Disabled people are being blocked from travelling abroad by NHS care boards and local councils that refuse to let them use their care funding outside the UK, the Guardian has learned.
Campaigners warn of a “postcode lottery” in England where the right of a disabled person to travel overseas depends on where they live or the whim of local officials – even when there is no extra cost to the taxpayer.
Disabled care users report having to abandon travel plans at the last minute, or go for years without a break, when authorities refuse to pay for their care abroad, even though they have agreed to meet all the travel expenses.
News to me that we do pay for people to go on their hols.
Lucy Robinson, 38, told the Guardian she had been prevented from attending international work events and going on a holiday because health officials in Oxfordshire had refused to allow her to use her care package abroad.
Robinson, who is quadriplegic and has a team of 24-hour personal assistants,
The claim is, apparently, that the NHS should pay for the complete team to go on such trips.
Campaigners have emphasised this is not about “holidays on the NHS”. There is no extra cost for the health service or local authorities, which are already paying for the care. In almost all cases, the care recipient is expected to pay for their assistant’s expenses and arrange their insurance.
Hmm. Dunno to be honest – seems like quite a big ask.
“The claim is, apparently, that the NHS should pay for the complete team to go on such trips.”
No, actually – the ‘Guardian’ makes clear that’s not the case – were she to stay at home, the complete team would be paid for anyway. There is no extra cost to the taxpayer in many of these cases, ad that last paragraph states. This is yet another case of bureaucratic intransigence by the NHS.
The complete team would need tickets, accomodations, and per diem. This is above and beyond the normal rate of pay.
Even if tickets etc are paid for by the holidaymaker, consider the carer. Instead of going to someone’s house to look after them for 8 hours a day 5 days a week, then coming home to family in the evening – you’re being asked to leave the family behind for weeks at time?
Some would love it, some would not be able to do it. So the care providers would have to source agency peeps at higher rates?
Maybe, but I feel sure if that ever happened, the article would have mentioned it
This is the Gruniad. Research is quite low on the priority list.
..and as you’ve already said, the article expressly rules out extra cost to the council
yes, sure, Grauniad fact-checking standards. But assuming the carers are on board, the care recipient covers all additional costs, and there’s insurance that effectively indemnifies the authorities if anything goes pear-shaped, it’s a weird thing to say no to.
Maybe it’s the incongruity of a care recipient requiring welfare money for care, but also having access to cash to bring a whole team on a trip with them. Presumably business expenses, and the scales aren’t comparable, but I can imagine trying to explain the arrangements if the article was in the ‘NHS wasting taxpayer cash’ style.
Which would be paid by her, as the article make clear.
I don’t think the article makes that clear.
But it also ignores that what if the care worker doesn’t want to go do this somewhere else? Beyond covering expenses, is she offering to cover the difference of a higher rate of pay?
And what is the insurance? Who has vetted it for comparibility with the protections they have in the UK? A carer gets hurt in Spain and some cheapo insurance package declines to cover the injuries so the carer is out-of-luck?
The Guardian is not considering that there is way more than ‘I’ll pay for their food and lodging’ here.
Finally – this is an aside – why the heck is the state paying for a full-time carer team for someone who can clearly afford it on their own?
To those who watch Clarksons Farm, bureaucratic intransigence is not just the preserve of the NHS. A pregnant cow on his farm was suspected of TB. The autopsy shows it did not have TB. So, one cow and an unborn calf killed. But, they cannot state the farm is clear of TB (there were no other suspected cases) until the next inspection – in 60 days…..
Everything in this country has been designed by bureaucrats so as to deliberately fuck it up.
Ordinarily any care abroad would be sourced abroad, according to the needs of the one receiving the care.
At the going rates/Bureaucracy in that country. Usually at a premium, because you generally have to skip local waiting lists to arrange matters.
Or you have to hire private caretakers.
Insurance may or may not cover (part of) those costs. In the case of private care, almost certainly not.
Also don’t forget that the Team she has are several persons, each doing a number of tasks daily/weekly according to their specialism(s), and are doing so for several other people as well in a Pool.
You just can’t take carers out of a pool willy-nilly to entertain the whims of one of the recipients of that care, because then you suddenly have to find other certified caretakers for a number of other people as well.
As a long-time recipient of that care, miss Entitlement should be full well aware of all this, as scheduling her care and the fritzes in that has been an integral part of her life.
Doubly so as the chairman of yet another BooHoo Issue Club, which should have made her very much aware of the sheer logistic headache she and cases like her actually are for care organisations, if she was actually serious about it.
But she wants to have her Cake and eat it… At the cost of the NHS….
where the right of a disabled person to travel overseas
Where did that right come from? Pretty soon there will be more human rights than there are people to use them.
This is one of the key reasons we can’t have a written constitution at this point
Shouldn’t have…
Can’t have is optimistic given the crazies currently at the wheel
They certainly seem to be engaged in scorched earth, and baking all of this concocted human rights shit into a written constitution that is extremely difficult to change would make an excellent parting shot.
I suppose the thing that annoys me is that while neither of us is anywhere near the quadriplegia level of disablement, my father in law and I both have health conditions that make international travel problematic. The last time he, my missus, and I went overseas his travel insurance was twice ours combined. Mine was only reasonably cheap because some problems got excluded, as in if that flares up you’re on your own.
So we have collectively decided, for the sake of Mrs Ltw’s blood pressure if nothing else, that there’s lots of Australia we haven’t seen yet if we really want a holiday.
But I certainly don’t whine about missing international work events. Life is what it is, and there’s Teams now.
There’s a similar restriction on drugs. If you stay home then daily drugs, e.g. blood pressure, are supplied via GP prescriptions, but you can’t get a supply to cover a longish holiday abroad, even though the cost to the NHS would be the same.
Normally by carefully scheduling the repeat requests it’s possible to build up a little stock for a month or so but that’s becoming more difficult with automation of the process.
TG, that’s what I did with my diabetes meds when I went to Israel for a holiday. I was worried that I’d get caught up in a ‘security incident’ and not be able to access my meds so I asked for a double helping of meds so that I could put one set in one place and another set in another place. If I was then prevented by a security incident caused by an outbreak of 7th century bearded savagery from getting to where I was staying I could still access the second set of meds.
I take alopurinol, and i’ve put together a four month stash (just in case of WW3 etc.) by missing one day a week. My mate, (on top of a lot of other things) uses morphine patches. A couple of months ago he ran out, and they didn’t have any at the pharmacy.
He spent a very interesting few days til the patches turned up……..
Allopurinol – I did a bit of experimenting with the dose, and found half a tablet less a day works (for me, 1.5 a day rather than 2). Going lower caused problems, but that didn’t.
I go back to full dose for a month around Christmas, or before anything where I’m likely to be eating stuff I shouldn’t.
That’s let me build up some spares, so I can keep a strip in my laptop bag and another in the glovebox in case I accidentally go away without them.
But of course the experimenting risks getting an attack, until you find the right dose..
You should find you can order a 4-week supply every 3 weeks. That soon builds up a bit of a buffer.
And the automation makes it easier. I use an online pharmacy for my NHS prescriptions and they send through a reminder after 3 weeks. Click the button and it’s on its way to me the next day.
You are entitled to 3 months of NHS prescriptions medicines when travelling abroad.
But some countries treat more than a month’s medication as drug smuggling. When I went to Japan I skipped one day a week to stretch my blood pressure tabs to six weeks.
“some countries treat more than a month’s medication as drug smuggling”
That’s a bit harsh. Even the USA, which is tough about bringing in things legally (and protectionist of their medical profession) allows 90 days.
Thanks for that information it might be useful
That’s interesting. When we go abroad we just ask for an extra month when ordering online, stating we’re going away in our motorhome. They’ve never questioned if we’re going abroad and I wouldn’t be surprised if we had mentioned it.
“or go for years without a break”
So holidays can only be taken outside the UK then?
The way things are going, Britain is probably what we need a break from.
You have the “right” to go on holiday provided it doesn’t incur any externalities. Extra care cost for the NHS is an externality.
So wanting to go on hols means you have to sort that out, not me.
I daresay the NHS, being a Big State Organisation, is quite unaccomodating in ways you could sort out covering that extra cost.
And next week you’ll discover the NHS isn’t unaccommodating & has been exactly this for a while. Would anything be surprising?.
You do have to wonder how this is dealt with in countries with normal SHI healthcare systems. Say a disabled Dutch woman fancies taking herself and her carers on a cycling holiday in the Malverns, does the Dutch system say good luck but that’s not covered by your insurance so pay your own way, or good luck, you’re still covered, go ahead and cider yourself out for a week.
She believes she has a “right’ to it. I refer you to a previous conversation where my views have received some criticism.
You seem to have forgotten the reference:
https://www.timworstall.com/2026/08/fuck-off-you-vile-ghastly-shits/#comment-1472820
Seems draconian. Does NHS have agents at airports looking for disabled people?
Gamecock presumes you can go to an airport, buy a ticked, and get on a plane and go.