Tanni Grey Thompson has declared that the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics will be the first time that the Games will be fully integrated. In a recent article in Time Out, Tanni said ‘Though there is a gap of 17 days between the Olympics closing and the Paralympics opening, a key feature of London 2012 is that the planning and design for both events are fully integrated. It was a strength of the bid, and one of the reasons why I wanted to get involved. This has not always been the case: in the past, some Paralympians have felt that we were simply tagged on, that there were the main Games then ‘our bit’.’

Tanni has also indicated that she is confident the Games will be a catalyst for continued change in public attitudes towards Disabled People. Tanni has won 11 Paralympic Gold medals in her career. She was also at the centre of controversy when the BBC failed to provide a ramp in order for her to pick up an award at BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year in 2001.  

The Commons Public Accounts Committee, in their latest report have highlighted the confusion that many Disabled People face when they require support in order to gain employment. 

The Department of Work and Pensions offers a number of complex and partly overlapping programmes to help disabled people find and retain work. The assistance includes help finding appropriate jobs, developing new or existing skills, support and advice for those in work and grants to employers. Together, the schemes and programmes cost the Department around £300 million a year.

Disabled people can gain access to the Department’s specialist support in different ways, which adds to the potential for confusion. Some of the programmes are only available through the intervention of a Disability Employment Advisor based in a Jobcentre Plus office, while others operate a self-referral system.

For example, the New Deal for Disabled People operates a self-referral system, Access to Work is through direct application, and other programmes are usually available through the intervention of a Disability Employment Adviser. Explaining precisely what is available to individuals in their particular circumstances can be difficult, and the reasoning behind the differences in activities is quite confusing. Although the Department has a distinct rationale for each scheme and is clear on the differences between them, the logic is less readily apparent to the potential user.

Within the report, there are also some worrying statistics about how much money is spent on these schemes with little evidence that they enable Disabled People to find mainstream employment. For example, the Department paid £68.7 million in 2004-05 to Workstep. Workstep is aimed at those disabled people furthest from obtaining work and who need higher levels of support. There are more than 200 providers of Workstep, some of whom have very few clients and have poor records of helping people to get into or remain in employment.  Remploy is funded by a block grant of more than £115 million a year from the Department, which covers the running of all services and any losses made by the businesses. It runs 83 factories providing segregated employment for Disabled People as well as running some Workstep programmes. 

The report also states that ‘Poor management information makes it difficult to determine whether the programmes deliver value for money. Except for the New Deal for Disabled People, the Department has patchy and inconsistent cost and outcomes data for its programmes. There is also limited information available about clients, making it hard to establish whether programmes are meeting the needs of different groups. The Department should gather detailed information on what has been spent on each programme and scheme, what has been paid to each provider and what the Department has obtained for the expenditure.’

SCIL would like to see the Government increasing funding for schemes like Access to Work that actually support Disabled People in mainstream employment and also importantly, help people retain employment if they acquire impairments during their working life.

Last week the Commission of Social Care Inspection published its annual report into the state of social care in England. It found that more services are meeting minimum standards, but despite spending more, councils are tightening local rules about who qualifies for state-funded social care.

This means that more and more older and disabled people either have to find and pay for their own support / assistance or rely on family members or friends.As local councils support fewer people, informal unpaid carers have to fill in the gaps, with inadequate support structures to help them and no system in many areas to help people find the services they need.Those who have no one to rely on may have to make do without support until their situation becomes critical.

CSCI Chair Dame Denise Platt said:“Social care services in England are gradually getting better, but only for those people who manage to qualify for help. As councils face an increase in the number of older and disabled people and in the costs of care, many have responded by raising the threshold people have to pass before they are entitled to a council-funded service. As a result, irrespective of the quality of social care services, fewer people are receiving services.Those who do qualify for care have a high level of need.”

“The options for people who do not meet the criteria set by their local council are limited. In some cases, people rely on friends and family members. In others, they pay for their own care. Some people have no option but to do without.“

“It is also clear that external pressures on the sector are hindering progress in making services better for the people who use them. In particular, NHS budget deficits in some areas are putting a strain on relationships at local level and potentially undermining essential partnerships in both adult and children’s services.”

The report also found that although there has been a substantial increase in the numbers of people using direct payments, these are very small compared to overall numbers of people who use social care services. Pilots for individual budgets are shifting traditional views on how to provide support, but lessons are yet to be learned prior to any national roll-out. Most people, including those who fund their own care, are not yet in a position to exert pressure on the care market and alter the local ‘menu’ of services.

The report had particular concern for the various groups including:

1. Those people who are not using services arranged by the council but who seek support and good information about what may be available. As yet, there is limited evidence as to whether people are successfully directed to alternative and appropriatesupport or properly informed about the options open to them.

2. Carers, unpaid relatives and friends who are bearing the costs of ever-tighter eligibility criteria for services.

3. People who have little, if any, choice and control over the services they use. There are still too many people who are offered little, if any, choice of services; nor do they have any choice as to who comes into the privacy of their homes to provide assistance and when and how support is provided. 

CSCI have pledged to examine the impact of tighter eligibility criteria over the next year and SCIL welcomes this move.  This report is yet another signal that both government and society need to seriously examine the future of social care within Britain before things get any worse.

Thanks to Hampshire Centre for Independent Living for this article giving a short history of means tested charging for social care services…… 

Back in 1990 my friend Mark, Chairman of the local Coalition of Disabled People, started a campaign to resist the introduction of means tested charging for services to older people.  Many of us though sympathetic to the organisation only half-heartedly supported this campaign. ’It is only old people in nursing homes’ we thought. Mark was adamant that even though this did not affect most of us, nonetheless it had to be opposed because it was wrong to discriminate in such a manner. Besides, he said, one day the policy might come to include us. 

In our ignorance we thought the proposals sounded reasonable.  After all we secretly reasoned. these were elderly people now in ‘care’, probably beyond active life.  Surely it was reasonable to ask them to contribute to the cost of their well being?  The sums were not punitive, mere pocket money.  Research amongst them had found support even though the researchers admitted that many were incapable of understanding the questions let alone giving a reasoned answer. 

The subsequent history is simple. Mark led the coalition in challenging the local authority.  The first measure was to ask for wider consultation amongst the disability community.  The local government commissioned further research which they said again gave majority support for their proposals.  Indeed the local authority did this exercise twice, each time conducting the ‘survey’, each time compiling the results, each time gaining the answer they wanted. 

The local authority ‘survey’ was loaded.  Mark and the coalition were convinced that ‘turkeys do not vote for Christmas’.  They never have and they never will.  Local politicians know that given a choice voters support parties who reduce taxes.  Is it really likely that disabled people are going to say they want to pay for services?  That they are happy to pay a ‘disability tax’? Ah but the authority asked cunning questions:

Do you think we should help as many people as we can? Yes/No 

Do you agree that those who can afford to should contribute towards the cost of their service? Yes/No 

Yes of course we should help as many people as we can.

Yes of course rich people should contribute towards the cost of their service.

Never mind the research, Mark was right, the means testing and charging policy for social care services was wrong in principle.  It was wrong because it is discriminatory.  Furthermore Mark has been proved right in saying that this policy would one day affect us all.

Another reason why people thought the practice acceptable was that the sums involved were of pocket money proportions.  A tickle rather than a fatal stabbing.  But Mark was wise and saw that the introduction of this policy was the thin edge of a wedge At the time none of us had personal experience of being charged for social services. 

We did not know about the financial assessment process.  A violation, a degrading and humiliating experience, a laying bare of ones life, an enforced exposing of all ones personal income and expenditure to a previously unknown apparatchik who records every detail ‘for the office’ and decides whether or not we are judged able to contribute to the cost of our care.  The threshold being the national ‘subsistence level plus 25%’, any monies above this must be used to buy your own care or pay the local authority ‘charge’ per hour.

Turn to 2006. At regular intervals over the intervening years the means testing and charging policy has been reviewed and each time history is repeated, the result has been to broaden the scope and depth of the practice.  First it was just elderly people in nursing homes and only pocket money, now it affects all disabled people, all people using services and the sums can be anything up to £385 per week. 

So what is the point of this history? Simple.  The policy was introduced in a reasonable manner.  It appeared harmless, only affecting one small group, old people in the nursing homes.  The sums involved were of pocket money proportions.  It all seemed harmless, tolerable, acceptable.  And besides all that it did not include us. Over time the scope and depth of the policy has deepened and widened such that at the end of 16 years all disabled people are significantly affected.  What we thought was nothing to do with us now bites us all and bites hard.

That is the background.  That is the history.  Those are the facts.   Anybody anywhere in Europe who believes that the means tested charging policy is acceptable as long as the practice is ‘fair and reasonable’ needs to look to England and see that not only is the policy discriminatory, its application is punitive and far from fair and reasonable.  It is a hidden tax on impairment, a cancer secretly eating its way through our society and ‘no one’ speaks out against it until it bites them. 

‘Ask not for whom the bell tolls, It tolls for thee’  (John Donne)

With Christmas finally out of way, many people’s thoughts turn to where to take their next holiday. Jackie Whitehead, who works for SCIL, recounts her experience cruising round the ‘Med’ with her parents who both use wheelchairs.

 We arrived at the designated dock gate to find our ship had been “moved down a bit”. Not a big deal until you realise we were at Gate 30 and had to go to Gate 8 at the other end of Southampton, and that there were five adults, (we had a driver) two wheelchairs and three enormous suitcases all in one car! 

When we finally found the right ship we were told people in wheelchairs and buggies, along with their helpers, were to be boarded first. Looking at the huge queues of waiting passengers it sounded too good to be true, it was! We and a couple of dozen others found ourselves directed to an area on our own where we left to fight it out for a place in a queue for a boarding pass.

Having done battle with a particularly determined lady in a motorised buggy we won and were directed to a ‘special’ boarding gate. Later on we discovered that most of the passengers were welcomed on board with fanfares, photos and friendliness, my mum was met with “hang on love, we’ll get you on board in a minute”. After ten minutes of sitting on a draughty Southampton dock my mum and dad were hauled up a lonely gang plank by a couple of workers wearing fluorescent yellow coats. By this time I was cross and my mother was giggling, not with hysteria but with genuine amusement.

The real fun began the minute we boarded the ship but I don’t mean deck quoits and salsa lessons. Eagerly I forged ahead of my husband and father pushing my mother confidently along a corridor to our ‘stateroom’ (cabin to you and me). My confidence was a tad previous because I had not counted on, nor noticed, a raised divider looming out of the carpeting. It is worth mentioning here that these occurred at regular intervals through out the ship and were a continuous hazard for wheelchairs.For us at that moment it was a bit like hitting an iceberg and my mother, destined to sink, shot up and almost out of her chair. She was, however, saved when I grabbed her with one hand and shoved the wheelchair under her with the other, effectively scooping her up before a titanic disaster struck.

All of this, along with a miniscule ‘stateroom’ which meant we had to leave both of them outside in the corridor, the wheelchairs not my parents, overly narrow doors and some other minor hiccups, actually did very little to spoil what turned out to be a wonderful holiday.

However, please Mr. Cruise Ship Director when you build your next floating hotel spare a thought for my mum and dad and make sure they can cruise with all the dignity and freedom they deserve.