Blog- Welfare – does Universal Credit leave you feeling dignified or stigmatised?

Heather Fisken, Inclusion Scotland’s Head of Policy and Research

Welfare – does Universal Credit leave you feeling dignified or stigmatised?

Secure, dignified and just? Are those words you would use to describe your experiences of the welfare system as a disabled person? Or are you more likely to say you are left feeling stigmatised, uncertain, and unfairly treated? Our Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) gives us rights to dignity and social protections like welfare but is this the reality?

Do decision-makers consider what people feel like when they access welfare systems and what impact that has on our lives? Do they have the evidence to shape welfare policy and practice for the best outcomes for disabled people?

I was in Madrid at the beginning of February to meet with our new academic and Disabled People’s Organisation (DPO) research partners from Norway, Estonia, Hungary, Spain, and England. It was a timely opportunity to plan how we will work together on an important new research project about disabled people’s experiences of welfare systems. The research project, led by King’s College London and funded by the European Research Council, will compare disabled people’s experiences of welfare across all those nations. In the UK this will be Universal Credit claimants in the limited capability for work or work-related activity groups.

Spread over 4 years, this year will see disabled people and DPO research partners, including Inclusion Scotland, coproduce a ‘conceptual framework’ with disabled people in their own countries. The framework will identify the concepts to be explored in the next phase of the project when up to ninety disabled people across the European countries taking part will record their experiences and take part in interviews over 6 months. After that, a large-scale survey of disabled people and an analysis of welfare systems and existing literature will be conducted, and the findings will be published, promoted, and positioned with decision-makers.

What difference will all this make? The project will make comparisons about how disabled people in different countries feel they are treated by welfare systems and what difference this makes to our lives. Then, it is up to all of us to use the findings and to hold decision-makers to account. We have rights to dignity and social protections.

Would you like to be involved in coproducing the concepts to be used throughout the research project? Vouchers for time will be available for taking part in an inclusive and creative coproduction workshop. Look out for more details on our website and member’s mailings in April.

You can read Inclusion Scotland’s Coproduction Toolkit ‘All Together Now’ in the Guides section of our website.

You can read more about the Welfare Experiences project at King’s College London Website here.