I can’t help thinking that if the Care Services Improvement Partnership (CSIP) wants to actually improve anything it might need to be a bit braver in its reports.
One of its latest offerings, Commissioning for People With Learning Disabilities – A Tale of Two Nations, looked promising. And it is good to see a focus on learning disabilities from an organisation that often seems to concentrate on mental health.
The report highlights an interesting north south divide, with a more institutional response to learning disability services in the south of the country and a more community based approach up north.
But instead of using the report as a bit of a wake up call for those local authorities dragging their feet on investing in community living for people with learning disabilities, CSIP pulls its punches saying
“It is not easy to assess results as there is very little information available on outcomes, quality of life, or satisfaction. In particular it is not possible to assess from national data whether people living in supported accommodation have better lives than those living in residential care”.
But I thought we’d already decided that we were going to go down the supported accommodation route. What about Valuing People and rights, inclusion, choice and control?
There’s a line in the white paper saying “we now know more about outcomes associated with living in different types of accommodation”.
But according to CSIP:
“there are no grounds for assuming that the type of accommodation is itself linked to better outcomes.”
But the report does note that in the northern authorities which spent a higher proportion of their budget on care provided in the community:
• more people are helped to live at home
• more people are getting short breaks
• many fewer people are living in residential care
• many fewer people are placed out of area
• more people are getting direct payments.
These all sound like pretty good outcomes to me. Certainly the majority of people with learning disabilities who responded to Community Care’s survey for our A Life Like Any Other Campaign said they would prefer to have their own place. And people living in group homes told us that even the most well meaning staff exerted too much control over their lives.
OK maybe CSIP is right and there isn’t a lot in the way of hard data measuring exact happiness levels in residential care versus living in your own place, I don’t know. But which would you rather live in – a mini-institution with rules or your own home where you can do your own thing?
So come on CSIP, the time for hedging your bets is over. It can’t be comfortable up there on that fence.