Kerry Potter
By Kerry Potter, our Group Social Impact and Vulnerability Manager
We’re supporting International Day of Persons with Disabilities, an important annual date which this year falls on 3 December.
The global initiative aims to highlight the continuing challenges and barriers that people with disabilities face, as well as promote inclusive and accessible societies.
Every year, we collaborate with dozens of national and regional organisations to support people in our priority groups to stay safe, warm and well as home.
Therefore, we know that life costs more for disabled people.
The latest findings show that disabled households need an extra £1,095 each month on average. This is just to have the same standard of living as non-disabled households.
As inflation is expected to rise over the next five years, the extra cost of disability is estimated to reach £1,224 per month by the 2029-30 financial year.
With the extra costs of heating, equipment and therapies, disabled people are more likely to face financial vulnerability, increased energy costs and fuel poverty.
There’s also around 12 million people in the UK who are deaf or have hearing loss, while there are around 87,000 people who use British Sign Language (BSL) to communicate.
Living with hearing loss brings a unique set of challenges, many of which have been intensified by the cost-of-living crisis.
Fewer working age adults with hearing loss are in employment compared to the general population.
Living with a disability can increase financial pressures on households, often due to additional costs and barriers in society.
Many disabled people face challenges accessing information and support, which are essential for managing these issues.
That’s why we partner with deafPLUS and Scope to address these challenges.
Disability Energy Support (DES) with water advice
We’ve been partnering with disability equality charity Scope since 2020 to deliver tailored and targeted support through our Disability Energy Support (DES) with water advice service, extending the service two years later by bringing in Britain’s other gas networks.
In February 2024, the partnership extended its commitment to the service until March 2026 and broadened the support services to include additional help for disabled people struggling to maintain a safe and warm home.
Our expanded programme opened up access to Scope’s independent energy advice and advocacy service to disabled people across England, Scotland and Wales. It also helped us meet the increased demand for this service as a result of the pandemic and cost-of-living crisis.
In creating an accessible route to clear information and support on energy issues, we’re able to help disabled people save money. To date, we’ve saved disabled households an average of £570.52 by reviewing benefit and grant entitlements.
Find out more about this service and how we may be able to work with you here.
energyPLUS
A lack of access to BSL interpreters when engaging with healthcare or council services means Deaf people experience barriers in accessing essential support services.
deafPLUS is one of the few organisations in England offering financial capability and energy advice in BSL. Together, we aim to tackle fuel poverty in the Deaf community by providing inclusive access to energy support services for households in Scotland and the south of England. The project is called energyPLUS.
We’re providing Deaf households with personalised energy safeguarding advice through video calls with deafPLUS’s AdviceLine and offering in-person sessions at seven locations across the south of England. For more complex cases, deafPLUS advisers refer households to our Safe & Warm partnership network for help with debt advice and home energy assessments. All delivery is in BSL.
A multi-channel awareness campaign to promote the Priority Services Register and energy safeguarding services has also been developed to reach deafPLUS service users, colleagues and volunteers. This includes distributing Energy Access Toolkits at community hubs and events to reach households with practical information on how to mitigate fuel poverty for Deaf households who haven’t engaged directly with the energyPLUS service.
Our Safe & Warm community partner National Energy Action is providing deafPLUS employees with Fuel Debt Advice in the Community (City and Guilds Level 2 Award) training. Following this training, the team will upskill additional deafPLUS colleagues to help them identify households in energy crisis, the symptoms of fuel poverty and where to signpost households for onward support.
Find out more about our partnership here.