Social Care Matters
Social Care Speed Debating at the Party Conferences - Thank you!
Thank you to all of you who wrote to your local councillor asking them to attend our event at this year’s party conferences. We had a great turn out at all three thanks to your efforts. If you did email your Councillor why don’t you email them again and ask them what they thought?
The key question we asked was,
‘How would you change social care for working age disabled people?’ Everyone who attended had an opportunity to contribute ensuring that the views of disabled people, party members, local councilors, carers and those using social care were heard.
Key listeners at the event included Phil Hope MP, Minister for Care Services, Greg Mulholland MP, Shadow Social Care Spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats and Chloe Smith MP, newly elected MP for Norwich North.
We’ll be making sure that not only are everyone’s views fed into the Government’s current consultation on social care reform but also the main political parties’ manifestos for the next General Election. If we’re going to achieve real change in social care then social care needs to remain a top political priority both locally and nationally and with your help we’ll be able to that.
Green paper update - social care reform and DLA
You may have heard reports about possible changes to Attendance Allowance and Disability Living Allowance mentioned in the Green Paper on social care. The information below sets out the situation, and Leonard Cheshire Disability’s views on this issue.
The recently produced Green Paper on social care contained a mention of the possibility of “disability benefits, such as attendance allowance” being integrated into the funding for social care managed by Local Authorities.
It is important to state that the Green Paper is a consultation document, and so the proposals are not definite policy positions at the moment. This means it is very important to challenge any proposals with which we disagree, but it also means that people's benefits are not immediately under threat, and that we need to be very careful about causing unnecessary concern.
Importantly, someone currently receiving Disability Living Allowance (DLA) care component or Attendance Allowance (AA) is not about to have their benefit cut.
Leonard Cheshire Disability’s policy on this issue is that we have always opposed any moves to take DLA care component and AA into broader social care funding and will continue to do so. Whilst we recognise the need to ensure that extra funding gets into the social care system it simply does not make sense to look to remove elements that are actually working most successfully at present.
DLA and AA are benefits that many people value greatly, they are universal and provide disabled people with the independence and choice to use them as they wish. DLA is an ‘extra cost’ benefit – it is designed to help disabled people to meet the extra costs that they can face because of their impairment. This means that it is absolutely crucial in tackling disability poverty. As such we not only have a policy position to oppose any moves to scrap DLA, we have also campaigned for it to be increased to better meet people’s needs.
We had already planned to raise this issue with the government, and to work with other organisations to reflect the strength of feeling on this issue. It is important to state again though that DLA and AA are not being scrapped, and people receiving them now are not about to lose their benefit. We are concerned that some people may have got this impression from recent reports about this issue.
There are many different policy options set out in the Green Paper on social care. We will be looking to respond to all these different proposals, particularly by trying to gather views from disabled people to inform our response. We recognise, and very much agree with, the strength of support for DLA and AA – our policy is to oppose any moves to take away DLA to make it part of wider social care funds, and in fact we want to see the benefit maintained and strengthened.
We will be working with other organisations to highlight our support for DLA care component and AA, and also on many of the other important issues raised in the Green Paper.
