Cost of living webinar shows reality faced by disabled people
The cost-of-living crisis has been found to have had an effect on how active disabled people are. Activity Alliance held a webinar to discuss the findings.
Four in ten disabled people said that the cost-of-living crisis has affected how active they are in Activity Alliance’s latest Annual Disability and Activity Survey. That is versus three in ten non-disabled people.
To highlight the findings, and delve deeper into the issues, Activity Alliance hosted a webinar bringing together disabled people and leaders from across sport and activity. The hour-long event was hosted by Activity Alliance Vice-Chair, and long-term campaigner on disability rights and inclusion, Phil Friend OBE. You can watch the full video below, or on our YouTube channel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBCPP0b5Os0
He began by talking to Cairo-Montel and Alex, both of whom are disabled. They talked passionately about the reasons they felt they were unable to be as active as they would like, and how that affected their lives.
As well as the stark findings on how the cost-of-living crisis is affecting how active disabled people are, it also showed they were socialising less too. Six in ten disabled people reported that the increase in cost of living has reduced how much they socialise.
More than 100 people were listening on as we then heard from representatives from Disability Rights UK, Sported and Club Matters. Each shared their experiences of how the cost-of living crisis is affecting disabled people.
Gemma Lumsdaine, Disability Lead at Sported, shared their Community Pulse Survey. It looks at some of the issues that deliverers are facing on the ground in their day-to-day work. This allows them to address the challenges that they see organisations are facing. They published a report that assesses the impact cost of living has had on grassroots sport.
Michael Erhardt, Campaign and Policy Officer at Disability Rights UK, and Jobeth Hamilton, who works on behalf of Club Matters, both shared valuable insight as the discussion developed. They were keen to highlight that the sector can provide a focus on potential ways in which the cost-of-living crisis can be mitigated. This ranged from ways in which sports clubs can adapt memberships through to set-up of the social security system.
