‘You are out of touch with our children’s rights and safety’-Parents hit back at Councillors over travel rights for children with disabilities.

 Gaslighting parents by dressing up cuts as what families ‘want’ and ‘deserve’ is a shameful rhetorical ploy. ‘Value for Money’ is the cornerstone here, not putting families first.

Ruth Kettle-Frisby today shares views of parents and carers of disabled children in Havering

Human rights go beyond politics and Labour counsellors Pat Brown and Franky Walker – along with Havering Conservatives, including Cllr Judith Holt, Cllr David Taylor and Havering Conservatives leader and London Assembly member, Cllr Keith Prince – spoke up for children with disabilities and their carers, recognising that we are “under constant pressure” and calling the cuts to Home to School Transport “low hanging fruit”. They have on this occasion done the right thing in opposing the Coalition’s unjust budget, but we have all been misrepresented by HRA.

At the recent Budget Meeting, Labour councillors focused onbemoaning the inadequacy of Rishi Sunak-led central government before supporting the budget proposal. It’s true that the government have utterly shafted local authorities, but carers were left wondering why so many Labour councillorselected not to apply the same principles of care and compassion (that they find lacking in central government) to disabled children and carers in their borough, by using their voices to support us.

As Cllr Taylor pointed out, the budget reflects choices. Some of these choices will actively disadvantage disabled children and their loving carers, however the harm to which HRA previously alluded – in terms of reducing the ‘impact’ to our kids – has been pushed completely under the carpet, with no acknowledgment of this at all.

In response to Cllr Gillian Ford’s justification of the budget in this regard:

1. Don’t make assumptions about what we want and ‘are looking for’; listen to us!

2. Don’t guilt trip us and suggest we want you to ignore parent’s request: if parents request direct payments, that’s fine, but this should not feel like a compulsion or appear to anyone like a blanket procedure.

3. Travel training as an option is one thing, but should never be – or appear to be – an expectation.

4. We never claimed that you were going to commission Uber, but the mere suggestion shows how out of touch you are with our children’s rights and safety.

5. Nobody is asking you to ‘do nothing’! Review the policy by all means, but do so according to need and care; NOT ‘value for money’.

6. Our voice is our voice, unfiltered by your agenda: the consultation was biased with leading questions conflating your strategies to claw back money with independence.

Don’t patronise us with reference to negotiating contracts for ‘better and more effective arrangements’. Better according to who? More effective at what? 

In essence, parents are concerned that the council is using the new DfE guidance as an excuse to get away with compromising their legal obligations to our disabled children in order to save money. Gaslighting parents by dressing up cuts as what families ‘want’ and ‘deserve’ is a shameful rhetorical ploy. ‘Value for Money’ is the cornerstone here, not putting families first.

Ruth Kettle-Frisby

On behalf of parents and carers of disabled children in Havering

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