‘Out of Touch’-Reform Deputy Leader’s Tirade Against Disabled Children.

By Ruth Kettle-Frisby – Guest Writer and Community Activist

Ruth is passionate about fostering positive change within the local community and regularly contributes insights and stories to The Havering Daily.

Multi-millionaire Richard Tice’s out of touch tirade against disabled children says more about what we can expect if we let Reform anywhere near the corridors of power than it does about loving disabled families doing their best to get by.

Tice’s cheap shots against children who rely on ear defendersto help them to feel more regulated in loud, or overstimulating environments are nothing more than evidence of the depths to which Reform is willing to sink to scapegoat the most vulnerable in our community.

While the likes of Richard Tice – and also, recently, celebrated actor Sir Anthony Hopkins – use their public platforms to perpetuate harmful stigma, trust continues to be eroded as the most vulnerable children in our communities are systematically failed and then exploited as political footballs.

Cash-strapped local councils across the country are reducing valuable disabled children to ‘drains on resources’. This cruel rhetoric is not only misplaced, but also dehumanising; with deeply troubling ramifications for children and families already at the behest of widespread ableist attitudes. 

Meanwhile, in the real world, the evidence is clear: the education system is failing disabled children, who are beingeffectively punished, excluded and sidelined purely for existing.

Let’s be really clear for the people at the back: the Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) crisis is not a consequence of over-diagnosis, but a symptom of aneducation system that is unfit for purpose, leaving behind millions of valuable children with lasting impacts on their mental health and prospects growing up.

It is more important than ever for parent-carers to get to know their children’s rights in law in order to protect their dignity, health and wellbeing in a society that is increasingly failing to value and include disabled children as they deserve.

Ruth Kettle-Frisby

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