Latest news with #disabledchildren
The Sun
11 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Sun
Abandoned UK motorway service station is being turned into £8m soft play centre with trampolines, swings & climbing wall
AN abandoned UK motorway service station is getting a new lease of life - as an £8million soft play paradise. The disused rest stop is being transformed into a massive family attraction packed with trampolines, swings, slides and a giant climbing wall. 3 3 A long-abandoned motorway service station near the M48 is getting a jaw-dropping makeover – into a huge soft play and exercise wonderland for disabled children. The £8 million centre, a UK first, will boast wheelchair-accessible climbing walls, trampolines, sensory rooms and even a two-storey soft play zone – all designed so every child can join the fun. Where did the money come from? The transformation of the former Aust Services, just outside Bristol, is being driven by local charity Gympanzees, and they've just smashed a huge fundraising milestone. Over 1,100 generous backers have chipped in to raise more than £255,000 in the latest crowdfunding push – edging the total to a whopping £5.4 million so far. And with builders set to move in this August, work is finally starting on the dream project that's been years in the making. The charity shared their excitement online, writing: 'We're building it. Thanks to your incredible support, our Crowdfunder has officially ended with over £255,000 raised!' They added: 'This milestone means we can begin construction on the UK's first fully inclusive exercise and leisure facility for disabled children and young people!' Where did the idea come from? Once complete, the centre will welcome over 200,000 children and families a year, offering spaces like a music room, party room, therapeutic swings, a cafe and Changing Places toilets. Founder Stephanie Wheen, who first dreamed up the idea in 2016, said: 'After feeling like a pipe dream at times, it now feels incredibly real. Our permanent home is closer than ever.' Until now, Gympanzees has run pop-up events around Bristol, attracting 28,000 visitors and helping more than 2,800 families and schools. I bought two splash pads from Temu and TikTok shop for £9.99 for my kids to compare - one of them is HUGE for the price In just a couple of years, the old motorway stop will be buzzing again. But instead of lorries, it's with laughter. What was it like before? Before its glow-up, the Aust Services was a ghost town stop-off — tired, dated and long forgotten by most drivers. Once a bustling pit stop on the old Severn Bridge route, the site had fallen into disrepair, with boarded-up buildings, crumbling walls and overgrown forecourts. Locals dubbed it a 'motorway relic', with only memories of greasy fry-ups and faded signage hinting at its past life. Now, it's being transformed from derelict dump to dream destination for thousands of children and families. 3
The Sun
07-07-2025
- Politics
- The Sun
Ministers must ditch cruel plan to raid disabled kids' support to plug self-inflicted £20billion black hole
Children first MINISTERS insist that a review of school care plans for special needs children isn't about saving money. The parents of disabled children fear that, in reality, it is much more of a cost-cutting exercise than a proper rebuilding of the system. 2 They have every reason to be worried, not least because of the battles many have been forced to fight with local councils over the years to get proper support. What is plain for all to see is that the Government, after the welfare debacle of last week, risks falling into an almighty new row. We know ministers are desperate to save cash — they are staring into a self-inflicted black hole of at least £20billion after the U-turns on benefits reform and winter fuel, along with other woes. But, instead of looking at areas of shameful waste or incompetence, it is apparently vulnerable children they have in their sights. Has it not occurred to Number Ten just how awful it would look to tip further billions into housing asylum seekers in hotels, or to fail to get a grip on still rampant waste by diversity-obsessed town halls, while penny-pinching from disabled kids? Voters are enraged enough already by the many existing examples of unfairness which are being inflicted upon them. Wealth stealth CAN Labour's long-held instincts of class envy really lead them to bring in a damaging and pointless wealth tax? To the Left, soaking the rich always sounds good. But in practice, it merely drives away the income creators who are crucial to our economy — and ends up costing the Government money. In France, it was abandoned after 60,000 fled, costing the country around £4billion in lost revenue. Britain has already lost more millionaires in the last year — over 16,000 — than any country in the world as a result of our sky-high taxes. Not only do these people drive growth, the top one per cent of earners also pay 29 per cent of UK income tax. Like all socialist ideas, a punitive tax on the rich simply won't work. The Prime Minister should bin it. On our own FRANCE'S much lauded ' one-in, one-out' illegal migrant exchange plan with Britain is being held up because it may breach EU laws. While Britain is free to do a deal, the European Commission says Paris must abide by its shared border agreements. It shows that — plus ça change — Britain can't simply rely on help from France.
BreakingNews.ie
01-07-2025
- Health
- BreakingNews.ie
HSE chief admits waiting lists for assessments for children with disabilities will get worse
The head of the Health Service Executive (HSE) said on Tuesday that he was 'hugely' concerned at growing waiting lists for disabled children seeking vital health assessments and admitted the crisis will get worse. Bernard Gloster acknowledged a 'significant challenge' in tackling the crisis, with more than 15,000 children with serious disabilities waiting to access their legal right to assessments. Advertisement When asked if the crisis was 'going to get worse before it got better', Mr Gloster replied: 'Yes'. The HSE chief said: 'Until we get extra capacity and until we reform the legislation, we are going to be challenged.' 'It would be very wrong of me to say anything different to people across the country, it would be untruthful to do that,' he told reporters in Limerick. The HSE predicts that the children's assessment waiting lists will increase to beyond 25,000 by the end of this year. Advertisement After meeting Cara Daramody, a 14 year old campaigner for the rights of children with disabilities, Mr Gloster pledged that the HSE will advertise tenders for assessments to the private clinicians, to try and tackle the problem. Prior to the meeting, Ms Darmody, accompanied by her father Mark Darmody, called out the government via the HSE for breaching current legislation requiring it to provide health and education needs assessments for children with disabilities. Ms Darmody said children had been left to 'rot' on the waiting lists and urged Mr Gloster to act fast to rescue the waiting list backlog for the vital assessments. Ms Darmody, who led a 50-hour protest outside the Dáil last month highlighting the crisis, said she gave Mr Gloster 'crucial information that totally contradicts the myth that capacity has been reached in the system in relation to the number of psychologists available to assess autistic children'. Advertisement Ms Darmody said she also informed Mr Gloster that she is aware of 'private' clinicians who have sought to help reduce assessment waiting lists but who have been delayed in doing so by bureaucracy. Ms Darmody claimed she knows of at least one private clinician who could have 'eradicated' the AON waiting list in her home county of Tipperary over the last 12 months, by performing an additional 220 AONs, had they been given the opportunity. Ms Darmody said the clinician had applied for a HSE Assessment Tender last October, 'but only got confirmation a month ago' that they had been accepted. Ms Darmody questioned 'why in the middle of a national crisis did it take eight months', and she accused the government of not acting fast enough on the waiting lists. Advertisement Mr Gloster said this evening he was 'taken aback' at the details presented to him by Cara Darmody and Mark Darmody. Commenting on the alleged eight-month wait for the provision of the assessment tender, Mr Gloster said: 'I have to say, it can happen, we are a very big organisation and we have to have rules and systems, and they, by their nature, can become bureaucratic.' 'I'm the first to put my hands up and say, that's for us to do better.' 'I don't think that my own people are doing anything bad or wrong, but it is for us to better, we are paid public servants and Cara and her Dad are not.' Advertisement Mr Gloster said, going forward, he would try to 'tighten the timeline' on assessment tenders applications by the private sector. He acknowledged that 'in the short-term' the HSE required 'help' from the private system to help reduce the assessment waiting lists. 'In the next few weeks, we are going to redesign the specification of private sector provision to help us provide assessment of need,' Mr Gloster said. 'We are going to widely advertise and promote it, so that if there are suitably qualified clinicians who can conduct an assessment of need, and who are qualified and registered to do so, and are safe to do so, then there will be no issue with us using that additional capacity,' he said. 'Even if it possibly reduced the timeline for a couple of hundred (children), then it would be a really productive thing.' Mr Gloster said: 'If you apply for an assessment of need, you are entitled to it in law; you should be able to get it.' The Limerick health service boss said other 'challenges' existed beyond the assessments, including timelines over children's access to 'therapeutic support and intervention'. 'The amount of therapists we have in Ireland that are available to us is limited, but the government are making some really good interventions to increase the supply,' he said. Mr Gloster said that Cara and Mark Darmody's 'anecdotal evidence' of a possible reduction in the waiting lists may exist in the private system; their arguments to investigate it further were 'legitimate and appropriate'. Mr Gloster acknowledged that it had been 'a while' since the HSE had 'updated' its 'framework' of assessment providers, 'so, therefore, there is nothing to lose and everything to gain' by investigating potential capacity in the private system. 'If (it is) proven that there is capacity out there that isn't being used, we'll be delighted that more that can be done, because it means that we can immediately enter into arrangements with professionals to buy additional services to support our own (services),' Mr Gloster said. Ms Darmody described their meeting as 'extremely successful'. 'I got what I wanted from the meeting, which was for Mr Gloster to look into the issue and to start looking for solutions nationally, and in my own county, Tipperary, and possibly internationally,' Ms Darmody said.
The Independent
30-06-2025
- Health
- The Independent
Nearly 800,000 disabled children face cliff-edge over Labour's ‘devastating' welfare reforms
Nearly 800,000 disabled children face losing their health-related benefits as the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) confirms that they will not be eligible for protections promised under the Labour's welfare concessions. Following a massive backbench rebellion over the government's welfare bill last week, work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall announced several tweaks to the legislation on Monday afternoon ahead of a crunch vote on Tuesday. But this protection will not be extended to the 773,000 under-16s currently in receipt of PIP's child equivalent, the Disability Living Allowance (DLA), the DWP has confirmed. If the bill passes, the Personal Independence Payment (PIP) will essentially become more difficult to claim as the point-scoring system used at assessments is tightened. Currently paid to 3.7 million people, the benefit is designed to help with extra costs related to health or disability. Around 1.5 million of these would not be found eligible under the new scoring system. However, Ms Kendall confirmed to MPs that anyone in receipt of PIP when the changes come into effect in November 2026 will be subject to the old, more lenient point-scoring system at their mandatory future reassessments. Formerly one of the most common health-related benefits in Britain, DLA began to be phased out in 2013. However, it remains in place for children aged 0 to 15 as the main childhood disability benefit. Parents can apply for DLA on behalf of their children from the time of their birth onwards. However, when a child in receipt of DLA turns 16, they are invited to apply for PIP. Their DLA payments will stop if they do not apply for PIP by the deadline they are given in this invitation. The DWP has confirmed that the protections pledged for current PIP claimants under the government's concessions will not be extended to any child currently in receipt of DLA. This means any child receiving the benefit that turns 16 after November 2026 will be assessed for PIP on the new, stricter system. The current system was criticised in March as a BBC investigation revealed that amount teenagers who were invited to make the transition from DLA then rejected from claiming PIP was already a third. Should the changes pass, this statistic will likely rise. A further 350,000 adult-age DLA recipients could also face a more difficult assessment process for PIP in the future as they all face a mandatory move to the benefit in the future. Following the phasing out of DLA, many recipients born before 1948 were invited to apply for PIP, subject to a mandatory assessment. The DWP has confirmed that these invitations have been paused for now, despite just over 350,000 adult-age DLA recipients being in the age bracket to get one. These figures mean that, combined, over one million current disability benefit recipients could face tighter criteria to claim PIP, left out of Labour's concession to offer protections for current PIP claimants. The DWP has said that voluntary claims for PIP from DLA for adults can be made at anytime, meaning anyone who has yet to transition from the benefit may want to consider doing so should the bill pass on Tuesday. James Taylor, executive director of strategy at disability equality charity Scope, said: 'These devastating cuts will strip support back to the bone for disabled children and their families in the future. "Life costs an enormous amount more for disabled people of all ages. Today's disabled children could be up to £8,000 a year worse off than someone older with the same needs and extra costs. "Hundreds of thousands of families will face a terrifying cliff edge in support as their children approach adulthood. 'The government needs to drop this bill, and properly engage with disabled people and MPs on how best to reform our welfare system.' Derek Sinclair, senior adviser at disability charity Contact, said: 'Last week's announcements will be a relief to existing claimants. However, it does nothing to help future claimants, including disabled children not currently old enough to claim adult disability benefits. 'We face being left with an unfair two-tier system. Future claimants will find it harder to qualify for financial support, and the benefits paid to many will be substantially lower. 'Our research has found that families with a disabled child or young person are already among the poorest households in the UK. The government should scrap its current plans until it has first carried out a proper consultation with disabled people and their carers.'
BreakingNews.ie
23-06-2025
- BreakingNews.ie
DPP will not oppose woman's appeal to overturn conviction for sexually abusing disabled children
The State has said it will not oppose an appeal by a 54-year-old woman to have her conviction for the sexual abuse and neglect of her disabled children quashed. The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) has also indicated that a retrial will not be sought. Advertisement The Court of Appeal heard on Monday that a psychologist who interviewed the woman accepted that alleged admissions she made may have resulted from "inducements". The psychologist carried out a number of interviews over five days, some of which included the use of a polygraph test, which formed the basis of the prosecution's case. The judge expressed reservations during the woman's second trial about the alleged admissions but felt bound by a Supreme Court decision which had found the interviews to be admissible. In its decision, the Supreme Court had found that the manner of those interviews did not compel the admissions to be excluded. Advertisement It further found that the polygraph test was not an "instrument of oppression" but a means for the psychologist to verify what was said and to "discover where the truth might lie". At the Court of Appeal on Monday, lawyers for the woman asked the court to set aside her conviction in light of the DPP's position. The woman was convicted following a retrial in July 2024 of four counts of sexual assault against three of her sons - all of whom have disabilities - between January 1st, 2005, and March 25th 2015. She was also convicted of one count of child neglect between August 3rd 2008, and March 25th 2015. Advertisement She was sentenced to eight years in prison with the final two years suspended by Judge Catherine Staines at Clonmel Circuit Court on December 17th 2024, but has remained on bail pending her appeal. The judge in the appellant's first trial ruled that admissions she had made to the psychologist were not voluntary and ought to be excluded. As they were the only evidence against the woman, the court directed the jury to acquit her of all charges. The DPP appealed this decision and in October 2022 the Court of Appeal found the admissions ought not to have been excluded. The woman subsequently appealed this decision to the Supreme Court which upheld the Court of Appeal's ruling and directed that a retrial take place. Advertisement Launching a bid to have the woman's conviction set aside at the Court of Appeal today, defence senior counsel Dermot Cahill said the only evidence against the appellant was her admissions and the issue was whether they were voluntary. He said on two separate occasions the trial judge had expressed 'serious concerns' about the admissibility of this evidence. 'The error of the trial judge was not to follow through on her own sense of justice,' he said. Mr Cahill said the judge had 'serious misgivings' about the evidence but failed to follow up on her concerns. Advertisement He said the DPP has reviewed matters and in a letter has 'sought not to oppose an appeal against conviction'. Counsel said the Director has also indicated she will not be seeking a retrial in the case. 'On that basis I'm asking the court to set aside this conviction,' he said. Outlining the background to the case, Mr Cahill said the woman's husband and brother-in-law were charged but the DPP initially indicated they did not intend to prosecute her. However, during the course of a safeguarding assessment concerning two of her adult children, the woman made admissions to a psychologist which led the DPP to revise her decision and instigate a prosecution against his client. Mr Cahill said the woman was interviewed by the psychologist over the course of five days. He said in the retrial, great emphasis was placed on day four and day five which led the expert witness to accept that things 'may have been said that may have been regarded as inducements'. He said the manner in which polygraph tests were conducted also came into focus during the second trial. Ms Justice Tara Burns, sitting with Mr Justice Brian O'Moore and Mr Justice Michael MacGrath, said the court understood the position the director was taking but asked counsel for the State if there was anything he had to add. Ireland Sky Ireland tells court it is not obliged to give... Read More Michael Delaney SC, for the DPP, replied: 'In defence of the trial judge and our own position, we were dealing with a fairly emphatic judgment from the Supreme Court'. He went on to say that the impact on the question of admissibility in this particular setting was 'more difficult to assess'. Ms Justice Burns said the court would reserve judgement and deliver its decision on July 14th. If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this article, you can call the national 24-hour Rape Crisis Helpline at 1800-77 8888, access text service and webchat options at or visit Rape Crisis Help.
