Report: GM Big Disability Survey Covid-19 report

The Greater Manchester Disabled People’s Panel (GMDPP) created a survey to find out how disabled people in Greater Manchester were managing during the Covid 19 pandemic. The Panel is unique, no other city region has managed to establish one, it is made up of 14 disabled people’s organisations. The Panel already knew a lot of the issues, but to help them to influence improvement of how services were responding they needed a wide evidence base the survey could provide. 936 people responded, making it one of the largest surveys by and for disabled people of the Pandemic.

Some key findings were:

• 90% of respondents said that the pandemic has had a negative impact on their mental health
• 80% of respondents were not included in the official shielded group, yet 57% of those had support needs. For example many could not get online supermarket food delivery despite needing to shield
• 56% of respondents had experienced some difficulty sourcing Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)
• 62% of respondents have experienced one or more health visit being stopped due to Covid-19
• Accessibility of the hubs was a problem, 46% found them inaccessible with deaf people being the worst excluded
• Disabled people are less satisfied with their care plans since the outbreak of Covid-19. Prior to the outbreak, 23% were dissatisfied, this dissatisfaction increased to 43% during the Pandemic
• 37% said that their housing was not accessible or only partially accessible
• 83% of disabled people were worried about how they would be treated in hospital because of attitudes to disability
• 47% found government advice unclear and many commented that the lack of a British Sign Language interpreter or conflicting language made official announcements inaccessible.
• Digital exclusion was a problem, especially as a lot of the emergency response used digital platforms
• A third of disabled people believe that their local authority is not doing anything significant whilst 76% of disabled people are dissatisfied with the help provided by the government

To read the report click here