Disability: Whether physical, mental or learning, it's usually our society that makes individual circumstances disabling

Photograph: Wheelchair Parking from Pixabay (License) (Cropped)

It isn't radical to acknowledge that our society, our infrastructure and the way we work, is built around the lives of non-disabled men. The experiences of women are testament to that: basic biology is often treated as an impediment to society's orderly functioning.

The same kind of exclusion is experienced by people with disabilities. This is even reflected in the language of disability, which has clear markers of being written from the point of view of 'able-bodied' men, complete with assumptions made based on the uncritical acceptance of how society is shaped. There are, of course, cultural and historical reasons for the way these things have developed.

However, change has been slow and inclusion still feels far away. And it's that failure to build otherness into our society that defines disability. The report this week into the government's failure to adequately fund school places for those children with special educational needs just exposes how much of an afterthought disability still is in societal decision-making. That's a sorry state of affairs.

This government has made big promises on inclusion but obstacles remain. It is easy to see the barriers to people with physical disabilities just by looking around you. Some of them are very literal. Steps are a big factor. Ramps and lifts still look like add-ons - with issues like the need for manual assistance, space for manoeuvring and limited access all the result of physical disability access being an afterthought.

For people with mental illness and learning difficulties, the impediments are often harder to see - less obvious than the conflict between wheels and stairs which is, nonetheless, still far too often overlooked. The needs of people with mental health problems are various, but often include things like quiet, routine and structure. In a working world growing increasingly loud and irregular, making accommodation for these needs is treated like a drag on efficiency.

A 'flexible' working environment is the buzzword of the moment, but all of the flexibility must come from the employee. Compassionate support is hard to find in a system of precarious work, that keeps people on edge, scrambling for uncertain shifts.

The public sector is not free from criticism. Funding for disability has taken a hit under austerity, with a harsh welfare regime, and even funding for school places for students with special educational needs has been critically inadequate.

All people, disabled or not, want independence. To get around without assistance. To be confident and seen as capable. To that end, successive governments have promised an 'independence revolution', to radically improve social inclusion. That project has not been completed. There is so much more work to do.

We must think carefully about our society: how we frame work and making a contribution; how we approach inclusion. People can live full lives with a full spectrum of conditions and circumstances. But only if the society they live in does not disable them, by failing to built support and inclusion into their framework.

General Election 2017 - Health & Social Care: Voters ousting Jeremy Hunt would send the Conservatives a very strong message

Health and social care in Britain is under tremendous strain and more Tory cuts won't help.

One of the biggest questions hanging over the 2017 general election is the future of funding for health services in Britain. The Conservatives have overseen one crisis after another over the last seven years.

There is a clear distinction to be made between progressives and Conservatives on how to address them. Under the Conservatives their are going to be more cuts, while the progressive parties have pledged to raise more money.

And this election even offers a symbolic way to reject the Tory approach to healthcare. Dr Louise Irvine - who previously took the government to court and won over the cutting of casualty and maternity services Lewisham Hospital closure - is standing against Health Minister Jeremy Hunt in the South West Surrey constituency.

Tactical Voting

On behalf of the National Health Action Party, Dr Irvine is standing against Jeremy Hunt and the field has been cleared. Local members of the Liberal Democrats and Labour have agreed not to campaign and the Green Party withdrew its own candidate.

The various progressive alliance movements have all offered their endorsement, including Compass - the most well known pressure group for a new more pluralism politics.

Let's be realistic: it would be a huge upset for Dr Irvine to defeat Jeremy Hunt. Last time he took 34,000 votes (with UKIP on 5,600), while Irvine took just under 5,000. However, support for the Conservatives is not innate.

Through the 1990s and into the 2000s, the Conservative-progressive split (led by the Lib Dems) averaged out at 26,000 to 26,000. Only since 2010 has Hunt opened up a significant majority. And now he's among the most well known ministers - for all the wrong reasons.

Voters in Surrey have a chance to reject Hunt's management of the NHS and the air of conflict he has created with doctors. Members and campaigners for the progressive parties have already thrown in their backing for Irvine. Now it's down to voters.

Health in Crisis

And there are a lot of reasons voters can be dissatisfied with Hunt. From strikes, to closures, to year and after year cuts to funding, Britain's healthcare system faces some dire years ahead if the Tories remain in power.

Hunt caused plenty of controversy by deciding to go toe and to toe with junior doctors over new contracts and casting them as unreasonable people taking unnecessary action. Fortunately, the public was having none of it: polls showed the public consistently behind the doctors.

The strike action over contracts goes hand in hand with discontent at the ongoing public sector pay capped, limited to a 1% rise. The policy has led to distress particularly among NHS staff, with pay not rising along with prices and the general cost of living.

Hunt's management of the NHS has also antagonised patients. One in six A&E departments across the country face closure under the Tory drive to find £22bn in cuts from the health budget in the next few years. These emergency units have been under severe strain, with waiting times targets consistently missed.

The problems with healthcare in Britain stretch beyond the Health Secretary to his party's wider approach.

One place from where extra pressure is being exerted on the NHS is social care. With no where to go, thanks to a shortage of places, hospital beds are remaining full. Elder patients are finding themselves stuck in hospitals, unable to be discharged because the social care system is at capacity.

That is in part thanks to Conservative cuts to local government funding, that has seen billions cut from social care budgets - with only token efforts to restore minimal amounts, mostly to be raised by local councils themselves, a move that is clearly punitive to poorer communities.

This failure to display compassion has overtaken welfare too. From cuts to disability benefits to attempts, appallingly, to dismiss the needs of those with mental illnesses. In an effort to cut spending on welfare, Tory policy chief George Freeman said the party wants welfare to go only to the "really disabled".

All of fronts, there appears to more concern about producing an immaculate looking balance sheet, than about the comprehensive quality service that balance sheet is supposed to be providing.

Progressive Pitch

The progressive parties are calling for a change in direction and both Labour and the Liberal Democrats have pledged more funding - and not just for the NHS itself. Both parties are calling for more to be restored to the social care system and for health and social care to be seen and treated as a joined-up service.

Labour have pledged to raise around £6 billion a year extra for the NHS, from higher taxes on the wealthy. They accompany that with investment from their proposed National Transformation Fund to upgrade hospitals and their equipment.

The Liberal Democrats go a step further. They plan to add a penny in the pound to tax, affecting all earners - but hitting the richest hardest - specifically to support the NHS and social care.

Both of these plans are a pragmatic step towards addressing the problems in the healthcare system. So would lowering stress for public sector workers by lifting the pay cap, to which both parties have committed.

Labour and the Lib Dems are also pledging to do away with some of the Conservatives more heinous welfare cuts, particularly those affecting people with disabilities.

Stand up for Healthcare

The idea of a progressive alliance is a rejection of the gerrymandering system that forces people to divide according to tribal loyalties. To bring people together who support common values and work together to ensure better representation.

In this election, the progressive alliance movement has brought parts of the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens together around the common values - for which they have stood in most past elections.

But standing aside for National Health Action and their candidate Dr Louise Irvine shows something more: a willingness to put aside narrow interest to fight for something larger. To put a candidate into office who has fought long and hard for the NHS.

Voters have to do two things. To vote for the candidates that stand for their values - not just for a specific party - and they need to be vocal about what is moving them. Healthcare always tops the list of people's concerns in Britain.

Jeremy Hunt has mismanaged the National Health Service. His party in government has sewn division and lacked compassion. Even if you usually vote Conservative, especially if you normally vote Conservative, rejecting Hunt and electing Dr Louise Irvine would be a strong statement.

Choosing Dr Louise Irvine would be a symbolic defence of the NHS and of the principles of compassionate universal care. But it would also put into office a tireless and independent minded local campaigner - who beat the government in the courts to stop closures and isn't afraid to call out any of the parties on their record.

General Election 2017 - Liberal Democrat Manifesto: Practical pitch to rebuild trust

Change Britain's Future is a practical pitch to rebuild trust - but that's a difficult task to accomplish.

Unsurprisingly, the Liberal Democrat promise of a second referendum on the final deal for leaving Europe has dominated their manifesto launch. It's in the manifesto's leading pages, at the head of Tim Farron's speech and all over the news.

However, at the front and centre of their election pitch the Liberal Democrats have put a collection of policies aimed at young people. Rent-to-Own, where rent buys a stake in a home that becomes outright owned over thirty years.

The restoring of young people's housing benefit. A new young person's bus pass. Universal free school meals at primaries. More money for the pupil premium. More investment in schools and colleges. Reinstatement of maintenance grants. More apprenticeships. Even votes at sixteen.

These policies are very much about practical things that can be done today to help build towards the future. In all areas, this manifesto has the same focus - what measured step can be taken now that prepares us for what's ahead?

But for the Lib Dems, the central aim at this election can only be to regain trust and recover ground. Tim Farron admitted as much at the Royal College of Nurses as he explained his party's spending plans for healthcare.

The Lib Dems have reached back into the vault and dusted off their Penny in the Pound plans, from the days when Charles Kennedy was the party leader. At that time, it was for education funding - and was proposed for such by Willie Rennie in Scotland.

For the UK, Tim Farron has called for this extra penny to be used to fund healthcare. It's a progressive tax, that will raise far more from those at the top than the bottom and would raise £6 billion a year, a significant addition to NHS funding.

But what is particularly important about the pitch is that Farron connected this policy with the need to be and honest about what it takes to fund the things the public wants.

That concern runs through the Lib Dem manifesto. The pitch to young people is full of practical affordable measures. Proposals that would be uncontroversial to deliver, but which could have profoundly positive effects.

On the NHS, the Lib Dems spell out exactly what it will cost people to support public healthcare as it presently stands. That includes levelling with working class people that they'll pay on average £30 more in tax each year.

The money raised would to go to restoring the NHS budget, to repairing ailing social care and supporting mental health care. These funds would accompany a review of how to better integrate these elements - and create parity for mental and physical health.

On the economy, the Lib Dems call for more investment to end the reliance upon a finance sector feeding on a bloated housing sector and dangerous levels of private debt. And that means being prepared to spend money in government.

While the party commits to balancing the government's Current account, they also call for £100 billion in Capital spending over the long term - on projects like broadband roll out, expanding and modernising schools and hospitals, along with roads and rails and coordinating with private investment in renewable energy.

And that extends into housing. The party promises to achieve the rate of 300,000 new homes built a year, for sale and rent. End the sell of Housing Association homes, let local authorities borrow to build and enable them to levy a 200% Council Tax penalty on second homeowners or landlords who leave homes empty.

On work, there are commitments to an independent review of the Living Wage and how to make it work, to stamping out the abuse of Zero Hours Contracts and encourage more employee share-ownership.

This is joined by reforms to welfare. Giving parents more earning leeway on Universal Credit, end the benefit freeze, reverse cuts to Employment Support Allowance, scrap the Bedroom Tax and Work Capability Assessment and more paid paternity leave.

There is also a direct stab at the Conservatives in a pledge to reverse tax cuts and remove loopholes to get the wealthiest "paying their fair share". These include reversing the Corporation Tax cut, that lowered it from 20% to 17%, and ending a series of tax 'relief' policies given to the rich.

The whole manifesto reads as a practical pitch to rebuild trust.

What it is not, though - to be realistic - is a manifesto that will see action in government. Tim Farron has ruled out entering a coalition after the election and it would take perhaps the biggest electoral upset in British history to get the party in government.

That makes it important to consider the Liberal Democrat pitch as part of a broader opposition picture and ask: are there grounds for cooperation with other progressive parties?

Both Labour and the Lib Dems have called for a major programme of capital investment. They both want significant increases in house building. Their is a willingness in both parties to raise taxes, weighted more on the rich, to fund essential services.

If the progressive alliance is going to work, voters need to feel that their tactical vote is going to support a set of broad values regardless of which party is strongest in their locality. So it is important that there is a lot of common ground to be found in these areas across the progressive opposition.

Despite the determination to present Labour under Corbyn as a party of the hard left, progressive parties are standing in much the same space - and that space is Keynesian. Investing for the future and practical spending to address the issues of today.

The big question, in the longer term, for the Liberal Democrats themselves is whether this June they can begin to rebuild trust. Whether they can succeed won't just depend on getting bums in seats on 8th June, but in standing by these pledges in opposition after the dust settles.

What can we do about taboo? Keeping mental health and suicide in the dark is killing young people

Taboo condemns us to ignorance and to repeat our failures through a lack of understanding. Photograph: On Mute by Katie Tegtmeyer on Flickr (License) (Cropped)

It is the mark of a free society that it tackles difficult questions openly. It braves the scrutiny of public debate for those matters that might otherwise have been hidden and emerges the wiser for it.

The closed and stifling world of taboo, by contrast, keeps uncomfortable matters closeted away, where it can ignore them. In doing so, however, there comes the greater risk of not understanding them.

In few areas is this more damaging than when it comes mental health. The stigma and discrimination, and the shame that follows, keeps mental health, and not least suicide, from being understood - preventing effective disclosure, diagnosis and treatment in the light of reason.

And this is no small matter. According to World Health Organisation numbers, by 2014, 800,000 people died by suicide each year. That is a huge number of people dying in a manner that is not widely understood, because taboo keeps it in the dark.

These taboos touch on every aspect of our lives and not least upon the lives of young people. In 2014, suicide was the second most prevalent cause of death amongst those aged 15-29 (Baker & CNN, 2014).

In the UK, the impact of suicide is even more profound. For Britain it is the number one cause of death amongst young people - in 2014, 1,556 young people under the age of 35 ended their lives. Even that number belies the reality.

Indeed, PAPYRUS believes these figures are the tip of the iceberg. In the UK, suicide has not been a crime since 1961, yet the law demands that coroners use the criminal standard of proof to conclude that a death was a suicide.

One of the frightening things about taboo is that, because it discourages open discussion or admission, it also hides the reality. All of this adds up, and the true number of lives lost to suicide is likely to be higher and attempts higher still.

Talking about suicide does not cause suicide and censoring discussion doesn't stop it. Rather, taboo and its inhibitions prevents what could be lifesaving communication.

The deaths of so many young people has sparked campaigns and led to the creation of organisations, like PAPYRUS in the UK, to help support young people and those close to them in order to prevent suicide.

The question is, how do we start the work of breaking up these damaging taboos?

The start comes in changing our own behaviour. By doing so, we can slowly reshape the world around us with our actions. The first step in that process is to talk.

In the UK, attitudes are clearly changing for the better. Articles pointing out the dangers of mental health taboos are appearing in popular media (Harvey-Jenner, 2016) and celebrities are taking to TV to talk personally about suicide (Ruby, 2015).

The very real momentum can also be seen gathering behind the push to put mental health on parity with physical health. Along with the advocacy of former Health minister Norman Lamb, progressive opinion has aligned with campaign (Perraudin, 2016).

The time has come for mental health to come out of the shadows. It's time for us to face the reality of suicide. Taboos only shut down reasoned debate, block discussion and understanding, and endanger lives.

If you are a young person having thoughts of suicide or if you are concerned that a young person make be at risk, please contact HopeLineUK, which is PAPYRUS’ confidential advice and support service. Call 0800 068 41 41, or Email pat@papyrus-uk.org or Text 07786 209697.