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IN TOUCH – Access to Work Backlog, Artist Clarke Reynold

TX:Ìý 31.01.2023Ìý 2040-2100

PRESENTER:Ìý ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý PETER WHITE

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PRODUCER:Ìý ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý BETH HEMMINGS

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White

Good evening.Ìý Tonight, the exhibition where you’ll be invited not to look but to touch.Ìý That’ll make a change.

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Clip

My art is a visual, it’s very 1960s pop art, so I want people to come and experience the colour and they can touch.Ìý And the idea is there is a key for them to unlock the braille, so they’re not just seeing a dot, they’re learning braille as they go.

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White

We’ll be finding out more about joining the dots and the man who’s joined them later in the programme.

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But first, Access to Work is sometimes described as one of the government’s best kept secrets.Ìý The scheme’s aim is to provide disabled people with the equipment to transport human assistance that they might need to get and keep a job on equal terms.Ìý But what is no longer a secret is that the wait to gain eligibility for the service can be so long that the job can be lost or have gone to someone else.

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In answer to a parliamentary question the RNIB has discovered that the waiting list to receive Access to Work already at over 15,000 in 2021 is now standing at over 25,000.Ìý And from the Department for Work and Pensions own figures, around 10% of those using the service are visually impaired.

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Well, Sam Leftwich and Melinda Hanvey are among those who are either struggling to get on to the service or are finding it difficult to use.

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Melinda, if I can come to you first.Ìý You were already in a job when you realised you needed the service, just explain your circumstances and what your problems have been.

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Hanvey

So, I’ve been working a number of years.Ìý I first used Access to Work approximately four years ago when I lost some of my sight and it was absolutely a great service, I couldn’t fault it at all.Ìý I lost a lot more sight at the end of last year and so had to reach out to Access to Work again because I knew that I would need an update with my equipment and unfortunately, although I applied in September, I only heard literally two or three weeks ago, so it’s been quite a wait and it’s been quite stressful because I’ve been unable to work during that time.Ìý My sight has deteriorated that much that I’m now registered severely sight impaired.Ìý I’m unable to do the job.Ìý I know I need sort of updated software and further help as well getting to work, around the office, such like.Ìý So, at the moment, I’m not working and although my work have been very good, let’s just say they’re probably getting a little bit impatient because there’s nobody to do my job and they’re having to find other people to do it and four months is a long time to keep someone’s job on hold.Ìý

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My future is so uncertain, at the moment, because I don’t know if the equipment I’m going to be given will be suitable for my current job.Ìý I’m worried about losing my job.Ìý I’ve still sort of three years to work until I retire.Ìý So, it’s fear of the unknown really and I just don’t know what’s going to happen to me, truthfully.Ìý I’ve asked to see if they could redeploy me but again, I don’t know if they can but I just feel that this process could have been speeded up a long, long time ago without causing so much hassle and worry really.

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White

Sam, if I can come to you.Ìý I think your problem wasn’t so much in being accepted as actually getting the services that it’s supposed to offer.Ìý So, just explain what your story is.

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Leftwich

So, I applied for it and within, I think, a month I had a date for my assessment which actually took place the day before I started work, so I’m very aware that that’s not that long a wait.Ìý However, for me, I think, I maybe put a bit of a jinx on myself by saying that – oh, everything seemed to be going really quite smoothly – because then I then had a very long wait.Ìý So, my report, I don’t think, was submitted for over 12 weeks and obviously in that time I had started my job and I was trying to impress my new employer, I wanted to show that I was keen and I was working but it did get to the stage where I was starting to struggle without having support in place.Ìý

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White

So, what were the problems you were having?

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Leftwich

The kind of assistive tech on my laptop, I hadn’t had that installed at the very beginning and even when I did have it, I hadn’t used it before so I was sort of getting by using it with very little knowledge.Ìý It actually turned out that I needed a slightly different type of assistive software – so I needed the voiceover as well as the magnification.Ìý So, for a long time I was having quite bad eye pain and eyestrain.

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White

And I also gather, Sam, it’s not only you, your support worker has had a problem as well.

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Leftwich

Yeah, so, my support worker’s been in place since the middle of November and they still currently have not been paid for any of the support that they’ve provided for me.Ìý We had issues with Access to Work not sending over the initial claim forms, which, apparently, should have been sent when my application had first been approved.

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White

She’s not walked away then?

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Leftwich

No, I do feel very lucky that they know me and they clearly trust me and that I will, yeah, keep chasing but it just adds extra stress and extra pressure on top of everyday work.

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White

And I gather another part of the problem was that you were finding it difficult to communicate with the person who was supposed to advise you if there were problems and tell you how the application was going?

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Leftwich

Yes.Ìý So, I hadn’t had any kind of contact from them.Ìý I had an initial phone call and yeah, I didn’t even catch their name.Ìý And I asked for the correspondence to be in email and that never happened, they only ever called me, I could never call them and yeah, when I asked for things to be emailed it was never done.Ìý So, it became quite a challenge and I was having to wait for them to contact me before I could then go to them with any issues or concerns that I was having.

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White

Sam, thank you very much indeed.Ìý Joining us and listening to that is David Newbold, who’s Director of Sight Loss Advice at the RNIB.Ìý David, how typical are those kinds of stories and do you have others?

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Newbold

Every single day we’re hearing cases of people having their job offers withdrawn because employers can’t wait four, five or six months after they’ve offered somebody a job for somebody to start or somebody who had a six months role.Ìý And their award from Access to Work came through just after they finished their six months when they’d really struggled.Ìý I mean the list goes on and it’s quite horrifying that this is just seeming to go from bad to worse.Ìý As you said, it’s gone from 15,000 people waiting in December 2021 to 25,000 people still waiting and six months now, which is just utterly unacceptable.

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White

Now this is not a new problem and the Department for Work and Pensions has acknowledged that there’s been a significant increase in applications over the past year.Ìý I mean what conversations have you had with the Department for Work and Pensions about trying to solve these problems?

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Newbold

It’s really hard to pin down with the DWP exactly what is going wrong.Ìý For several months, we’ve been trying to engage with different ministers responsible for Access to Work and, of course, we’re on the fourth minister in 14 months, that does not help.Ìý There are really simple things that could be done now.Ìý Thousands of people are called in for a review every year of their Access to Work support package, surely while there’s a delay of six months that that could be just put on hold, you could have a 12 month grace period until the backlog has caught up.Ìý But we’re not getting the chance to share these because the ministers gone so quickly.Ìý Yes, so it’s really difficult to pin down.

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White

Well, it’s good that you should mention that because we did invite the relatively new minister for disabled people, Tom Pursglove, to come on to the programme.Ìý We were told he wasn’t available for interview.Ìý But the DWP have told us that they have recruited additional staff to meet customer demand, which they say has already improved processing times.Ìý Have you not been hearing about the benefits of this?

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Newbold

We’re definitely not hearing or feeling that this is getting under control.Ìý We’ve tried meeting after meeting with the DWP, with ministers, and again yes, additional resource is so, so welcome but we haven’t started to see a really positive impact yet.

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White

The DWP have also told us that a new digital claims process is being tested to help customers better track progress of their claims going forward, perhaps going back to the problems Sam had in finding out what on earth was going on.Ìý Is that not going to help?

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Newbold

It will help when it eventually comes online but at the moment we’re still in paper world, paper forms, which is utterly unaccessible [sic].Ìý And there isn’t a timescale for when this new all singing all dancing digital solution’s going to be rolled out.Ìý There’s hopes that it will be – that parts of it will be in – within the next year or so but, again, there isn’t a fixed date, it won’t cover everything, it won’t cover submitting every receipt etc., there’s still going to be some manual paperwork involved, which again is just not accessible to so, so many people.Ìý So, I think, long term, that is actually – it’s a really good news story long term but right here, right now, for the next year, 18 months, that’s when radical action’s needed.

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White

David Newbold, thank you very much indeed and also, our thanks to Melinda Hanvey and Sam Leftwich.Ìý And also, we will continue to try to get our interview with the minister for disabled people.

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And as your emails show, the growth of tech solutions to what used to be face-to-face contacts is often not good news for visually impaired people.Ìý This from retired engineer Ray Smith, now, himself, visually impaired.

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Smith

The Ask my GP app is now the main route for patient communications with many GP practices.Ìý It’s far from easy to use by those with full sight but a total disaster for people like me with certified impaired vision.Ìý The app has small boxes on a green background which cannot be machine read by any app or accessibility features.Ìý I’ve been able to find it on several different platforms, including iPad and Google Chrome.Ìý Many other websites are equally bad but something of a potentially critical nature should not be.

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White

This disappearance of the face-to-face meetings, not only with our GPs but with banks and other organisations is something we’re going to be looking at in more detail in a few weeks’ time.

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Now as blind people, we’re all used to the irritating directive at museums and exhibitions – Do not touch – so you’ll be pleased to know that at the Quantus Gallery in London there’s an exhibition where the artist is saying if you don’t touch this you’re going to be totally missing the point.Ìý The exhibition is called The Power of Touch and the artist is Clarke Reynolds and he joins me.Ìý

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Clarke, you’ve led an eventful life and we’ll get to some of that as well but first, the exhibition.Ìý If people go along, what will they feel?

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Reynolds

Well, I work in braille, you might call me a braille typographer.Ìý I think braille is beautiful and the misconception of braille is small dots.Ìý So, what I do is I blow that dot up, give it a distinctive pattern and then also give it colour.Ìý So, what you’re feeling is my story in dots.

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White

So, presumably, you don’t have to know braille to make sense of this?

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Reynolds

No, not at all, it’s – the idea – we live in a world made for visual people and my art is a visual, it’s very 1960s pop art, so I want people to come and experience the colour, there’s hundreds of colours and they can touch.Ìý And the idea is there is a key for them to unlock the braille, so, they’re not just seeing a dot, they’re learning braille as they go.

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White

So, what misconceptions do you think people have got about braille?Ìý I take it we’re mainly talking about people who can see here, who never really come across braille at close quarters.

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Reynolds

Yeah, they think it’s about reading that individual dot but it’s not.Ìý Not many blind people can physically read those individual dots.Ìý It’s about the pattern, isn’t it?Ìý I explain to people that negative space is what we’re feeling and that’s what creates the distinctive pattern.Ìý So, by making a dot two centimetres big and closing it up, it becomes a distinctive pattern.Ìý And then the idea is by giving it colour the brain will start to recognise that pattern for what it is.Ìý It’s almost like teaching people how to read for the first time.Ìý You know, you were told A is A because A is A but A is a shape and that’s how I try to explain to people about the misconception of braille.

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White

But you’re not suggesting that anybody is going to learn braille by a quick visit to an exhibition?

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Reynolds

Well, surprisingly that question, you’ll be surprise, a lot of people when they come do start to recognise patterns and they start to learn braille really quickly, especially children.Ìý I mean I go into a lot of schools and I teach braille to sighted children with this colour coded method.Ìý Kids are great at picking up new languages.Ìý And the idea for the adults to come out of it, is to look at it and go – hang on a minute, there’s more to being blind than just complete darkness.Ìý So, when they come to this exhibition, as well, there’s some special glasses that Vision Foundation have lent us that replicate different eye conditions.Ìý So, you can see my art by putting these glasses on through my shoes, how I see and how other visually impaired people see, so that’s really exciting.

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White

So, it’s not only about braille, you’re trying to change people’s whole attitude and misconceptions to blindness and partial sight?

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Reynolds

That’s it.Ìý And also, how we’re perceived in the creative industry.Ìý Unfortunately, having the word blindness or disability in front of your name, in the creative industry, it’s kind of a pity thing, it’s – oh, it’s nice you’ve got hobby.Ìý And I get that a lot.Ìý And I studied art before I lost my sight and I was an artist but because I lost my sight it’s now a hobby.Ìý So, that’s what I’m really pushing forward is like why can’t I be as big as Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin, those big artists, why can’t I?Ìý It’s because society is – feels that what I do it’s a hobby, it’s a pity thing because that’s the only thing I can do because I’m blind.

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White

Clarke, how much of this is a surprise to you?Ìý I mean I’m wondering if, when you started to lose your sight, did you think that was the end of art?

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Reynolds

Never.Ìý I’ve suffered a lot of [indistinct word] and social upheaval in my life but one thing has always remained a constant and that is art.Ìý No matter what’s happened in my life art has always been there.Ìý The lightbulb moment happened when I was given a Perkins typewriter and it was like, this is amazing.Ìý I learnt braille in three weeks because I saw it as a pattern.

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White

Are you making a living at this?

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Reynolds

I am now, yes.Ìý Quantus Gallery has given me the opportunity to come off benefits, to be self-sustained.Ìý They’re going to be representing me.Ìý I want to work.Ìý When I was – my career was a dental model maker before I lost my sight and when I lost my sight, it’s not like the job centre could help me out because of what my background is, it’s like – well, I’m sorry…

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White

It’s a bit specialist, isn’t it?

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Reynolds

Yeah, it is.Ìý But the best thing about it is now I have a platform to become more than what I was when I was just having no money.

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White

Now as you said, you have had a pretty tough time.Ìý I gather that at the time that you were losing your sight you were also being evicted from your rented house weren’t you?

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Reynolds

We was, yeah.Ìý At the time, my daughter she had mobility issues and we didn’t know what was up with her at that time, she was three, four years old and I literally just found out I was going to go blind, had to give up my job and then the landlord just sold the property from underneath us.Ìý And yeah, it was – no again, it’s like it’s tough but I’m never going to give up, I could have given up ages ago, that’s the kind of life that I’ve lived back living in a council flat but I’m fighting for my daughter because she was diagnosed with mild cerebral palsy and hypermobility.Ìý She’s coming up to nine years old now and we’re living in a property that’s unsuitable for her and I, as a blind dad, I’m carrying my daughter down the stairs because she can’t get down the stairs and it’s safer for me to carry her down than for her to walk down and that’s the world I’m living in at the moment but hopefully things will change.

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White

Clarke, it’s clear from just talking to you and listening to you that you’re a very positive person, given everything that’s happened to you.Ìý I mean how do you maintain that because it has been rather one thing on top of another, hasn’t it?

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Reynolds

It has.Ìý I suppose we’ve only got like one life, you know, and growing up in a council flat the majority of my people – my peers, my friends and family – are either in jail, alcoholics or some substance abuse and my brother is no different.Ìý Unfortunately, he never found art and five years ago, in April, he passed away in a street corner at the age of 35 being homeless and alcoholic.Ìý And I wonder to myself, it’s like why did I never go down that path and it’s strange that I just wanted to get out of the rut, I wanted to get out of the position that society had put me in, like I live in a council flat so I’ve just got to be in a dead end job and just live life like that but I wanted more than that.Ìý I’m on this radio now but for me why am I not sitting on Graham Norton’s show, why am I not on Strictly Come Dancing?Ìý I want to be famous.Ìý I feel it’s time for an artist to have a rock and roll status, to change perception of – especially with the power I could do so much and I want to do so much, I want to leave a legacy.

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White

Let’s hope the Strictly organisers are listening.Ìý Clarke Reynolds, I’m sure you’ll get there.Ìý Great to talk to you, thank you very much indeed.

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And the exhibition The Power of Touch is on at the Quantus Gallery in London until Saturday, subject to train strikes.Ìý Don’t forget the instruction Please Touch.

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And that’s it for today.Ìý You can email us intouch@bbc.co.uk, leave us voice messages on 0161 8361338 and there’s more information on our website bbc.co.uk/intouch.Ìý From me, Peter White, producer Beth Hemmings and studio managers Simon Highfield and Amy Brennan, goodbye.

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