A woman with severe mental illness was found “mummifed” and “almost skeletal” unnoticed for over three years.
Laura Winham was 38 years old. She had schizophrenia. She couldn’t look after herself. She lived in social housing.
There were no routine checks to see if she was ok. Her body was found in 2021. She is thought to have died in 2017.
Her family limited contact with her because it caused her “enormous stress” according to the BBC, instead relying on the care system to check on her wellbeing.
It seems astonishing that disabled people can fall off care radars in such dramatic fashion, but this is not an isolated case.
Errol Graham also slipped through the net, dying of starvation when his benefits were stopped because he was too unwell to attend DWP appointments. He was 57.
Elaine Morrall froze to death when her benefits were stopped. She was 38. She had missed an appointment to discuss her benefits because she was in intensive care. She leaves four kids behind.
This week, Joy Dove, the mother of Jodey Whiting, who had physical disabilities and mental health distress, and who died by suicide in 2017 after having her benefits stopped, will have her case into the need for a new Inquest heard by the Court of Appeal. Jodey didn’t attend a DWP assessment because she had pneumonia, could not leave the house, had recently been in hospital and had just found out she had a cyst on her brain. The first inquest was heard in just 37 minutes with Joy having no legal representation present.
Where is the humanity in any of these cases? All I can see is despair, horror, a total lack of compassion and understanding, and the complete and abject failure for disabled people to receive the care and support they needed not even to thrive, but to survive. None of these people were old. None of them should be dead.
This Government is not prepared to fund the public services and safety net that its citizens need. Disabled people are starting to feel that we are not even viewed as second class citizens, so much as seen as not worth being any kind of citizens. Not worth the dignity, respect, honour and love that we all crave and need as human beings.
Driving Forwards
In stark contrast, a fine example of what disabled people can achieve if we do have means and support is Sophie Morgan.
Sophie’s book, Driving Forwards is published in paperback for the first time this week. The book is all about the accident that left her paralysed, and the life she has built back since – one of grabbing on, holding on tight, and going for one hell of an adventure on whatever ride she has to hand (often a big-ass motortrike).
I’m not one for celeb biographies as a rule, but her prose is pacy and gripping and her story is breathtaking. She tells her story with the same intelligence, energy, sass and drive she is loved for as a presenter.
Disabled people hate being called inspiring, but she is – not because she’s disabled, but because she lives life to the full, and takes her readers on that journey with her. Rev it up.
