Disabled People: Independent Living Fund

Baroness Hollins Excerpts

Monday 31st March 2014 Grand Committee

[Baroness Hollins (CB)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend on introducing this debate and on her advocacy for the right of disabled people to live independently. My own interest derives from my work as a psychiatrist with people with learning disabilities for more than 30 years, and as the mother of two disabled adults.

The Independent Living Fund provides important support for more than 18,000 disabled people. I know that many people with a learning disability, particularly those with profound and multiple learning disabilities, have benefited from the fund. The Government’s view that such a discretionary fund should be subsumed into the mainstream social care budget of the local authority might perhaps be an agreeable one if social care were not being so horribly squeezed already and if people with disabilities were not already being adversely affected by cuts to welfare benefits.

My noble friend referred to the serious delays to progress in the post-Winterbourne View programme that aims to move people who are in institutional or supposedly specialist hospital care back into their home communities. This has been held up. Local authorities seem to have no incentive: it is cheaper for cash-strapped local authorities to admit people to NHS or private specialist hospitals than to provide skilled suitable support for them at home.

In the past three years, an estimated £2.68 billion has been cut from adult social care budgets—a figure cited by the Association of Adult Directors of Social Services. Of course, the result has been a tightening of the eligibility criteria, meaning that many people have already lost much-needed support. The Care Bill, a very welcome piece of legislation, sets a national eligibility threshold that is intended to bring consistency across the country. However, the Government have said that they will set the threshold of care at “substantial”, meaning that many people—I am thinking here of people with learning disabilities—will lose out and find their independence threatened. Such a restriction will undoubtedly leave local authorities struggling to deliver on the new well-being principle set out in the Bill.

Organisations such as Mencap, which assisted with research for my speech today, and others within the Care and Support Alliance have highlighted the impact on those with mild and moderate needs losing care as the threshold rises. A few hours of care a week for someone with a mild learning disability might be the difference between living independently and being alone and lonely at home. It might mean being supported to get out into the community, being involved in leisure activities, being helped to organise money and pay bills, and being less vulnerable to exploitation. Last week I watched a play performed by a theatre company of actors with learning disabilities. The play was called Living Without Fear. The actors illustrated graphically the lives of people with inadequate support living at home, and the kind of disability hate crime and exploitation that some people with inadequate support will face.

Many people rely on relatively cheap and low levels of care. The loss of such care risks isolating them and denying them independence—something, of course, that is central to this debate. The Independent Living Fund supports a number of people with low or moderate needs. It is members of this group who might well be hit twice. The focus of the fund on supporting independence could be lost by being subsumed into a general adult social care budget. One worry I have is that the welcome move toward supported living for people with learning disabilities will be slowed down now with a retreat to a residential warehousing model of care, which we have been working so hard over the past 30 years to turn around.

Like the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, I look forward to the Minister’s response on how the transition will be handled, particularly in light of the increasing financial constraints faced by local authorities. I am interested in the Minister’s comments on how the effects of the abolition of the fund will be evaluated and reported.