Blue badges for hidden disabilities triple as councils issue permits to drivers with anxiety and ADHD
Source: tylerthe-theatre
Blue badges for hidden disabilities triple as councils issue permits to drivers with anxiety and ADHD
Source: tylerthe-theatre
37 Comments
And here I am having to fight for one. The application requires a written diagnosis from your GP and mine has consistently refused to accept there is anything wrong with me. Guess I’ll just have to struggle for parking then
Can someone explain to me (as someone with autism spectrum, mind) why someone with anxiety or ADHD needs to park in a disabled spot? My understanding was they were there so people with physical disabilities can more easily get in and out of their vehicles…?
Typical shit-stirring from the far-right LB…C… ah.
Typical nonsense story. Their evidence of this is they saw a TicToc where people were ‘encouraged’ to apply for a blue badge with ADHD, so that is clearly absolutely definitive, nothing untrue has ever existed on social media.
I have arthritis and severe mobility issues and I couldn’t get one from my local council, how the hell do you get one for anxiety and ADHD?
Oh great.
My son was deemed to disabled for a blue badge.
I’m not kidding.
He scored 12 points on the planning part of pip. He’s very disabled with no chance of improvement so got an indefinite award on pip.
So I applied to renew his badge only to be told no he needed to score 10, to get the badge back!!!!! Another 3 month wait 7 more pages of evidence, gp, social worker and sen school back up we have it back.
The sad thing is a lot of parents with really disabled kids are so stressed they don’t fight back. Pip took high rate mobility from a kid at his school with cp. His mum said she was too scared and exhausted to go to court to fight it.
Everyone is different nobody should take the piss.
My anxiety locks my back up. My nans in hospital this week and my back feels like my liver is about to do a backwards alien chestburst scene. I’m pretty sure it works differently in different people but don’t be out here assuming.
Applications or actual badges issued?
My mother can not stand unaided, nor walk more than a few steps without a frame or walker. She has decades of medical evidence to prove her spinal damage and the impact it has on her mobility. We still had to jump through hoops to get one, and still have to jump through hoops to renew it.
I call BS on this one.
You know r/unitedkingdom turned into a rage bait sub so quickly I didn’t even notice
Yet another article deamonising people with disabilities. Exaggerate one small faction to imply all disabled benefit recipients are scammers.
So many people enjoying watching people with disabilities suffer.
There’s no point getting angry at this, what are we actually getting angry about, jealousy that we can’t park in the disabled bays?
We really need a societal switch moving away from ragebait and get people motivated by being happy.
I have had chronic anxiety (social phobia and agoraphobia) for 30 years and I never once thought I should be entitled to a blue badge.
Absolutely zero evidence other than the numbers increasing? Total Tory shit piece.
Everything in life that starts off meaning well, eventually gets emptied of any real meaning sooner or later.
We are quickly approaching a place where there is almost two parallel systems. One for those with these kinds of disabilities ( debate on the legitimacy of some of these claims aside), and those who don’t.
It’s going to create resentment in the later group, many who perceive to be paying for all this. My local town now costs £9.60 for 4 hours of parking, but a disabled badge holder can park for free for 3 hours on double yellow lines.
Unless the number of disabled bays also triple it just means that people with Blue Badges won’t get a disabled bay anyway. Quite a few pay and display car parks now charge people with Blue Badges so it’s not even a case of having one guaranteeing free parking.
I worry we’re minimising the physical limitations that day to day life has for people with physical disabilities with this over focused on mental health disorders. I say this as someone with diagnosed ADHD, I’ve been in so many trainings about disability where they talk about me for hours and physical disabilities are an add on.
I think it comes from a good place buts it’s an overcorrection when it comes to things like this. I think it has created a sense of entitlement rather than support.
Reminder for people: don’t fall for the anti-disability propaganda.
Blue badges have been abused for years, I worked for a primary academy like 10years ago and it was an argument every day for every school posh or poor area just to tell people it didn’t mean they can park outside the gates on the zigzags.
It needs scrapping and replacing with a more heavy scrutinized system as I can’t imagine what life is like ATM if you have mobility needs, must be like being wheel chair bound 30 years ago.
Some people really are shit. My dad has a paralysed arm, which would enable him to get a blue badge easily as he is technically disabled. But he doesnt as he doesnt see the need to as he can get in and out of his car easily.
Surely if your anxiety is that bad that you need a blue badge, you shouldn’t be driving.
People are forgetting the additional bad side of this. The more blue badges get pushed out, the less value they have, and the more likely it is that people will ignore the bays entirely and just park in them. I’ve now seen multiple people park in them, not display a blue badge, and if I point it out they just say they see people without a disability parking in them all the time (because of the hidden disability element).
I don’t have a disability so I obviously can’t speak for anyone, but I don’t particularly understand the point of using a disabled bay unless you have a physical issue (which can include a lot of hidden physical issues). Using it because you have autism or ADHD feels weird, and i’m surrounded by AuDHD people in my life – none of them would ever need a blue badge.
I’ve known people who fake all kinds of mental issues for decades to get benefits, including people I’m related to. None of this is surprising if you’ve lived in social housing.
I have severe anxiety and it’s brutal but i dont feel entitled to a blue badge. This is ridiculous.
I wouldn’t mind seeing the 40 or so disabled spots used at my local tesco. Silliness aside, I’m not sure how I feel about this. There will be plenty of places where there is limited parking for disabled people and well a physical disability and a mental disability will have huge differences for access.
As the husband and carer for a disabled wife. Wheelchair, van with a ramp…
My two penys worth.
The blue badge system needs a complete overhaul.
Mobility allowance should be the only criteria for automatic acceptance. A board with face to face interviews for exceptions.
The DWP can issue the badge, take it out of the hands of local council.
A couple years ago there were two disabled spaces on my entire street, and one on the adjoining street. Council put up parking meters and suddenly – and I wish I was exaggerating – the entire street, along with the adjoining ones are nothing but painted “disabled” spaces. There are two outwardly physically disabled people on my street, the same people who had the original disabled spaces. Everyone else, well if they are disabled it’s the invisible kind. Lived here over a decade so I am very familiar with my neighbours.
Two members of my household are disabled themselves and whilst we will get to a point of needing a blue badge eventually, currently the 5 min walk to a street with available parking is still doable so we haven’t applied.
Clickbait headline fake news for anyone who didn’t bother reading, councils are not “handing out blue badges to people with anxiety and ADHD”. The council have reported an uptick in applications based on these diagnosis thanks to TikTok scammers, but the provision of hidden disabilities was and remains designed for things like cognitive degenerative disease. Just another “whip up the masses in outrage over mental health benefits” nonsense headline
As someone with diagnosed anxiety, not self proclaimed made up bullshit, i am massively confused as to why someone with anxiety needs a blue badge ? It has nothing to do with your ability to get out of a car and walk an extra 10ft …
My son has autism and would be Thrown into this misleading article, he cannot follow instruction, he has no danger awareness, he would just run into the path of a car, road, any danger he would have no understanding of. It’s unfair to do these misleading articles to stir up hate
It’s true – there really is a Half Man Half Biscuit song for every occasion.
CSI: Ambleside – Blue Badge Abuser
😎
Anecdotally, my mother in law is physically disabled and uses a blue badge. She has noticed it becoming harder and harder to get a disabled spot and that the people who park in those spots tend to not look physically disabled more often than she’d seen in the past
What a shock, grifters and chancers spoiling it for people with legit disabilities. Like they did at theme parks jumping the lines by claiming Hayden has autism and then dragging all 13 members of the family along too.
We all know it’s either going to be grifters who spend their Fridays at the flat-roofed pub or Middle Class women who think the rules don’t apply to them (Though they are more likely to just park there anyway and then kick off when someone confronts them–“I’m only nipping in to buy some bits and bobs! I’ll be five minutes!”)
It’s shocking how the media asserts ideological positions through apparently neutral headlines.
They write “Half of the schoolkids in Randomshire are ASN”, as if describing a fact, but knowing that this headline is written and read from a position of outrage, more like “HalF of KiDDOS are ASSN??!!!!! Howww??! Benefits!”.
You’ll never see other headlines though, like:
“Gentry member (Duke of Westminster) avoided 40% inheritance tax”.
“Half of autistic adults systematically excluded from access to employment”.
Funny.
It’s frustrating to see the system that made my granddad fight for months to prove his Parkinson’s is now handing these badges out based on a phone call about stress. The core issue isn’t that invisible disabilities exist, but that the assessment process clearly lacks the consistency and rigour it should have for everyone. We need a system that properly validates all genuine needs without making anyone jump through hoops while letting others breeze through.
I have ADHD and OCD. I was diagnosed over 10 years ago.
A blue badge for ADHD is a fucking joke.
If you get PIP benefit and “you receive the mobility component of PIPand have obtained 10 points specifically for descriptor E under the ‘planning and following journeys’ activity, on the grounds that you are unable to undertake any journey because it would cause you overwhelming psychological distress” then you can get a blue badge. So I do think there’s a lot of people with anxiety disorders or ADHD who get PIP that would receive a blue badge.