coping with extraordinarily dark thoughts, distressing thoughts, and when I discovered that he had been trying to cope with this for probably three years before he came out in the open…" This obviously pains Lamb, as it would any parent. "And you think about the stress of being a young teenager, trying to cope with the normal strains of growing up. He was in the Norwich City football academy under pressure to perform and at the same time he was [also] trying to cope with these extraordinarily dark thoughts..."

Today, Archie is a successful music manager who launched the career of the rapper Tinchy Stryder. "He is in a much better place now, much stronger," explains Lamb. But the journey to find him treatment has not been an easy one. "The services in Norfolk didn't really provide any support to the parents of people [who were ill]. We're reasonably articulate parents, and we had no idea what we were doing, whether the way we were dealing with Archie was helping or hindering him [OCD sufferers often seek reassurance that they are not bad people, or that they have not left the gas on, though providing this reassurance is the worst thing you can do as it only serves to reinforce the illness]. So, should we be reassuring him or should we be challenging him? Nobody told us."

His experience with his son Archie reinforced his determination to push for change. He spoke to Professor Graham Thornicroft, chair of the psychiatric organisation Maudsley International, who helped Lamb to develop his policy on mental health. In desperation, Lamb asked Prof Thornicroft if he had any advice on how to help Archie. "He said the guy to talk to was Paul Salkovskis [the head of a national OCD treatment centre in Bath, who was then at the Maudsley]. Now of course I've got the great advantage that I have MP after my name, and I got to talk to him for an hour. He said 'it sounds like we could help Archie', so we went back to Norfolk and asked if we could refer him to Salkovskis and they said 'you can't'." Treatment could only be provided by the local mental health trust in Norfolk where Archie lived.

In the last decade, the NHS introduced something known as the 'legal right to choice', meaning you can choose where to be treated. However, for some reason, the issue of mental health was exempted from this. "The only positive was that having the MP after your name made absolutely no difference." He laughs. "We were treated like sh** like everybody else!" His face soon clouds. "But here's the thing, the great injustice. We were confronted by a six month waiting time in Norfolk to start treatment, and we were fairly desperate, and the truth is we could afford to get treatment for him. We paid privately. You do what you can for your child, don't you? But it's not acceptable. You cannot even begin to justify a country where people with money get help and people without money don't."

It was this that set him on his current path - to get true equality between mental and physical health. "When you're a minister the cultural pressure on you is to defend the status quo when you're confronted with awful stories. You're supposed to say 'yes, we hear this, but things are getting better'. But I just decided to be completely upfront and say 'yes, I completely share the horror'. I have empathy because we'd gone through it ourselves."

And Lamb does not believe that mental health has parity with physical health despite various pledges.

"An example is the £1.25 billion that the much-maligned Nick Clegg secured in the budget last year to be spent over this parliament as extra investment in children's mental health. That's £250m each year for five years. But in year one it was £143m [spent on children's mental health]. A lot of it [the remaining money] is being spent propping up acute hospitals that are all in debt. And then there was the Mental Health taskforce which endorsed the need for maximum waiting time standards with mental illness, just as there are A&E standards and cancer standards. The report endorsed this, and the government accepted the report. But it's not funded. So it won't happen. It's a mirage."

We talk a bit about the nine-year old boy who wrote to him about being depressed, and went on to read the letter on the Today programme. "He has been waiting for a diagnosis and has been told it could take two years," says Lamb, shaking his head, "we know if you intervene quickly you can improve their life chances. It is simply economically stupid not to intervene earlier."

He also worries that the mental health of society is on the slide. "There's an accumulation of evidence that prevalence is increasing. If you think of the things that teenagers are having to deal with: social media; cyber bullying; sexting. The isolation of communicating with people without actually seeing them. We are in a whirlwind of change, aren't we? I think people do inevitably struggle to cope with that pace of change. We have to think about how we address the root causes of it, not just commit all resources to repairing the damage once it's done."

Lamb says he hasn't suffered from mental illness himself. "I've been fortunate in that regard." He tells me his wife's father suffered from agoraphobia. "So there's plenty of it around. But we're no different from other families." I tell him I am sorry about his sister. "This is what families go through," he says, simply. And it is. We can only hope that, thanks to people like Lamb, some of the stigma they face will soon disappear.

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