The true price of the cost of living crisis

By Enable Magazine

As the cost of living crisis continues, people in the disability community continue to struggle to afford essentials like energy for equipment and food with the little financial support on offer.

Since a cost of living crisis was declared in the UK during July 2022, disabled people have taken the brunt of the impact, forced to make the choice between eating or using money for electricity to keep essential equipment or heating on. This situation will be detrimental to people’s health, but for many people it isn’t a new one.

Before the cost of living crisis began, research by Sense showed that 24 per cent of people with complex disabilities were already struggling to keep their homes adequately warm.

“The rapid increase in energy costs disproportionately hit people who need energy-intensive equipment to live a healthy, fulfilled life,” reveals Richard Kramer, chief executive of charity Sense.

 

Quality of life

For many disabled people, this crisis means a choice between eating or heating: 62 per cent of disabled people and their families told Sense that they have already had to make this choice in the last year, and 72 per cent of disabled households have been pushed into debt by rising costs.

 “Sadly, we know many disabled people are still in desperate financial situations and worried about how they will pay their bills long-term,” explains Richard.

“Many of the families we support run daily equipment such as feeding machines, powered wheelchairs, hoists and electric beds. Turning the energy off for these machines is simply not an option. “We know that for many disabled people, the decisions they are making to try and cut costs are drastically reducing their quality of life, and in some cases impacting on their ability to lead healthy, pain-free, independent lives.”

 

Emma's story

Emma, who is deafblind, has been working with Sense since 2009, doing paid and voluntary work. Here, Emma shares how the current cost of living crisis is affecting her life.

Disabled people, myself included, have been affected before the pandemic and the cost of living crisis and now it’s like we’ve been left in limbo because its 10 times worse than it’s been before. In my household in particular we have additional costs on top of the average household because we have medical machinery that we need. I have an emergency alarm in case I fall and have a seizure, my partner has a sleep apnea machine and we have a special fire safety alarm for when I’m asleep. It feels like those kinds of things haven’t been considered in support, the funding supplied is gone within a day for us.

I only work four hours a week out of the house and so the rest of the time I’m home all of the time because I can’t go out alone. I can’t just sit here and do nothing or not having the heating on because I have arthritis. It feels like fighting a losing battle in a way. It’s affecting every angle of my life, my mental health, relationships. As a disabled person you want to be able to do more, to work more, to help more, and you can feel like you’re a burden sometimes. It doesn’t help when there’s comments that say you should just be doing more to help yourself and you physically can’t. My partner works more and so we aren’t eligible for things like Universal Credit either.

On top of the additional costs we have, we still have the same issues as other people in terms of the cost of food and things. It’s bad to say but I’m not holding out much hope for more support because over time, I’ve learnt to not get my hopes up.

In a way, it feels like we’re going back to the 50s where disabled people were shut away and left to their own devices and it’s not right.

 

Sense can offer advice related to financial help, benefits and money through their website www.sense.org.uk

You can also call the Sense Information and Advice service on 0300 0330 9256