Mothers and Carers with Disabilities

MOTION: Women and Disability – For A Fair and Appropriate DWP Response

Women perform far more of the cognitive, emotional and physical tasks of parenting than men and undertake the lion’s share of unpaid care. For example, women are eight or nine times more likely to be diagnosed with fibromyalgia than men. It is a debilitating disease for which there is no known cause or cure, which limits sufferers’ ability to work outside of the home, but also within it. Conference agrees that DWP assessment processes do not readily acknowledge the severity of pain or the regular and fluctuating mobility impacts of illnesses such as fibromyalgia.

Further:

• DWP assessment systems fail to recognise the impact of disability on women as carers and parents - both of which are physically, cognitively and emotionally demanding roles that require consistency

• Women as mothers and carers are expected just to get on with it and there are no specific assessment points allocated relating to difficulties in carrying out these vitally important roles

In government, the Party will:

• Convene an urgent, lived experience-informed review of the disability benefits system, to take full account of the impacts of all disabilities on women as mothers and carers and on those they care for

• Adequately fund all DWP processes and income streams on which women with disabilities rely

• Provide adequate support to all disabled mothers and carers and additional provision for single disabled women who are mothers and/or carers