Last year, I wrote about the history of the
Independent Living Fund and why we need to defend it. At that point, the Fund was closed to new
applicants and in July last year the government consulted on closing it
entirely and transferring the over 19,000 current ILF grant holders to local
authority funding.
In response to that consultation, the
Minister for Disabled People announced
that “In April 2015 the ILF will
close and from that point local authorities in England, in line with their
statutory responsibilities, will have sole responsibility for meeting the
eligible care and support needs of current ILF users.”
A Judicial Review has been granted of the
government’s consultation process and is due to be heard on March 13th. Disabled People Against the Cuts are
organising a vigil outside the court in London.
Since it was set up in 1988, the ILF has
enabled people with the highest levels of support needs to live in their own
homes and to have choice and control over the support they need to go about
their daily lives. Some people who receive ILF grants talk about what a difference it makes to their lives here.
The ILF is something of an anomaly in that it is a national
system of allocating resources, whereas most other support to disabled people
is delivered via local authorities, and this is a reason given by the
government for abolishing the Fund.
Nonetheless, since 1993 ILF users have had to qualify for a certain
amount of support from their local authority before they can access an ILF
grant so a more accurate representation is of the ILF as a way of providing a
‘top up’ to local authority resources so that those with the highest support
needs can have access to opportunities for an ordinary life.
The overwhelming response to the
consultation from disabled people currently receiving ILF funding was summed up
by the government: “ILF users
tended to believe that local authority assessments of care needs were
excessively budget driven and the ILF applied a more needs based approach.
Users said they feared that the local authority may reduce the care package
they currently receive or would not fund the type of activities that the ILF
does.”
In response, the government stated that
“All disabled people, including those transferring from the ILF, will continue
to be protected by a local authority safety net that guarantees disabled people
get the support they need.”
The nightmare facing
many people who are currently supported to live in their own homes is that they
will, at best, be left with just ‘life and limb’ support (the ‘safety net’ that
the government refers to) or, at worst, be forced into residential care. That this is a realistic fear is evident from
the local authority responses to the consultation.
The Association of
Directors of Adult Social Services and the Local Government Association were in
no doubt that most people would receive less support than they currently get:
“As ILF recipientstransfer into the LA system in 2015, and are subsequently reviewed against the FACS criteria, the value of the personal budget calculated through the Resource Allocation System (RAS) will generally be at a lower level than the initial ILF/LA budget”
The government’s own
Impact Assessment acknowledged that “some users may not receive the same level
of support or be able to use their funding in the same way as they currently do”, while the National Association of Financial Assessment Officers (the people who
carry out the means-test to determine whether disabled and older people should
be charged for their care) told the government “some councils may determine that residential care would be a less expensive option than a high cost homecare package. “
There is a long
history of local authorities operating informal ‘caps’ (linked to the cost of
residential care) on how much they will pay to support someone living in their
own home. This has primarily affected
older people and there are fears that – with ever-tightening budgets – such a
practice will also now increasingly be applied to people under the age of
65. Local authorities are always very
careful in the language they use to describe such policies as they would be
acting unlawfully if they ‘fettered their discretion’ by applying a blanket
limit on the amount of money to be spent on supporting people to live in their
own home. Thus we see the example of
Worcestershire County Council consulting on a ‘Maximum Expenditure Policy’ while
insisting that this does not mean they will impose a ‘cap’ on expenditure. George Orwell would have loved such an
example of ‘doublethink’ (i.e. simultaneously accepting
two mutually contradictory beliefs as correct).
The majority of people
who receive funding from both the ILF and their local authority receive support
costed at over £500 per week.
These are people with the highest levels
of support needs who, in previous generations, would have been consigned to
institutions. The ILF has been
particularly effective at enabling people with ‘complex needs’ (a combination
of physical and learning disabilities) to live in the community, supported by
their families.
Much of recent public
debate about social care has been focused on older people but disabled people
of working age in fact account for an increasing proportion of the total
expenditure on social care. Although
they account for only a third of total service users, “there is evidence that there is a growing number of LAs where .....expenditure for people aged under 65 is approaching the levels of expenditurefor people aged over 65”.
Currently, social care
for disabled people of working age is under-funded and many people do not have
their basic needs met. Local authorities will experience a 28%
cut in their overall budgets by 2015.
Are we now going to see a reversal of the trend – experienced over the
last 50 years – of a move away from institutional care for people with the most
significant impairments?
If local authorities cannot
envisage being able to continue funding the levels of support needed by current
recipients of ILF grants, what chance is there for people with high support
needs in the future to receive help to enable them to live ‘ordinary’ lives in
their communities?
(1) Blackmore, T. 2013. Local Authority Social Care Expenditure: A discussion paper, Disability Cornwall and Isles of Scilly.