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The Independent Living Fund enshrines many of the values proclaimed by social care reformers in the past few decades. It acknowledges the fact that disabled people usually want to live their lives with independence and dignity, supported by families, friends, neighbours and others in their localities. "This will continue to be the primary means by which people are enabled to live normal lives in community settings," said Sir Roy Griffiths in his seminal 1988 report Community Care: Agenda for Action. "This," he added, "is as it should be."


In many ways the troubled history of the ILF reflects the mixed fortunes of care in the community as a policy. The policy triggered by the NHS and Community Care Act 1990 was supposed to be needs-led but proved instead to be cash-limited as the high ideals quickly turned to dust. The ILF, evolving in parallel, also began as needs-led and soon became cash-strapped: it had to be reincarnated as the ILF 1993 Fund and had a controversial ceiling placed on its grants.

Now, thanks to a bizarre change in government policy prompted by legal advice, people appealing against disability living allowance rulings will have their ILF money stopped in the meantime. More than 11,000 people using the fund could be affected and, since payments may be in the region of £500 a week, the impact on their care arrangements could be catastrophic. For some, residential care will be the inevitable consequence.

Such setbacks make a mockery of the recent adult social care green paper's claim to be a champion of independence with its proposed right to request not to go into residential care. They are of a piece with the doubts that continue to surround the Supporting People programme, which the government seems to decry precisely to the extent that it actually promotes independence. At the same time the number of local authority direct payments, while rising slowly, still languishes at a miserable 20,000 or so.


The achievement of independence with dignity for all those who could benefit from it will require a much more concerted effort from government and its acolytes. It will require a health and social care white paper that recognises the importance of both sectors in promoting independent lives and - a more modest aim but just as elusive - it will require a less ambivalent attitude to the genuine merits of the ILF.