A Route out of Poverty? Disabled people, work and welfare reform

Edited by Gabrielle Preston

Disability is both a cause and a consequence of poverty. Disabled people are more likely to be poor because they experience barriers to employment, high living costs, low wages, and inadequate benefits and tax credits. People living on a low income are also more likely to become disabled because of the close association between poverty and ill health.

A Route out of Poverty? explores the evidence linking poverty and disability. Drawing on interviews conducted by CPAG, it also examines the experiences and attitudes of disabled parents to paid employment; whether disability benefits and support services are accessible, adequate and appropriate; and the impact government policy has had on their own and their children’s lives.

A Route out of Poverty? is published in response to the Government’s Welfare Reform Green Paper, which aims to increase the employment rate of people who are sick or who have a disability and to reduce the number of people claiming incapacity benefit by one million. It argues that overcoming poverty is essential if the extent of disability and ill health is to be reduced. Support mechanisms, and the attitudes and behaviour of employers also need a major overhaul if welfare reform is to offer 2.7 million disabled adults and children a real route out of poverty.

A5 paperback, 142 pages June 2006 £11.00

ISBN10: 1 901698 93 9
ISBN13: 978 1 901698 93 0

• Download Chapter 4 of A Route out of Poverty? (104 KB pdf file)
  

Contents and authors – A Route out of Poverty?

Foreword – Bert Massie
Bert Massie is Chair of the Disability Rights Commission

Introduction – Gabrielle Preston
Gabrielle Preston is Policy and Research Officer at CPAG

1. Disabled people, poverty and the labour market – Guy Palmer
Guy Palmer is Director of the New Policy Institute

2. Children with disabled parents – Hugh Stickland and Richard Olsen
Hugh Stickland is an employment adviser in the Economic and Labour Market Division at the Department for Work and Pensions. Richard Olsen was Research Fellow in the Nuffield Community Care Studies Unit at the University of Leicester and is now a mental health adviser.

3. Changing weights and measures: disability and child poverty – Tania Burchardt
Tania Burchardt is Academic Fellow at the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion at the London School of Economics

4. Living with disability: a message from disabled parents – Gabrielle Preston

• Download 'Living with disability' from A Route out of Poverty? (104 KB pdf file) file

5. Incapacity benefit and welfare reform – Gabrielle Preston

Conclusion – Gabrielle Preston

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