Help Us Document Evidence of Welfare-Related Deaths
Healing Justice Ldn is launching a public consultation on a timeline of evidence of the links between welfare policy, harm and people’s deaths. The timeline is part of our wider Deaths by Welfare Project, investigating deaths linked to welfare reform and the violence of state austerity, including suicides.
The expertise, knowledge, and leadership of people with lived experience of the welfare system, including disabled people and bereaved families, is a key part of both the evidence documented in the timeline and the making of it. The timeline is being co-created by China Mills (Healing Justice London and City, University of London), John Pring (Disability News Service), Ellen Clifford (Disabled People Against Cuts [DPAC] and author of the War on Disabled People), Nick Dilworth (welfare rights advisor), Dolly Sen (artist and activist working on section136), and Rick Burgess (Co-founder of the WOW petition), with the intention to work with more collaborators in the future.
Our hope is that the timeline will be useful as a tool for disability justice movement organising, creating counter-histories that help to understand and bring attention to how policies designed in the name of ‘welfare’ can create the conditions for people’s deaths. In making this draft of the timeline public, we are extending an invitation for you to join us on the journey of building these counter-histories.
Read more to find out how you can contribute. The timeline is a living document and we know it will never be ‘perfect’ or ‘complete’. We really value your input and are very open to critical feedback, to make sure that this timeline reflects the realities of, and can be useful to, those experiencing and fighting the harms of the welfare system. We’re particularly keen to make sure our timeline doesn’t (re)produce a white history of welfare reform, and is attuned to the way welfare reform has had a disproportionately negative impact on people of colour.
We plan to officially launch our timeline online in late 2022. Please send your feedback, edits and ideas before August 31st 5pm BST, by emailing deathsbywelfare@healingjusticeldn.org with the subject line ‘Timeline Consultation’.