Homelessness

speakthetruth121

Why are there so many people with learning disabilities and serious mental health conditions that are homeless and also have problems with addiction why are so many people with learning disabilities and serious mental health conditions being exploited. Why are addiction services generally on accessible for a non disabled person and why do disability charities such as scope ignore these issues some times I think charities like scope are the biggest ablists you will ever meet as they are worried about offending the non disabled community and will ignore allot of huge social problems that are happening and allot of people are unaware of. These groups of disabled people will often get blamed but the truth is there are allot of services that are not accessible to disabled people such as someone with learning disabilities that has issues around addiction can find addiction services inaccessible  which can lead to long term homelessness. Charities such as scope pretend these issues do not exist due to people blaming the person rather then looking at the bigger picture which is there are allot of services which are still inaccessible for people with disabilities and the person with a disability would be viewed as the problem rather then the service. 

Ross_Alumni

Hello @speakthetruth121

Welcome to the community, thank you for sharing your thoughts. 

I think with homelessness and addiction you make a superb point. Access to those kinds of services are hard even for a non-disabled person to come by, however for a disabled person accessing such things is even more difficult due to inaccessibility.

It's true that in general disabled people don't have equal access to services and that is something Scope will always campaign to change, it's a question of educating some sectors about the challenges faced by disabled people and giving others who have the capacity to do better the kick up the backside to implement positive change.

The issues you mention in your post seem to be ones that you are very passionate about, have you had difficulties in any of those areas in the past? Please note that there will always be support available for you, and if you have particular examples of places where poor accessibility is demonstrated, or where disabled people are being exploited, feel free to send us an email to [email protected] so we can discuss things further.

For Scope, one of our main beliefs is in the social model of disability, which explains that a person's disability or health condition is never the thing standing in the way of a person living their life to the full, the thing standing in their way is society, and how inaccessible it can be. The disabled person never has, and never will be, the problem, the problem is as you say that services are not accessible or available for disabled people and that contributes towards so many of us finding parts of life a struggle.

As touched on above, if you or someone you know has been impacted by any of the issues you mentioned in your post, we are always here if you want to talk about it.

woodbine

@speakthetruth121 I believe that homelessness is the scourge of the 21st c. I'm not sure I agree with your about disabled people, it's a tragedy for anyone who is homeless, it's thought that at any given time 125,000 children are "homeless" in so far they are living with their families in long term "temporary" accommodation.