We have responded to the Major conditions strategy: call for evidence. This is where the Department of Health and Social Care sought views and ideas on how to prevent, diagnose, treat and manage the 6 major groups of health conditions that most affect the population in England.
The following organisations co-sign this response:
- Disability North – a user-led charity which promotes inclusion, independence and choice for Disabled people and their families.
- Colostomy UK - a charity that supports and empowers people living with a stoma.
- Wiltshire Centre for Independent Living – a user-led organisation supporting Disabled people living in Wiltshire to have choice and control to live independent lives.
- Pulp Friction – a CIC which supports people with Learning Disabilities and Autism.
- Disability Peterborough – a Disabled People’s Organisation that has been supporting local, physically disabled people for over 30 years.
- Leicestershire Centre for Integrated Living - a user-led organisation based in Leicester City that works innovatively based on the social model of disability to support Disabled people.
Following DR UK’s extensive work on a rights-based approach to sport and physical activity provision, this response focuses on the benefits physical activity can provide. In particular, our work and research in the Get Yourself Active programme identified access to sport and physical activity as a rights issue through the social model lens. We all have a right to get active however we want, and the health and social care systems should approach physical activity provision as a health concern.
Together with our colleagues at the aforementioned DPOs, we have responded to the department’s consultation to recommend:
- Health issues must be through the social model lens to allow sport and physical activity to be seen as a health intervention.
- Disabled people receive the quality care and support they need to be active. In particular, we recommend serious financial investment into the social care sector.
- The benefits system enables Disabled people to be active. Including support for the Commission on Social Security’s recommendations of a system with no sanctions, no benefit cap, no five-week wait and no two-child limit.
We argued that generally, there is recognition in the health and social care sector of the health (both physical and mental) benefits of sports and physical activity. And that applying a social model lens to major conditions responses would allow this recognition to occur widely and create more accessible, equitable and effective services.