Published on: 03/11/19
The charity’s message is ‘Life costs more for disabled people and their families’.
The event aims to highlight the need to help end the financial inequality experienced by disabled people.
It will draw on Scope’s recent findings showing on average families with disabled children face extra costs of £581 a month to have the same standard of living as parents with a non-disabled child.
Additionally, for almost a quarter (24%) of the former group, it has been found that extra costs amount to over £1,000 per month.
Scope’s research has shown that:
- Utilising accessible goods and services drive up the cost of raising a disabled child. Play, for example, often costs more if you are disabled. Specialist toys tend to be significantly more expensive than those sold to non-disabled children.
- The high cost of travel insurance means that summer holidays can be particularly expensive for families with disabled children. Some companies charge more to insure disabled people with certain conditions or impairments, while others deny cover altogether.
- The difficulty of finding accessible public transport means that parents often have to shell out for taxis and private-hire vehicles just so their child can get to school or have an active social life. Even parents or carers who can use their own cars to get about can face extortionate parking costs if they need to attend regular hospital appointments.
- Disabled children often benefit from treatments such as physiotherapy, hydrotherapy, speech and language therapy and physiotherapy. But parents and carers have to pay out of their own pocket for these.
Scope is hoping the event will play an important part in contributing to its target to end the financial inequality disabled people and their families face.
All these costs add up, the charity says, meaning that parents and carers can find it difficult to give their children the support they need to get the best start in life.
