Brooks supports disabled children's campaign

Brooks Newmark has sponsored a Parliamentary Early Day Motion in support of the 'Every Disabled Child Matters' campaign. Brooks Newmark has sponsored a Parliamentary Early Day Motion in support of the 'Every Disabled Child Matters' campaign. His motion calls for the Government to support a Bill to impose a new duty on local authorities to assess disabled children for short breaks.

Fellow Conservative MP Gary Streeter will aim to pass the Bill into law after winning the chance to do so in a ballot of MPs. Brooks has assembled cross-party support for his motion in order to help speed the Bill through the legislative process in the House of Commons next year.

There are 770,000 disabled children in the UK and that more than half of families with disabled children live in poverty. Meanwhile there are 3,000 disabled children on waiting lists for family-based short breaks and not getting these can rip families apart. Brooks is supporting this Bill in order to give disabled children and their families better access to short breaks.

Brooks says, "I am delighted to have been able to sponsor this motion in support of such an important campaign. Families with disabled children need the best support that we can offer them. The Disabled Children's Short Breaks Bill will ensure that disabled children and their families have the right to the kind of breaks that many other families would take for granted. I hope that the breadth of support for my motion will be matched by support for the Bill in the House of Commons."

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."

EDM 321 EVERY DISABLED CHILD MATTERS CAMPAIGN 28.11.2006

That this House believes that the UK's 770,000 disabled children and their carers deserve to have better access to respite or short break care; notes with concern that more than half of disabled children's families live in poverty; pays tribute to the principles of the Every Disabled Child Matters campaign; and calls upon the Government to support the Disabled Children's Short Breaks Bill, which places a specific legal duty on local authorities and health agencies, to provide vital short breaks for families with disabled children in England and Wales.

Visit the campaign website at www.edcm.org.uk.