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Learning Disability Coalition

Policy and statistics


Policy context

The Learning Disability Coalition believes that people with a learning disability should have the same chances and choices as everyone else.

The new Government has promised "that people needing care deserve to be treated with dignity and respect." The Government has stated that it understands that the social care system needs to be reformed, and it has promised that it will establish a commission to look into long-term care and how it should be funded. This will report back within a year.

The Treasury has already announced that there will be £6.2 billion worth of cuts this year, including cutting the money given to Local Governments by £1.165 billion. It is very likely that the Government will have to make more cuts.

The Learning Disability Coalition believes that without better funding for social care, the human rights and life choices for people with a learning disability may suffer. We are putting pressure on the Government to make sure that social care funding is not affected by the forthcoming cuts.

What is social care?

The term social care encompasses a wide range of services which support people with daily tasks that they cannot accomplish themselves and which ideally help them, as much as possible, to become independent and to play a full part in society.

Amongst many other services, it includes:

  • Day centres

  • Home care

  • Residential care

  • Personal assistants

Social care is not restricted to people with a learning disability: for example, people with mental health problems, older people and other groups also receive it.

The following information relates to policies introduced by the previous Labour Government. It explains the current social care system, but the new Government may make changes to this.

The drive towards personalisation

The Government's social care policies are aimed towards the greater personalisation of services. Personalisation is the concept of individuals having choice and control over their own services.

The Government first committed itself to personalisation in the 2005 paper Improving the Life Chances of Disabled People. They stated that personalisation was a key part of achieving their ambition of equality for all disabled people in Britain by 2025. They then reiterated this position in the Green Paper Independence, Well-being and Choice, also in 2005. And in 2006, the White Paper Our Health, Our Care, Our Say further refined the policy.

Read Improving the Life Chances of Disabled People

Read Independence, Well-being and Choice

Read Our Health, Our Care, Our Say

More recently, the Government has expanded on its position in the documents Putting People First (2007) and the Independent Living Strategy (2008).

Putting People First is a short concordat signed by statutory bodies, central and local government, service providers, and other groups. It was not signed by any organisations that deal exclusively with learning disability issues. It states:

'The time has now come to build on best practice and replace paternalistic, reactive care of variable quality with a mainstream system focussed on prevention, early intervention, enablement, and high quality personally tailored services. In the future, we want people to have maximum choice, control and power over the support services they receive.'

Read Putting People First

The Government has recently finished consulting on the Independent Living Strategy. The consultation paper set out the Government's policy commitments and how their implementation will be monitored. These are based on the cross-government strategy to deliver independent living identified in the Independent Living Review.

Read the Independent Living Strategy consultation document

Individual budget pilots

The Government has attempted to put personalisation into practice with a series of pilots of individual budgets around the country. There has been a delay in publishing the evaluations of the pilots, and this has led to some controversy over the Government's indications that it is pressing ahead with personalisation despite this lack of analysis.

Read more about the individual budget pilots

Learning disability policy

As well as producing policies relating to social care in general, the Government has published policy work relating specifically to services for people with a learning disability.

The Government first set out its aspirations for people with a learning disability in the paper Valuing People, published in 2001 and the consultation paper Valuing People Now, published in 2007. Valuing People Now was published because the Government believed that the implementation of Valuing People was progressing too slowly. It also slightly modifies the Government's stance on some issues. The final version of Valuing People Now, incorporating the response to the consultation, is due to be published in October 2008.

Valuing People:

  • Stated that the Government's four guiding principles for change are: Rights, Independence, Choice and Inclusion

  • Announced new national objectives for services, with targets and performance indicators

  • Announced the Learning Disability Development Fund, of up to £50 million per annum. This was to be targeted on the key priorities of the paper. This was to be partly funded by the savings made through the closure of long-stay hospitals (long stay hospitals are a form of provision that is no longer considered appropriate by most in the sector).

  • Announced a new Implementation Support Fund of £2.3 million a year for 3 years intended to fund a variety of large-scale projects, including advocacy services and a national information centre and helpline.

Valuing People Now:

  • Stated that the Government's four guiding principles for change are: Rights, Independence, Choice and Inclusion

  • Emphasised that the Valuing People agenda applies to all people with a learning disability, including those with very complex needs

  • Focused particular attention on: health, employment and other day activities, housing and personalisation

  • Set specific time-frames for progress and an emphasis on actually delivering change - an area that the original Valuing People was criticised in.

Read Valuing People

Read Valuing People Now

A new start?

The Government is currently in the process of re-organising the social care system. There are two key strands to this work:

  • The forthcoming Green Paper on social care. The Government is currently consulting on the contents of this paper, which is expected to focus on how the social care system can be funded in the future.

  • The forthcoming review of the Fair Access to Care (FAC) system. The Commission for Social Care Inspection (CSCI) is currently preparing its response to a public consultation on the FAC system, which is used to decide whether people are considered eligible for social care. It is now widely considered to be in need of replacement, due to campaigning by the Coalition and work by CSCI itself which has shown that it fails large numbers of vulnerable people.

Contribute to the consultation on the Green Paper

Carers

The Government has recently published its carers' strategy. The main points of the strategy were:

  • £150m investment over two years in short breaks and replacement care to give carers time off from caring.

  • £38m to help carers to enter or re-enter work

Read the carers' strategy here

Further information

 

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