Disabled people are being barred from leaving the country. This isn’t the first line of a dystopian novel but a scandal quietly happening across swathes of England. For the past six months, myself and my colleague Patrick Butler have spoken to disabled people who have effectively been blocked from going abroad on a holiday or to a work event by their local care provider.
There’s 38-year-old Lucy from Oxfordshire who needs to travel internationally as the president of the European Spinal Cord Injury Federation. And Chelsea from Lancashire, a 25-year-old with cerebral palsy who dreams of swimming in Spain again. Then there’s 40-year-old Joel*, who has a muscle weakness and works for a global marketing brand but hasn’t been able to leave the UK for nine years.
