People with disabilities obviously have problems anywhere, but in a rural area they're much more compounded. There's more of an isolation factor and there's many, many reasons for that - for example, transport, accessible transport, being able to move from work, entertainment, church - that can cause a great problem. Then there's the whole issue of access to information. Information is not easy for people in rural areas because they're not mixing, they are isolated, and access to buildings, many in a small community the shops are small, even entertainments, if they want to go to a pub for a drink, maybe they can't get in. Getting to churches in all denominations, maybe there are steps, the aisles are too narrow and there's also very much a stigma that they're very obvious and people will tend to look at them, and loneliness.
You mentioned loneliness. How crippling a factor is loneliness?
It's very much a factor because, and especially for a person who has been recently disabled, they don't know who to go to, they may not have had much contact with their GP. OK, they see a social worker, but as you know in the Health Service all these people are under pressure, there's the cost factor and there's all sorts of things like allowances for motability. You know if somebody wants to get a car, they might not know about that, they might not know about their benefits, and they might be embarrassed to ask so therefore you just sit and do nothing about it until maybe a neighbour鈥t just can take a long time. There are benefits there but sometimes it's so difficult to access them and, that people just sit in their little corners.
