By Liz Sayce, Chief Executive, RADAR
The disability movement seems, at first glance, to have won the argument on independent living. Everyone (or almost everyone) – Government, social services organisations, disabled people – agrees that services to support disabled people should be based on choice, independence and control. The only problem is the gulf between rhetoric and real experience.
Less and less people are receiving ANY social services support – as councils increasingly restrict eligibility criteria so only people with critical (or perhaps substantial) need get through the hoop. This means no early intervention to support people to sustain the lives they want; and sometimes people living in direly unsupported situations.
The services on offer are still largely based on fitting people in to residential establishments, day centres and the like. The type of services based on the movement’s principles of control – direct payments, individualised budgets – are growing at a snail’s pace. In 2005-6 267,000 people used residential care, 242,000 used day centres. When it comes to direct payments the figure drops to 22,000 (they make up 1% of social services budgets); and the number of people with fully individualised budgets can be counted in the hundreds.
In a climate of major financial constraint there is a real risk of combining downsizing with the rhetoric of independent living – using it as a cloak for abandonment, as happened with ‘community care’. This was another phrase originally coined by activists but then adopted by fiscal conservatives, resulting in restricted services in the name of liberty.
We can stop the same happening with independent living.
The Our Lives Our Choices campaign and Lord Ashley’s Independent Living Bill have set forth a profoundly important agenda. As society ages, resolving the social services crisis will become ever more pressing and baby boomers may be increasingly inclined to join the call for action. As Government pursues its 80% employment target, carers prevented from working because they are filling the gap left by declining social services will have reasons to join the campaign. So will business. After all, when a disabled person or their partner does not dare move house for a new job because the long fought-for care package is put in jeopardy by moving, business suffers.
The first priority for independent living campaigners is to enable the movement for change to grow in strength and range of players. The second is to engage vigorously with the Government’s 5-year Independent Living strategy, expected at the turn of the year. We in the disability sector are waiting for commitment to action that will bring serious outcomes. No one confidently expects fully legislated rights to independent living. But soft levers to encourage local councils to change will not satisfy. Government needs to take national, strategic action on some of the big issues – like making social care packages portable and ensuring the promised 3 million new homes in Britain factor in disabled people’s requirements from the outset. At the same time they need to demonstrate that that the levers and resources they introduce will be effective in stimulating local change. If that happens, then local disabled people and allies can support councils in transforming services on the ground – through the new Links (user involvement networks), through engagement in the Disability Equality Duty and by getting directly involved in service commissioning and user-led development.
RADAR will play its part – as part of the Our Lives Our Choices Campaign (with the National Centre for Independent Living and others); through our work with the All Party Disability Group, who can help hold Government to account; and by briefing local RADAR members so they can influence local and national decision-making and share experiences. RADAR’s briefing for the 2007-8 Parliamentary session – Doing Policy Differently – lays out the benefits of building disability equality into all the major new policies coming up (housing, skills, constitutional reform), all of which would support independent living. (www.radar.org.uk)
The disability community is watching – and looking for hard measures of progress. Until then, we have to temper our success at convincing everyone of the merits of independent living with some scepticism - about what the consensus on independent living really adds up to.