Latest News for Parents & Carers

Disability Passport is a new app that to give disabled people a quick, easy and trusted way to identify themselves and their needs to places like shops and venues. Currently, there is no single recognised, validated and accepted way for disabled people to prove our disabilities to an organisation. This causes huge frustration, wastes time on both sides and fundamentally creates a barrier to essential services. The Disability Passport service looks to solve this problem. The app will also allow you to book accessible travel tickets, hotel rooms, disabled or companion tickets for events.

Getting your clinically vulnerable child vaccinated against COVID-19?  Then here’s some advice from a parent. Yvonne Woodford compiled this advice for other parents after a long struggle to get her clinically vulnerable disabled daughter vaccinated. Yvonne finally secured the vaccine but only after contacting a range of key people from government ministers to local vaccine centre mangers.

Carers of people with co-occurring autism spectrum condition (ASC) and eating disorders experience additional needs and difficulties compared to those caring for people with eating disorders only, new research shows. The study published in Journal of Eating Disorders found that carers of loved ones with both ASC and eating disorders experienced a lack of support from healthcare services and described the experience as having a significant personal impact on their lives.

Disability Horizons asked their team and community of readers what they’d like to see improve or change for disabled people in the next 10 years. Ideas include better accessibility, more representation across all sectors, affordable assistive technology and products, and no more prejudice or disability hate crime.

MPs are calling on the government to consult on a ‘national right to food’ and to appoint a Minister for food security. The calls come in a report by the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee (EFRA), which follows on from its Coronavirus and food supply report last summer. Disability Rights highlighted 3 key findings in the report:

• a new minister should be appointed to work across departments to ensure “that everyone and especially the most vulnerable”, have access to enough “affordable nutritious food”.
• that the Government must consult on a legal “right to food” in its White Paper responding to the National Food Strategy, due out this summer.
• supermarkets to “recognise their responsibility” to assist shielders. EFRA guidance encouraged scrapping delivery charges and minimum online spending for shielders, as well as ensuring that ‘Covid secure’ measures in-store do not exclude Disabled people.

One in ten households experienced food poverty in the past two lockdowns.