Disability and Social Care

The case that I wrote about yesterday may have a massive impact on adult social care in this country. The outcome of the appeal may make it easier for councils to slash social care services. But, as David Batty points out in The Guardian today, councils in England are already slashing adult social care services due to a lack of funding resulting from the Government's cuts.

The article says that:

The number of councils in England cutting back on free adult social care has increased by 13% this year, according to the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (Adass).

It found that 19 local authorities had raised the eligibility bar for free adult social care.

Six councils, including the largest, Birmingham, are limiting free care to people in "critical" need, which includes those with life-threatening conditions. Another 116 of 148 councils surveyed only fund people with substantial needs.

Only 22 local authorities now fund people with moderate needs, such as those too frail or ill to eat a meal or take a bath without assistance. Previously, 36 councils gave this assistance.

This is not just a problem for England either, as the knock-on effects of cuts affect services in the devolved nations. Wales and Scotland have some leeway when deciding on their funding priorities, but the squeeze on local authorities in these nations is also causing problems when it comes to social care. This is a problem for Britain as a whole.

The use of the word "free" in the article is slightly misleading, as councils normally charge people some limited amounts for care services, except for those claiming certain income-related benefits (NB: as @Sociable points out, the fairer charging scheme in England means that people on benefits often pay more for their care - as explaiined here). Thus social care services a more accurately described as highly-subsidised than free. What is happening is that councils all over Britain have, or are actively considering, raising their eligibility criteria.

As David Batty points out, "Only 22 local authorities now fund people with moderate needs". When councils restrict care to those with "critical" needs only, they will only provide services to those who would face life-threatening risk without appropriate care, such as being unable to feed or drink by yourself, to maintain a basic level of hygiene or to get in and out of bed safely.

Restricting services to those with "substantial" needs or above is similar to critical-only, but substitutes "significant risk" for "life-threatening risk". Either way, you are restricting social care to a small set of people.

The ironic thing about restricting to critical-only is that you cut care to those with substantial need, i.e. those at significant risk of falling, of being unable to feed or clean themselves, and to carry out domestic routines. Unable to access care services these people will often hurt themselves, fall over, become ill due to hygiene issues or inability to manage their conditions alone.

When this happens, they end up in a hospital bed which costs the NHS more per night than community care for an entire week costs the council. And once they get out of hospital following their period of ill-health, they will often be reassessed as having critical needs which they would not have had had the council not made them ineligible.

Restricting social care to substantial need or above is still not easily defensible. People with critical needs will get their care, as will those with substantial need, but those who face moderate risk in the areas outlined above will miss out. When made ineligible for social care services, they face the same type of problems which may cost more in the long-run. Even if we put aside the moral issues of restricting social care, there is a very strong argument that these policies are fiscally inefficient and hugely wasteful.

Of course, the other issue about restricting social care to those who meet very high eligibility criteria is that the people who lose out will face further obstacles. First of all, people with less substantial care needs are more likely to be in work and paying taxes. Removing their care will often mean that these people are forced into unemployment because they lack the support to do their work. This, in turn, may well leave these people stranded in a spiral of poverty, and the welfare dependency which this Government is fond of complaining about.

More immediately, people who are ineligible for social care services are often completely dependent on their DLA to fund the little care they can afford. DLA reform and the advent of the Personal Independence Payment (PIP) means that the DLA caseload will be cut by 20%, and it is those with less severe needs who will lose out. People who have moderate care needs will then not qualify for social care, and will not get DLA to help them buy it elsewhere.

When these people can no longer afford any care, what happens?

Life Can Change In An Instant:Blog and Video

This week I was visited by Robin On The Road - the awareness raising tour from the people behind The Robin Hood Tax. They've posted my blog here and posted a video here.

Cross-posted from The Robin Hood Tax blog

by Kaliya Franklin

Any of our lives can change in an instant; whether it be the sudden shock of finding a lump in your breast or uniformed policemen arriving at 3am to break the news your teenage son is fighting for his life after being hit by a drunk driver. More often it’s the gradual pain of witnessing our elderly parents becoming increasingly frail and dependant, the heartbreaking effects of disease on our spouse and the new awareness of a world which will never be the same again. A world so eloquently described by one parent of a profoundly disabled child.

“The very painful thing about disability – whether your own or your loved one’s – is the feeling that the situation is out of your control. When the system that surrounds you is very top-down, bureaucratic, inhuman, that can only increase your feelings of helplessness … but I do believe there are moments of despair, helplessness and frustration that could be directly alleviated by the work of government.”

As a disabled person I have never before felt such despair and fear for all our futures. Every day I hear of day centres closing, desperately unwell people being denied disability benefits, parents fundraising for specialist wheelchairs the NHS can’t afford to provide their children with, carers at such breaking point they feel their only option is to put their loved one into state residential care, and most chilling of all, people planning exit strategies to end their lives for when the time they most fear comes and their benefit is denied.

We have all paid our taxes and national insurance for ourselves and our loved ones in the expectation the financial support and protection they provide will be there for us in our hour of need. The savage cuts to disability benefits and services mean this will no longer be the case, but unlike that passionate parent we have no other resources we can fall upon as his government take away our safety net and hurl us off the cliff into despair.

The Human Right To Dignity

This week was meant to be a quiet one, with Parliament in recess; no pressing issues on the news agenda; no MPs to brief. Meant to be. It hasn’t quite worked out this way, and we’ve all been busy preparing the continued campaign. This has meant that I haven’t had a chance to write about an interesting court case that’s been on my mind for the last couple of weeks.

Last week the Supreme Court heard an appeal case with huge implications for disabled people who receive packages of support. The court heard the appeal of Elaine McDonald, whose care package was cut by Kensington and Chelsea council even though it had assessed her as needing that support. McDonald became disabled following a stroke in 1999 and later broke a hip in a night-time fall. She had been provided with a weekly package of 22.5 hours of daytime support and another 10 hours of care seven nights a week.

A needs assessment by the council found night-time care was essential to provide supervision to prevent her falling while using the commode at night, due to a bladder condition. But in 2008 the council said it planned to cut her care package, and said she could be given incontinence pads instead of an overnight care worker, even though she is not incontinent. In November, the Court of Appeal ruled that the council had not breached care laws, McDonald’s human rights or the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) by cutting her support.

The Supreme Court confirmed three weeks ago that it had granted her leave to appeal. McDonald’s case is being funded by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which said in November that it feared other councils would use the judgment to “reduce community care and services for disabled people”. The Supreme Court’s decision will not be handed down for a few weeks yet, but it will be massively important for anyone who gets a care package from their local council.

This is because the Court of Appeal had found that a council could simply review a service-user’s care needs and then reduce their support, without needing to conduct a new assessment. The precedent set by this case would affect all service users. At the moment, if the council want to cut a person’s care package, they must show that their needs have changed and that they are thus entitled to fewer hours.

As service users will know, councils have been anxious to cut costs in recent years. This has led to a great deal of pressure to cut care packages, and the near-impossibility of new care packages being offered, but the need to re-assess has slowed the austerity zeal. This is because, regardless of whether they wish to cut, councils must show that the service user’s needs have lessened prior to cutting, and a council cannot be considered to have conducted a lawful assessment simply by reviewing a disabled person’s care package.

If the Supreme Court were to uphold the Court of Appeal’s decision, it would give councils free reign over decisions to cut care packages. It would also mean that it would be more difficult to argue that the refusal to provide care was a breach of her human rights to dignity and to a private and family life.

You might think that forcing a disabled person to, effectively, wet themselves at night when they are not incontinent is humiliating and degrading. But when councils are hunting for possible cuts, it may not be illegal for councils to cut care packages and force just that outcome.

Documentary about WCA & mental health claimants

We have been contacted by a journalist who is making a documentary about Employment Support Allowance and particularly the flawed Work Capability Assessment in relation to people claiming for mental health reasons.

They are hoping to find people who've either already had their letter to tell them their WCA date or from mental health claimants who are frightened of the assessment. If you would be willing to talk to them please email me on benefitscroungingscum@hotmail.co.uk and I'll put you in contact.

Last Day For Submissions To ESA Enquiry

Today is the last day for submitting your evidence/experiences to the ESA enquiry.


-If you have experience of an ATOS Work Capability Assessment
-If you are currently on IB but will soon be assessed for ESA
-If you have experience of the Work Capability Group
-If you are concerned about Time Limiting or any other aspect of the changes, then


Please take a few moments to read the issues outlined in the enquiry below and if you feel one or more have affected you, I urge you to write a short statement. It might be a description of how unsuitable your assessment was, your experiences of ATOS, or how time limiting the benefit could affect your partner's ability to keep working. If you have been through the worry and fear of a tribunal, we need to explain how this fails too, or how hard it is to always be fighting.

Obviously, you can respond to all of the points if you feel you have personal experience to share. Contact details for sending in submissions can be found by clicking on "How to submit Written Evidence" at the bottom of the DWP quote.

However, I have set up a new email address, suey2yblog@hotmail.co.uk to enable anyone who wishes to, to write their feelings and thoughts and contributions without having to make their personal details available on my blog. It is vital that each submission is accompanied by a name address and telephone number to ensure that as many submissions can be made as possible.

You don't need to be a writer or a campaigner - far from it. It doesn't matter what you write or how. No submissions will be censored or altered. I will simply collect them together until the submission date. If you've never been actively involved before, I urge you to think about joining in. This is the best chance we, the public, have to be heard and hopefully, to change the most damaging aspects of ESA.

"Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) replaced incapacity benefits for people making new claims from October 2008. To be eligible for ESA, a person must usually undergo a Work Capability Assessment (WCA).

The introduction of ESA in 2008 was initially limited to new claimants. Existing incapacity benefit claimants are now being reassessed under the Work Capability Assessment. The process will last until 2014 with around 1.5 million people being reassessed.

Reassessment commenced on 11 October 2010 with a trial in Aberdeen and Burnley.  At the end of February, Jobcentre Plus began a limited introductory phase, and will move to full national reassessment of incapacity benefit claimants from April 2011.

In particular, the Inquiry will focus on the following issues:

• The Department’s communications to customers going through the assessment and whether the information, guidance and advice provided by the Department and Jobcentre Plus is effective in supporting customers through the process.
• The Work Capability Assessment including: the assessment criteria; the service provided by Atos staff; the suitability of assessment centres; and customers’ overall experience of the process.
• The decision-making process and how it could be improved to ensure that customers are confident that the outcome of their assessment is a fair and transparent reflection of their capacity for work. 
• The appeals process, including the time taken for the appeals process to be completed; and whether customers who decide to appeal the outcome of their assessment have all the necessary guidance, information and advice to support them through the process.
• The outcome of the migration process and the different paths taken by the various client groups: those moved to Jobseeker’s Allowance, including the support provided to find work and theimpact of the labour market on employment prospects; those found fit for work who may be entitled to no further benefits; those placed in the Work Related Activity Group of the ESA, including the likely impact of the Department’s decision to time-limit contribution-based ESA to a year; and those placed in the Support Group.
• The time-scale for the national roll-out for the migration process, including the Department’s capacity to introduce changes identified as necessary in the Aberdeen and Burnley trials.

Short submissions (no more than 3,000 words) are invited from interested organisations and individuals.

The deadline for submissions is 14 April 2011."

How to submit written evidence

That last line is the link that gives details on how the submission should be presented. (just click on it) If you can follow the suggestions, please do, but if they daunt you, don't be put off, just send your story with name, address and telephone number to suey2yblog@hotmail.co.uk and I will attempt to put as many as I can in the format the inquiry requests. (always asking for your approval before submission.)

Most of all though, know that this is great news. It is an enormous achievement that this blog and hundreds of other blogs and campaign groups and charities have highlighted the faults of ESA so effectively that we now have a chance to make our views heard officially.

Please pass this on to anyone you know who might want to participate, and again, share as widely as possible to make sure that as many people are included in this process as possible. 


Once again, the email for submitting via this blog is suey2yblog@hotmail.co.uk

Fitness was my life #TBofBTT

Before i got MS I was in training to teach aerobics. This was never in my future in my head - I was thinking of helping other overweight women to see how easy ity was to lose it and find fun in food and fitness... I wanted to tach and to be a personal trainer - I would have been a great tax payer and made good money - Had this not come along and trashed my dreams.

And yet I read what scum I am to this govt - Like I planned this - No way! Fitness was my life. I still grieve for being able to run and jump and walk and do so many things I cannot do now

~Anonymous comment to the TBofB Blog

Last Chance to Have Your Say on ESA #fitforwork

The Broken of Britain's very own Sue Marsh (@sue2y) has written this brilliant blog on Left Foot Forward all about giving evidence to the Work and Pensions Select Committee inquiry into ESA

#fitforwork and #DWP45 were a huge success over the weekend, and highlighted just how ridiculous most disabled people think the ESA system is.

Now for the serious bit: the inquiry into the Migration from IB to ESA which has been launched by the Work and Pensions Select Committee, with the call for evidence closing this Friday. Sue Marsh devoted a week to raising awareness of the issues a couple of weeks ago, and pointed out that: "Anne Begg MP has suggested that many individual submissions will always carry more weight than a collective response. Please take a few moments to read the issues outlined in the inquiry below and if you feel one or more have affected you, I urge you to write a short statement. It might be a description of how unsuitable your assessment was, your experiences of ATOS, or how time limiting the benefit could affect your partner's ability to keep working. If you have been through the worry and fear of a tribunal, we need to explain how this fails too and how hard it is to always be fighting."

The Broken of Britain is putting it's own evidence to the Work and Pensions Select Committee inquiry into the Migration from IB to ESA on behalf of all our members who are not able to do so themselves.

If you can submit something, then please do, following these instructions:

Contributors should feel no obligation to comment on all the issues raised above, but should focus on those areas in which they have particular expertise or interest.

Please bear in mind that the Committee cannot investigate individual cases.

Written evidence should be in Word or rich text format, not PDF format, and sent by email to workpencom@parliament.uk The body of the email must include a contact name, telephone number and postal address. The email should also make clear who the submission is from. Hard copy submissions should be sent to: The Work and Pensions Committee, House of Commons, 7 Millbank, London SW1P 3JA.

Submissions should be in the format of a self-contained piece of written evidence. Paragraphs should be numbered for ease of reference, and the document must include a summary. For further guidance on the submission of evidence see
www.parliament.uk/get-involved/have-your-say/take-part-in-committee-inquiries/witness/

Submissions should be original work, not previously published or circulated elsewhere. Material already published elsewhere may be referred to within a proposed piece of written evidence, in which case a hard copy of the published work should be included.

Additionally, submissions should be no more than 3,000 words.

Below are the inquiry's full terms of reference:

* The Department’s communications to customers going through the assessment and whether the information, guidance and advice provided by the Department and Jobcentre Plus is effective in supporting customers through the process.
* The Work Capability Assessment including: the assessment criteria; the service provided by Atos staff; the suitability of assessment centres; and customers’ overall experience of the process.
* The decision-making process and how it could be improved to ensure that customers are confident that the outcome of their assessment is a fair and transparent reflection of their capacity for work.
* The appeals process, including the time taken for the appeals process to be completed; and whether customers who decide to appeal the outcome of their assessment have all the necessary guidance, information and advice to support them through the process.
* The outcome of the migration process and the different paths taken by the various client groups: those moved to Jobseeker’s Allowance, including the support provided to find work and the impact of the labour market on employment prospects; those found fit for work who may be entitled to no further benefits; those placed in the Work Related Activity Group of the ESA, including the likely impact of the Department’s decision to time-limit contribution-based ESA to a year; and those placed in the Support Group.
* The time-scale for the national roll-out for the migration process, including the Department’s capacity to introduce changes identified as necessary in the Aberdeen and Burnley trials.