We interviewed people with different careers about the welfare for disabilities in UK, from which we can find some differences from China, there is a variety of welfare in many aspects indeed.  

Facility support on campus

The university in UK makes sensible adjustments to provide access for both student and staff with disabilities. Within common sense, there are certain exceptions which are made in both directions. For example, wheelchair uses are not allowed at the top of the library because it won’t be possible for anyone’s access to the evacuation. This is permitted under the UK laws because the safety trumps the right of access. Obviously, we try to make things available and responsible for the people with disabilities. If, for example, there are several wheel chair staff teaching, the timetabling team try to ensure they put wheelchair users in the places which they can access. This does get tricky at times particularly with the student numbers and the number of teaching spaces. But we can usually find a way of accommodating the requirement for staff and students. Comparing with China, we do have a number of facilities for disabilities in public areas. But a large quantity of them are not in real use. Some are because of the occupation of other stuffs, such as cars and shops; and some are because of people’s ignorance. Nevertheless, there aren’t so many on campus.

Allowance for disabilities

The British government provides benefits and income for people with various mental and physical disabilities if they cannot find possible jobs. While in China, which is still a developing country, even though the government is always sparing its effort to support disabilities, still plenty of them cannot get the support because of the large population.

Financial support

From the report online, disabilities in UK can get financial support and work-related support through Employment and Support Allowance (ESA)

They’ll normally get the assessment rate for 13 weeks after their claim. This will be:

    Up to £57.90 a week if you’re aged under 25

·         up to £73.10 a week if you’re aged 25 or over

After that, if they’re entitled to ESA, they’ll be placed in one of 2 groups and will receive:

·         up to £73.10 a week if you’re in the work-related activity group

·         up to £110.75 a week if you’re in the support group

Financial support for older people

They could get £57.30 or £85.60 a week to help with personal support if they’re both:

·         physically or mentally disabled

·         aged 65 or over

The situation is quite similar in China, once the disabled people without restricted age get the disability certificate, they’ll get a certain amount of money. However, it is not given weekly necessarily. What’s more, it takes a long time to get the certificate because of complex procedures.