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People with learning difficulties can find themselves invisible as far as their housing needs are concerned. David McCabe assess the impact of the Housing Act 1996 on those with special needs

The Housing Act 1996, which has just been enacted and is based on the White Paper Our Future Homes, says nothing about the housing rights or choices of people with special needs. There is, consequently, no mention of people with learning difficulties and past experience is the only guide to the implications of this act for them.

People with learning difficulties have never had legislation dedicated specifically to their particular needs.

There is, of course, an inherent difficulty in making a special case for any disempowered group: by doing so you risk labelling them and placing them on the margins of society without access to mainstream provision.

Housing legislation is a perfect example of the dilemma facing users and practitioners. Is there a case for special treatment of a minority or should we manipulate ill-suited legislation so each individual's needs can fit it? The new Housing Act prolongs the dilemma.

The history of housing for people with a learning difficulty has been linked to care issues since the reduction of hospital provision was first announced in 1969 by Richard Crossman, Secretary of State for Health and Social Services. I suggest the link is manufactured.

All housing legislation essentially concerns homelessness. It articulates the need to make provision for extra housing for those creating a demand and, within this context, learning difficulties are seen as a care issue first. The bricks and mortar are a secondary concern.

Attempts to empower this group have historically involved a pick and mix approach from different legislation created by different government departments, often with different objectives and, seemingly, without reference to each other.

The vague expression 'by the use of more appropriate resources' characterises Crossman's announcement of the commitment to reduce the overcrowding in hospitals. It is, hardly surprising a clear definition of alternative housing is missing in such nebulous beginnings.

Care needs, often ideologically formulated, led the response to initiatives aimed at reducing the hospital population. The commitment to reduce overcrowding was part of the vision expounded in the White Paper Better Services for the Mentally Handicapped.¬ This document envisaged a reduction in the hospital population to 33,400 and an increase in community provision from 6,750 to 42,700 places.

A steadily implemented programme was noticeable until 1979, albeit with varying degrees of enthusiasm, but then a sea-change occurred. The Conservative Party, which was then in opposition, produced a manifesto which contained a clear disavowal of public spending. Now we have a National Health Service where the claim is that outcomes are more important than inputs. The private and voluntary sectors have also become critical to the new weave of the welfare economy.

So, by the early 1980s, three quite separately forces were at work on the welfare sector. The government's determination to reduce the power of local government in housing provision was the first, while the second was the single-minded desire of professionals to pursue 'ordinary houses in ordinary streets'.­

The third was the dramatic rise in the involvement of housing associations and voluntary organisations willing, if not always able, to meet the demands of the first two forces.

Entrepreneurial practitioners were able to exploit legislation in housing and the benefits system, in a single-minded ideological pursuit of their clients' interests, by basing their arguments for funding on care. People with a learning difficulty became part of the special needs category within the Housing Corporation.

They attracted revenue funding by way of hostel deficit grant, because they were economically disempowered and could not afford the going market rent. They also attracted social security benefits as of right to allow for their care needsand they had access to increased levels of Housing Benefit. This funding arena must have appeared to be a bottomless pit in the early 1980s.

By fudging the boundaries between housing and care it was possible to maximise income. This meant there was a disincentive to see people with a learning difficulty as having housing rights and genuine choices as opposed to just needing somewhere to live. Even those pursuing supported living schemes where people had fully protected tenancy rights had to rely, more often than not, on generous local district councils which awarded above average levels of Housing Benefit.

The market forces beast, having changed the face of welfare provision in the early 1980s, had, by 1986, turned around to bite its creators. Expenditure on private and voluntary sector residential care had risen from £100 million in 1981 to an estimated £900 million in 1987 and the Treasury was decidedly nervous.

It was equally apparent the Department of Environment had lost control of Housing Corporation expenditure through the hostel deficit grant, which had also risen to an all time high.

Although Housing Benefit did not give the Treasury cause for concern until the budget of November 1994, tackling social security benefits and the Housing Corporation had become a priority long before. The government decided to disentangle the separate, apparently unconnected, strands of social policy which had crossed, allowing cash to bleed into the welfare system. As far as the government was concerned, the ever increasing flow had to be staunched.

There appears to have been no more consultation on the separation than there was on the entanglement, but by 1991 it was complete.

The NHS and Community Care Act 1990 shifted the responsibility for residential care to local authorities and introduced assessment. By rate-capping local authorities and introducing assessment, the government effectively controlled the runaway expenditure by dealing once and for all with what it saw as the bottomless pit of automatic entitlement under Department of Social Security rules.

In 1991 the Housing Corporation replaced the non-cash limited hostel deficit grant with a special needs management allowance which is now cash limited.

It is also subject to review. Furthermore, the government has announced its intention to hold the total amount available at current levels.

The effect of these measures has been to squeeze the total cash available to meet the needs of people with learning difficulties. It forces housing and care issues apart: treating them separately has become more necessary for providers to survive.

There has been no corresponding examination of the unique housing needs of the group. The Housing Act itself brings this into sharp focus. Officialdom often refers to the close relationship between the Housing Act and the NHS and Community Care Act 1990, yet none of the 181 clauses in the housing legislation mentions special needs.

We are therefore left, once more, to examine legislation with a view to exploiting its contents in any way which will further the cause of true empowerment for people with learning difficulties. We do so knowing that as one opportunity arises others diminish, and that some previous opportunities have turned to threats.

Opportunities may well exist in the new act, particularly in the section on registered social landlords. Their new status entitles them to obtain the new social housing grant which has replaced the old housing association grant.

Voluntary organisations could use this proposal to make provision without having to work with housing associations.

We will see how real this proposed competition to housing associations becomes and how it impacts on the lives of disabled people. Meanwhile their housing rights are still not being genuinely acknowledged and continue to be masked by cash-limited assessments of care needs.

¬ Department of Health and Social Security/Welsh Office, Better Services for the Mentally Handicapped, HMSO, 1971

­ King's Fund Centre, An Ordinary Life, King's Fund Centre, 1980

David McCabe is head of the research and policy unit at MENCAP