Not short of something to say

Contact details

As well as being a freelance writer I am also a qualified counsellor and I work for a low cost counselling service in Exeter and for the NHS Gender Clinic also in Exeter.

Simultaneously, I work as a Disability Member of the First Tier Tribunal, Social Entitlement Chamber sitting on disability benefit tribunals on an ad hoc basis.

As a writer I specialise in writing about disability and health.

My articles have been published in the Guardian, Times, OUCH! [BBC disability website], Disability Now, Broadcast, Lifestyle [Motability magazine], The Practising Midwife, 'Junior, Pregnancy & Baby', Writers' News, Able, Getting There [Transport for London magazine], Junior, Community Care, DPPi [Disability, Pregnancy & Parenthood International]. I have also had articles commissioned by Daily Mail.

For more information about me and for examples of my writing please see below.

If you would like me to write an article for your publication, about any aspect of disability, please do get in touch:

emma@emmabowler.co.uk

Thursday, August 16, 2012

Ian Brady - Time To Let Go? - Part 2

On the 2 July I wrote a post about Moors Murderer Ian Brady who wants to be allowed to die. I said:

"I can't help wondering whether he should be granted his wish provided he puts the mother of Keith Bennett, one of the children he murdered, out of her misery and tell her where he buried his body. At least that would bring her closure after all these years. Is there any part of Brady that is humane enough to do that for her if he does know/still remember?"

Apparently he has now revealed, to one of his long term visitors, the location of Keith Bennett's body:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-19292164

Does that mean he does have an inkling of humanity?

[I have to say there is a part of me which is very curious about his long term visitor- who are they, why did they start visiting, was the purpose of visiting to extract this very information?]

Friday, August 10, 2012

Guest Tweeter for Accessible Guide today

I was Guest Tweeter for #AccessibleGuide [Motability Operations] today, so have gone from not having a clue about Twitter to guest tweeting in a matter of weeks!

Tweeted from the fabulous and very accessible Haldon Forest [I should really be doing their PR!] which is featured in the Rough Guide to Accessible Britain: accessibleguide.co.uk

Check out the great photos in the links below:

Tweets

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Living with the fear factor - Disability Now article

Hot off the press is my article about the fears disabled parents and parents of disabled children have about 'welfare reform' [see below for link].

There's a photo of David Cameron being passed around on Facebook at the moment, the headline is: 'Don't Panic' then under the photo of him it says 'If we haven't fu*ked you over yet... you are all on my list'.

Unfortunately disabled people seem to be very high up on that list. As one contributor to the article said to me '"it's a very bad time to be disabled right now" and once these welfare reforms AKA benefit cuts properly kick in it's looking likely that things will get a whole lot worse.

See Disability Now:

http://www.disabilitynow.org.uk/living/features/living-with-the-fear-factor

Friday, July 13, 2012

The return of institutionalisation for disabled people?

Baroness Jane Campbell has just alerted me to a very worrying proposal being considered by Worcestershire County Council and if she's worried about it we all should be.

Basically Worcestershire CC want to put a cap on the amount of money they spend on disabled people living independently in the community. The cap would be the amount of money it would cost for that same person to live in a care home.

So, if your care costs more than the cost of a care home you either have to cover the extra costs yourself [at a time when the government is looking to strip away as many benefits as they can], source help from friends/family/neighbours/charities or compromise on the care package you need. Otherwise you move into a care home.

It may come as a surprise to some but there are many disabled people who live independently, quite happily in the community but the level of support they receive could well cost more than a care home and therefore under these proposals they could well end up being shunted into a care home because they have no alternative.

Doesn't this all sound vaguely like doing the opposite of what we've been aiming to do over the past few decades, 'care in the community' and all that?

It just feels like this government is trying to strip away and strip away whatever we have - money, independence, dignity. Are we really going to go back to the whole 'out of sight out of mind' thing?

Is this really happening in 2012?

To read more:

http://wearespartacus.org.uk/past-caring-report/

http://www.worcestershire.gov.uk/cms/pdf/04-MEP-Consultation-EasyRead.pdf

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Ian Brady - time to let go?

The case of Myra Hindley and Ian Brady has lingered in the public domain for decades. Their hideous crimes, murdering five children in the 60s, are hard to forget and impossible to forgive.

Myra Hindley died in jail in 2002 when she was 60.

Brady, now 74, was jailed in 1966 and detained at Ashworth Hospital, a high security psychiatric hospital, since 1985. He has been on successive hunger strikes since 1999 in attempt to kill himself and has been tube fed for the last 12 years as he refuses food. He now wants to be transferred to prison and be allowed to die.

Having just had a seizure it's possible that Brady is 'on his way out' but if he recovers from his current health predicament should he be transferred and be allowed to die? Has he served his time or is there no such thing as serving your time when you have done such appalling crimes? How much is our feeling about this case complicated by the intensity of its media profile and does that affect our judgement of it in a way that it doesn't with cases that have received less attention?

What's always fascinated me is the balance between 'mad', 'bad' and 'dangerous' - where does Brady fall within this balance and does this affect anything? Probably.

I can't help wondering whether he should be granted his wish provided he puts the mother of Keith Bennett, one of the children he murdered, out of her misery and tell her where he buried his body. At least that would bring her closure after all these years. Is there any part of Brady that is humane enough to do that for her if he does know/still remember?

On becoming a writer

After over 10 years as a BBC TV programme maker working on disability, documentary, entertainment and children's programmes I left to have 2 children.

Having decided that the full on lifestyle of programme making and being a parent wasn't for me I decided to utilise the skills, experience and knowledge gleaned from my BBC career to became a freelance writer.

Because of my personal experience of disability I chose to specialise by writing about all aspects of disability – from parenting to sport, clothes shopping to legislation, what’s in the news to specific aspects of particular impairments.

All too often the media portrayal of disabled people and disability issues doesn’t quite hit the mark, the tone is off, the language is wrong; the overall effect leaves the public none the wiser.

As a disabled writer my aim is to be positive, informative and accurate, that doesn’t have to mean dry and boring – a bit of humour can go a long way!