Women's Views on News |
- We are on holiday for a few days
- Protest cuts to nurses’ bursaries
- Trauma, women and prison
- What will our grandchildren ask us?
- Homelessness: new highs, new lows
- Labour sets up disability equality roadshow
| We are on holiday for a few days Posted: 23 Dec 2015 12:06 PM PST
But there is loads to read on our facebook page. Wishing everyone a peaceful time. Thanks for your company. See you in the New Year.  |
| Protest cuts to nurses’ bursaries Posted: 23 Dec 2015 11:41 AM PST
In November the chancellor, George Osborne, announced the government are going to cut NHS bursaries for student nurses, midwives, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, radiotherapists, radiographers, dieticians, operating department practitioners, podiatrists, speech and language therapists and – potentially – paramedics. A bursary is a grant, awarded to someone to enable them to study at university or college. But, as of 2017, in order to study these professions students will have to take out a hefty loan of over £50,000. Even though nurses spend 50 per cent of their training time working for the NHS on clinical placements. This money will then be paid back from a salary which is capped at a 1 per cent rise. That is not in line with the hike in national living costs. But student nurses, midwives and the allied health professions (AHPs) actually work real hours in real hospitals and directly contribute to patient care, are at the front line of the NHS, and earn – and deserve – that bursary. To take the bursary away is ludicrous. Why would students pay to work? The cuts to the bursary will deter – and indeed prevent – people from training, so who will be looking after our society in the future? Who will be that person there holding the patient’s hand as they receive bad news? Who will be working alongside their mentor who is a radiotherapist helping to deliver lifesaving cancer treatment? Where will the physiotherapist be who helps the patient who fell at home and broke their hip to be able to walk again? Who will help deliver a baby when the student midwife cannot afford to do the degree? The NHS bursary should be seen not as a cost but an investment in the future health and wellbeing of our society and our NHS. It affects each and every one of us and together we must unite to fight to save it. So on 9 January NHS students will be marching against these cuts. Through London. Please do join in. In the meantime: Tell EVERYONE you know about the NHS bursary cuts, share the impact and bring them along on this march. It is vital we reach as many people as possible – the postman, the shopkeeper, the junior doctor who lives down the road, your teacher, your mum, your dad, SPREAD THE WORD! Lobby your MP. The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) and Unison have links for templates you can use. You can also pop along to your local MP’s surgery to meet them! And join the Twitter Storm #BursaryOrBust on 28 December 2015 from 5-7pm. Thanks.  |
| Posted: 23 Dec 2015 05:34 AM PST
The traumatic personal experiences of criminalised people often go unnoticed. Their experiences are ignored, their needs minimised, their support and treatment an afterthought. The Centre for Crime and Justice Studies has started providing a space for women’s voices to be heard by the publication of a series of short articles under the title ‘Breaking the Silence‘. And Madeline Petrillo, a Senior Lecturer at the University of Portsmouth, has been helping the women to share their stories. She has been using their own words where possible as recorded in a series of interviews for a project examining how women can find pathways to desisting from crime. The names of the three women whose stories are outlined here – and other identifying information – have been changed. Alice, for example, has paranoid schizophrenia she understands to have been triggered by having been raped. 'I first got raped at 13. They went to my school but I didn't tell the police. I don't know. Maybe I was scared. And then I was raped again at 18, and I was raped again in January this year. I used to hate myself. I used to self-harm my face. I used to self-harm quite a lot but only on my face. I used to take a lot of drugs because of it. And I've got children and they're not allowed to live with me because I've got paranoid schizophrenia now from being raped. Like, I used to think about it quite a lot and then it started to make my mind a bit unwell.' This is Rosie's experience: 'My offence happened last year, but they didn't put me in prison till last month. So I was starting to get my life back on track. Got a new home. Trying to sort myself out. Then they put me in jail…I didn't think I'd done anything wrong.' Rosie was imprisoned for an offence of criminal damage. A taxi driver had dropped her at the wrong place following a night out. ‘I didn't know where I was so I went a bit hysterical. Because I'd been through domestic violence and stuff, I was just….at the time I was living in a safe house’. Rosie initially refused to leave the taxi and then, once on the street, kicked the door a few times. She admits she was drunk at the time. ‘It was Christmas. I don't really drink. When I have a drink it doesn't agree with me. Everything was piling up on top of me. I just thought I'd have a few drinks and enjoy myself.’ Rosie was never asked about the things that were piling up on top of her during her journey through the criminal justice system. ‘The Judge just sent me straight to prison. No report. It didn't look like he had any interest.’ This was her first conviction. She was sentenced to four weeks in custody. If reports had been requested, and if Rosie had been given the chance to tell her story, what looks like a harsh but commensurate sentence in response to her crime would have been revealed to be cruel, unnecessary and harmful. Lynne first had a drink at the age of seven. Her dad was an alcoholic and would bring beer home from the pub and encourage her to drink. ‘Even then, I wanted more. By 11, I'd get drunk. At secondary school I was smoking. I'd had a sexual relationship by then with a girl. We'd both been abused by men. I just hate men. It was very confusing. At 11 I was put on Valium by a doctor.’ Lynne went to the doctor when she was 11 because she was at breaking point. ‘All I knew was being beaten up as a child by my father. He never sexually abused me but neighbours, family friends, dad used to bring them home from the pub. I used to get paid for it. It went on till I was 11. Then I couldn't take it no more.’ Lynne had not felt safe at any point in her life until she was imprisoned. Whilst this reflects positively on the opportunities afforded her in custody, it challenges us to question the legitimacy of punishing Lynne whilst remaining silent about all the harm inflicted on her; to question a system that only acknowledges some victims, leaving those like 11 year-old Lynne to develop coping strategies that later contribute to their involvement in the criminal justice system. Commenting on the recent surprise announcement by the chancellor, George Osborne, of the imminent closure of Holloway prison, Rebecca Roberts and Claire Cain have called for a managed reduction in the prison population. The women who end up in prison often have personal histories of poverty, trauma, neglect, abuse, mental health issues and violence – as is revealed in the Breaking the Silence comment series. Most women in prison do not pose a risk to anyone but themselves, Roberts and Cain point out. Indeed, this year has seen the highest levels of self-inflicted deaths in the women's prison system for seven years. Why not, they suggest, simply reduce the number of places in the women's estate by (at least) 500 next year, and continue to do so until we have fewer than 100 women in a significantly smaller and more humane custody system. Baroness Corston's recommendation for small custodial units should be given serious consideration. Importantly, they continue, at the same time as reducing the numbers of people in prison, we also need to ensure that the wider services are available to support women in the community. These services should not be run by criminal justice agencies. Fixing the criminal justice system and fixing those people detained inside it has been a core concern of social reformers and lawmakers throughout the history of imprisonment. But while reforms are often driven by humanitarian objectives, they can reinforce the legitimacy of imprisonment and punishment. This sale means the government will be capitalising on prime real estate to cover shortfalls in public funds elsewhere. The benefit for prisoners or wider society is highly questionable. A prison building programme will increase capacity in the system. Amid concerns about rising levels of self-harm and violence in prison, new institutions can include closer monitoring and tighter levels of supervision. We can build cleaner and more high-tech and low-staff prisons but they will still be places of cruelty and desperation. They will be just as isolating and painful and distressing – and do little to address the needs of people in prisons or address wider social problems. Furthermore, by investing in the 'corrections industry’, the foundations will be laid to continue expanding the infrastructure of punishment and control in net-widening interventions such as community-based punishment, electronic monitoring and satellite tracking. It is, in short, as they say, time to abandon the already tested and failed systems of punishment and control that reinforce and compound trauma, inequality and harm.  |
| What will our grandchildren ask us? Posted: 23 Dec 2015 04:14 AM PST
By Frida Berrigan. I have the world's worst hair cut. It is uneven, hacked and does nothing to flatter my features. For the first few days after I cut it, my hair was also super dirty, sticking straight up with a Pomade of bug spray, sunscreen and Cuban dirt. While so many in the United States were being driven to distraction by the biggest deals of a lifetime on Black Friday, I was in Cuba, taking a pair of scissors to my head as I looked down a mountainside at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantánamo Bay. I could see the base, which straddles the sparkling bay, cutting the Cuban people off from rich fishing waters and full access to their land. A representative of the Cuban government told us that the Department of Guantánamo lags behind the rest of the nation in economic development because they have expected an invasion to come from the base since 1903, when the United States seized the land. "Why invest in an area that is just going to be destroyed by bombs?" she asked. Standing at this spot, I could see the sacred — mountains, valleys, rainbows, water, skies that almost sing with gorgeousness — and the profane — occupation, militarization, torture, abuse, indefinite detention. I was there with 13 other friends from Witness Against Torture. We were spending our Thanksgiving week far from our families, camping out at the Mirador overlooking the U.S. Naval Base. We were being hosted by the staff of La Gobernadora restaurant and lounge. From the look out, we could see the U.S. base that has occupied more than 100 square kilometers of Cuban land for over a century and imprisons 107 men in torturous conditions. We camped. We prayed. We worked to transform a random international tourist spot — not to mention local make out spot, where the night staff drink rum from the bottle and blast reggaeton music toda la noche — into a place to honor. We wanted to connect and extend ourselves towards the men our nation has demonized and forgotten — hoping our songs, chants and prayers were carried by the wind, refracted by the sun, swept along by the rain, and carried along by every bird that flew overhead. After a while, though, I needed to do just a little more than fasting and camping. I needed just a little more suffering. I was here — close this exact spot — 10 years ago, when Witness Against Torture was born. That time, in December 2005, 25 of us walked about 100 kilometers from Santiago de Cuba to the Cuban military checkpoint that guards the entrance to a Cuban military territory that surrounds the U.S. naval base. We fasted then as well, camping out at the Cuban checkpoint and calling U.S. SOUTHCOM to request entry onto the base. That time, we hoped that the United States would press charges against us for traveling to Cuba, giving us an opportunity to put the Bush administration's torture program on trial. They declined. What drew me back to Guantánamo? What propelled me away from my husband and three small children during Thanksgiving week? I returned 10 years after our original mission because so much has changed for me — I am now a wife and a mother — and so little has changed about the criminal injustice of indefinite detention, abuse and torture. Relations between the United States and Cuba have changed. Travel restrictions have loosened. Embassies have opened in both countries. We are not breaking any laws by being here, but we are doing something no one has done before, and the Cuban people were with us. They are sick of being occupied, sick of being exploited, sick of Guantánamo being synonymous with torture the world over, when it should bring up visions of gorgeous beaches, fat healthy fish and rigorous mountain climbing. That's why I needed a little more than fasting and camping. That's why I needed a little more suffering. And that's why I opted to give myself the world's worst haircut. As I sawed and hacked off hanks of hair, I recalled all the names we had read earlier in the day. The names and stories of 107 men still held at Guantánamo, many in solitary confinement, many on hunger strike, many still subjected to forced feeding. Mohammed Ahmad Said al Edah is a 52- or 53-year-old citizen of Yemen. As of November 16, 2015, he has been held at Guantánamo for 13 years and 10 months. As of January 2010, the Guantánamo Review Task Force had recommended him for transfer to Yemen provided that certain security conditions were met. Abd al Malik Abd al Wahab is a 35- or 36-year-old citizen of Yemen. As of January 2010, the Guantánamo Review Task Force had recommended him for continued detention. A parole-like Periodic Review Board later recommended him for transfer. As of Nov. 16, 2015, he has been held at Guantánamo for 13 years, 10 months. I wanted to get back to my kids, my husband and my domestic routine. I yearned to wash dishes (and my hair) and read books. But I didn't want to forget what we were able to do on that mountaintop. I didn't want to forget what people of good will are able to accomplish. We established an outpost of prayer and intention, and showed the world that people from the United States still care about what happens here. I wanted to leave Cuba with more than a sunburn, a stomach ache and pile of really beautiful, moving photographs of our work here. I wanted to leave Cuba changed and doubly committed to changing the life circumstances of the men who are stuck in the worst form of hell — life in limbo. We are living in an age of borderless war, pervasive terror and prevailing fear. We can trace many of the origins of this to 2001, the launch of the U.S. war on the people of Afghanistan and the delivery of a planeful of Arab and Muslim men into U.S. custody on Cuban soil in 2002. Guantánamo — the wholesale shackling, torturing and confining of men without charge or evidence — was the beginning of a new and grim chapter in our nation's history. I keep thinking about what my children and grandchildren will ask me about this time when they are older. I want to be able to tell them that I stood on the side of the outsider, that I was not afraid, that I kept the flame of peace afire and held onto my humanity by never losing sight of anyone else's humanity. That's why I embarked on this journey, to be able to look my children in their big beautiful eyes and say, "I tried. I am trying." But, the first thing they said when they saw me was, in fact, "Hi Ma, what happened to your hair?" A version of this article appeared in Common Dreams on 19 December 2015.  |
| Homelessness: new highs, new lows Posted: 23 Dec 2015 03:57 AM PST
The housing and homelessness charity Shelter has said that 109,000 children in England, Scotland and Wales will be in a hostel or temporary accommodation on 25 December this year, 103,430 of them in England. The chief executive of Shelter, Campbell Robb, said: “These figures are a heart-breaking reminder that thousands of families will wake up homeless this Christmas morning – many hidden away in a cramped and dingy B&B or hostel room, sometimes miles away from everyone and everything they know. “With the double blow of cuts to welfare and a chronic lack of affordable housing, many more families are facing a desperate battle to keep a roof over their heads.” And the Guardian has reported that official figures show the number of families with children living in emergency B&Bs in England rose by 45 per cent in the 12 months to the end of September, the highest level in 12 years, And as far as campaigners Architects 4 Social Housing (ASH) are concerned, the government’s proposed Housing and Planning Bill far from addressing the so-called housing 'crisis', has in fact been designed to bring about the end of social housing in this country. It is, they say, one of the most dangerous and far-reaching pieces of legislation passed in this country in a long time – yet its true impact has been unreported in the mainstream press and is largely unknown to the people it will most affect. To call it a Housing Bill doesn't do justice to the real scope of its ambitions, ASH said. The intrusive new measures it introduces for monitoring social housing tenants, and the centralisation of power in the Secretary of State it will affect, makes the Bill a social engineering plan that will have catastrophic consequences for the people of Britain. If this Bill had been written to do what the government is presenting it as doing – helping people to get on the property ladder, freeing up existing social housing for those most in need, cutting bureaucracy on planning permission – it would merely be a deeply misinformed piece of legislation that has taken no account of existing conditions in housing. But it isn't that. It is, in fact, an extremely subtle and duplicitous piece of legislation that in almost every aspect does something very different, if not the direct opposite, of what it is claiming to do. If passed, ASH pointed out, the Housing and Planning Bill will: 1) Replace the obligation to build homes for social rent with a duty to build discounted 'starter homes' capped at £450,000 in Greater London and £250,000 across the rest of England, in effect offering state subsidies for private investors, who may then sell their assets at full market value within five years of their purchase; 2) Extend the Right to Buy to housing associations without any provision for their replacement with like for like, effectively overseeing the further decline in the number of homes for social rent; 3) Compel local authorities to sell 'high value' housing, thereby exploiting London's exaggerated property values either to transfer public housing into private hands or to free up its coveted land for property developers; 4) Force so-called 'high income' tenants with a total household income over £30,000 in England and £40,000 in London to pay market rents, targeting low-paid working families, those on the minimum wage or claiming disability allowances who cannot afford either to Pay to Stay in their existing homes or to exercise their Right to Buy; 5) Grant planning permission in principle for housing estates designated as such to be redeveloped as 'brownfield land', a term usually used to describe former industrial or commercial land that requires cleaning up, but applied here (as it has by the Housing and Planning Minister and the Conservative candidate for London Mayor) to the communities that live on these estates; and 6) Phase out secure tenancies and their succession to children and replace them with 2-5 year tenancies, after which tenants will have to reapply, with such tenancies also being applied to tenants who have been 'decanted' for the purposes of the demolition and redevelopment of their estates. Rather than alleviating the housing 'crisis', either by building genuinely affordable homes or by increasing provision of social housing, the Bill seeks to use that crisis for political and financial ends. On the one hand it forces local housing authorities to implement Conservative housing policy, and on the other it takes planning power away from those authorities. Both these hands, the one compelling, the other taking, are wielded by what, if the Bill is passed, will be new and punitive powers of the Secretary of State, not only against the people who rely on social housing for a home, but also against the councils and housing associations that provide them. There is absolutely nothing in the Bill for the provision of social housing. Instead, it introduces legislation by which existing social housing is to be either sold into private ownership or demolished to make way for new developments. The Bill's model of home building is driven by state subsidised incentives for private investors that will increase, rather than check, existing speculation on the property market. Under the tattered banner of austerity, the Housing and Planning Bill is in reality legislation for the social cleansing of London in particular, and more generally for the further dismantling of the welfare state by this Conservative government. During its passage through the House of Commons Public Bill Committee, over 150 written submissions were made to Parliament voicing concerns about its legislation and their consequences. None of these altered the contents of the Bill in any meaningful way up to the report stage. Instead, the government has responded by making plans to fast track the Bill into law. When the democratic process fails, as it so clearly has here, it is our duty to take other measures to make ourselves heard. The Bill will receive its third reading in the House of Commons on 5 January 2016, after which it passes to the House of Lords. Under the banner of 'Kill the Housing Bill', numerous groups from the housing sector, the trades unions and beyond will be demonstrating from midday on 5 January 2016 at the Houses of Parliament against the Housing and Planning Bill and for secure and genuinely affordable social housing for all. Please join in. Ask your MP to oppose the Housing and Planning Bill: click here for a model letter. To find your MP and their contact details, click here. Copy to Labour shadow housing minister john.healey.MP@parliament.uk and to Housing Minister Brandon Lewis MP helen.hill@parliament.uk or brandon.lewis@communities.gsi.gov.uk, Twitter:@brandonlewis. Or you can write to any or all of them at House of Commons, London WC1A 0AA, or phone 020 7219 3000 and ask for their office. Then there is this: The government has also just passed a measure to prevent council tenants living in one house for longer than 5 years, after which they could well be kicked out by local authorities in order to supposedly help “social mobility”. Housing is more than just accommodation or a place to live; this new measure will lead to the breakup of communities, friendships and relationships people form while living in one place. It will lead to children having to change schools regularly or else travel ages to get to their school if they choose to stay on. It will lead to people having to fight a battle every 2 to 5 years to stay in their own home. And it is counterproductive: it is supposed to help people get better jobs – but why does it deprive them of their own home as a reward for doing so? Please sign this petition asking for the 2 to 5-year limit on council house residency to be scrapped. The Daily Mirror has also launched a Save Our Council Homes campaign to try to stop the Tory attack on council tenants, which you could also support if you’d care to. Not only are campaigners strongly opposed to the government’s plan to end lifetime tenancies for people living in council housing and all new tenants being given short-term leases of between two and five years and then facing a reassessment that could see them booted out of their homes – the plans were unveiled by the Tory government without warning at a little-attended House of Commons committee. Join the ‘Kill the Housing Bill’ protest on 5 January 2016: for details click here.  |
| Labour sets up disability equality roadshow Posted: 23 Dec 2015 02:37 AM PST
A Labour shadow minister has announced she is to travel the country to ask disabled people for their help in designing a 21st-century social security system. Debbie Abrahams, the shadow minister for disabled people, launched her "disability equality roadshow", due to start in 2016, at a parliamentary event held to mark the international day of persons with disabilities. She said the roadshow would "allow disabled people across the UK to voice their opinions about how, as a society, we should be supporting them in the most effective and appropriate ways and to define what a social security system for disabled people, fit for the 21st century, should look like". Abrahams said the government had treated disabled people "appallingly", from "the £23.8 billion cuts in support to 3.7 million disabled people to the dehumanising and ineffective work capability assessments (WCA) for working-age disabled people". She said the government had "refused to listen" to doctors, academics and disability organisations who have raised concerns about the adverse impact of the WCA on claimants' mental health, but promised that Labour "will listen". She said: "The views and experiences of disabled people have to be right at the heart of, not just the overhaul of the WCA, but other aspects of social security policy too. "Labour wants disabled people to be able to play a central role in both the development and monitoring of this." Her roadshow announcement comes only 18 months after Labour gave a cool welcome to the report of its own disability and poverty taskforce. That taskforce, led by Sir Bert Massie, called for a greater contribution from the state towards the extra costs of disability. It also called on a future Labour government to replace the work capability assessment, introduce a personalised system of employment support, invest in accessible housing and transport, launch a major drive to improve the skills of disabled people, and ensure a new focus on the barriers to employment faced by disabled people. Massie, former chair of the Disability Rights Commission (DRC), heard Abrahams speak at a seminar held at Leeds University on 4 December – the day after she launched the roadshow – in memory of the disability rights campaigner Caroline Gooding, who died last year. Massie, who was chairing the seminar, said: "Debbie was terribly good telling us what the Tories were doing wrong, but she didn't say anything about what she would do right. "I don't know what her policies are, I really don't. There was no commitment, no vision of where Labour would go." He said a roadshow would be likely to produce "lots of good ideas" but not necessarily new policies and: "I wonder if you will get more new ideas from going on a roadshow than you will talking to people who actually know what they are doing, people who know the system inside out." He added: "I cannot think of a public consultation of this type which has actually led anywhere. If it's activity for the sake of activity, that would be my first question. "These consultation meetings are fine as far as they go, but at some point some serious people need to sit down and work out what is going to happen. "If you go round the meetings, what you will hear is how awful it is… it might help politicians understand the angst out there, the frustration, in some cases the desperation and the futility of some of the contacts you have with DWP. "That might all come out, but it doesn't constitute a policy. "Going round to meetings is fine, but you end up with a pile of ideas. They have to be knocked into shape." Massie said he would like to see a new disability rights taskforce, following the one set up by the new Labour government, which reported in December 1999, but with a wider brief that would look at the whole range of disability policy, including social care and possibly even the right-to-die debate. He said: "All the support mechanisms built up from the 1970s are slowly being dismantled. We need another taskforce to really look at the whole of disability policy." Bob Williams-Findlay, a former chair of the British Council of Disabled People, said he had been impressed by Abrahams at the seminar, and said that the roadshow "was not a bad idea", but he warned that "the devil will be in the detail". He said that a taskforce set up by Labour "would make sense with the right remit and personnel", for example with co-chairs such as Professor Mike Oliver and Baroness [Jane] Campbell. Debbie Jolly, a co-founder of Disabled People Against Cuts, who also attended the seminar, said there was no need for a new taskforce, but she backed the idea of a roadshow. She said: "Top-down approaches are dated and untrusted – why we should need yet another set of well-paid disability elites and charities sitting around tables having exclusive closed meetings is unclear in 2015. "The proposed equality roadshow by Debbie Abrahams is a route that allows everyone to give their views and experiences on policy, on what's working and what's not working at the grassroots level – these are the types of things we need to ensure the many, not the few, feed-in to change from the perspective of their own day-to-day life experiences," she continued. "The test for Labour, of course, will be what they do with that information."  |
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