Recently in housing Category

• People with lower-level needs, who often receive support through hostels or foyers. This group would receive the standard rate of housing benefit for their area plus a top-up to acknowledge the extra costs of their housing.
• People with higher-level needs who would receive a special rate, decided by local authority care and support staff (rather than housing benefit staff, as at present).
  

Last week a court found that Birmingham councils decision to restrict its eligibility criteria for adult social care to 'supercritical' was illegal because it breached the Disability Discrimination Act.

In the wake of that decision, today, the president of the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services and director at Birmingham, Peter Hay has warned many more councils could face a similar fate.

But how do you know if what your council has done is against the law? Community Care legal columnist and editor of Social Care Law Today, Ed Mitchell, gives his handy guide below.

When making policy decisions councils were required under the DDA to to give "due regard" to these needs: promoting disability equality eliminating discrimination, promoting equality of opportunity, eliminating harassment, treating disabled people more favourably if necessary, promoting positive attitudes on disability and encouraging participation of disabled people.

The duty has been reformulated by the Equality Act 2010 but the DDA case law remains valid.

In effect this means:

The council should be able to show genuine consideration has taken place. Supporting paperwork should record this. Just saying that the matters were considered is unlikely to be enough.

Disabled people will need to be given adequate notice to participate in any consultation on decision which effect them. This may be longer than for non-disabled people.

It is often necessary to keep the adverse impact, under review. This is a good way of demonstrating that 'due regard' has been given.

A council can still make a decision which has an adverse impact on disabled people. The duty to have 'due regard' does not require a particular result but councils should be upfront about the effects of what they are doing and explain why, despite adverse impacts, they are going ahead anyway.

Image courtesy of Horia Varlan on Flickr

• Helping prisoners stay in touch with their families is well-known to improve their prospects after release, but charities in this field are struggling to demonstrate their effectiveness, found a report last week by voluntary sector think-tank New Philanthropy Capital. NPC has developed a measurement tool to help charities in this area, but it also has some tough messages for government and commissioners - apparently there is much confusion among charities about what commissioners are looking for, so it calls on government to be clear about the outcomes it is after and to improve access to data.
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