Children's care and disability rights

Brooks Newmark this week sponsored a Bill to help disabled children and their families.Brooks Newmark this week sponsored a Bill to help disabled children and their families. The Bill, introduced by Labour MP Ed Balls, will impose a new duty on local authorities to assess disabled children for short breaks.

There are 3,000 disabled children on waiting lists for family-based short breaks. Not getting these can rip families apart. Brooks is supporting this Bill in order to give disabled children and their families better services, including short breaks.

The Disabled Children's Assessment and Services Bill will make it clear in law for the first time that local authorities must assess disabled children and provide them with a range of services, including short breaks/respite care, where these are assessed as necessary.

Brooks says, "I am delighted to have been asked to sponsor this Bill in Parliament. Families with disabled children need the best support that we can offer. This Bill would give disabled children the assessments and services they need. This was just the sort of issue that was raised when I visited Edith Borthwick School in Bocking and Southview School in Witham recently."

The Bill is supported by Contact a Family, the Council for Disabled Children, Mencap and the Special Educational Consortium, who have been campaigning together for several years to raise awareness of the issues that the Bill addresses and to press for change.

Jo Williams, Chief Executive of Mencap, says: "Without short breaks, many families of children with severe or profound learning disabilities face crisis. This Bill supports Mencap's Breaking Point campaign and could make a real difference."

Brooks has recently introduced EDM 1258 , calling for more funding for East Anglia's Children's Hospices, which provides respite care to children throughout the region.

Brooks also pledged today to support the "Are we taking the Dis?" campaign launched by the Disability Rights Commission.

The national campaign aims to highlight the impact of disability discrimination and features real life stories of disabled people at the receiving end of unfair treatment.

Brooks said, "We need to move attitudes to the point where judging someone's capability on the basis of their impairment is considered as crass and wrong as it is already accepted to be on the grounds of race and sex. This campaign is an important contribution to this much needed shift."

The campaign aims to highlight key facts:

• Disabled 16 year olds are twice as likely to be out of education or work as their non-disabled peers.

• Disabled people earn an average of 10% less per hour than non-disabled people.

• Disabled people are more likely to be out of work. Those in work are likely to be in low paid jobs.

Photo:Brooks with Disability Rights Commissioner Chris Holmes