by Neil BatemanThe adult care Green Paper states: "some elements of disability benefits, for example Attendance Allowance" might no longer be paid to people and instead integrated into a new social care budget and there are those in the social care world who support this, thinking that such benefits are to "pay for care"
It's a nice, simplistic argument, but like most such arguments, it's seriously flawed.
It would be catastrophic for millions of the poorest and most vulnerable if Attendance Allowance or Disability Living Allowance (AA/DLA) were diverted to fund social care.
AA/DLA use care needs, (and in the case of DLA, mobility needs) as indicators of the extent of someone's disability. If they used a scoring system, like Incapacity Benefit, this issue wouldn't arise and history shows that AA/DLA were created to contribute to all the costs of disability, including lost earnings and higher fuel, clothing, leisure and housing costs.
Then what about the numbers? In England, 1.26 million people receive social care services, but 3.82 million receive AA/DLA. Are the proponents of transferring AA/DLA really suggesting that over two and half million people would lose these benefits? Would care services be expanded threefold to provide services instead? Fat chance.
How ironic that some senior champions of social care could be the authors of the worst cut in income in living memory for the very people they claim to care about.
And what about the passported extras which go with AA/DLA, such as the severe disability premium in means tested benefits or Carers Allowance? Would these also be transferred, or will new (tighter) criteria be developed? Probably the latter.
Because AA/DLA are paid through the social security system they are underpinned by standard, national, transparent and legally enforceable criteria and can be challenged by formal appeal processes - something which doesn't apply to the postcode lottery of care service "rights".
The AA/DLA recipient also decides what to spend the money on, which is what most of us take for granted about our own money and is also the core principle behind Individual Budgets, whereas transferring AA/DLA to social care, (either as services or Individual Budgets), would involve extending bureaucratic control over peoples' lives, undermining the new philosophy of individualisation and choice.
Finally, research shows that a lot of AA/DLA is spent on informal care services - paying someone to do shopping, gardening or give lifts. Transfer would erode these valuable preventative services and the social capital that they create. The end result would be that people might expect local authorities to arrange such things.
So however tempting it is to grab a chunk of the millions spent on AA/DLA, just don't. Cutting benefits just makes poor people poorer.
Neil Bateman is a welfare rights specialist. www.neilbateman.co.uk
AA/DLA use care needs, (and in the case of DLA, mobility needs) as indicators of the extent of someone's disability. If they used a scoring system, like Incapacity Benefit, this issue wouldn't arise and history shows that AA/DLA were created to contribute to all the costs of disability, including lost earnings and higher fuel, clothing, leisure and housing costs.
Then what about the numbers? In England, 1.26 million people receive social care services, but 3.82 million receive AA/DLA. Are the proponents of transferring AA/DLA really suggesting that over two and half million people would lose these benefits? Would care services be expanded threefold to provide services instead? Fat chance.
How ironic that some senior champions of social care could be the authors of the worst cut in income in living memory for the very people they claim to care about.
And what about the passported extras which go with AA/DLA, such as the severe disability premium in means tested benefits or Carers Allowance? Would these also be transferred, or will new (tighter) criteria be developed? Probably the latter.
Because AA/DLA are paid through the social security system they are underpinned by standard, national, transparent and legally enforceable criteria and can be challenged by formal appeal processes - something which doesn't apply to the postcode lottery of care service "rights".
The AA/DLA recipient also decides what to spend the money on, which is what most of us take for granted about our own money and is also the core principle behind Individual Budgets, whereas transferring AA/DLA to social care, (either as services or Individual Budgets), would involve extending bureaucratic control over peoples' lives, undermining the new philosophy of individualisation and choice.
Finally, research shows that a lot of AA/DLA is spent on informal care services - paying someone to do shopping, gardening or give lifts. Transfer would erode these valuable preventative services and the social capital that they create. The end result would be that people might expect local authorities to arrange such things.
So however tempting it is to grab a chunk of the millions spent on AA/DLA, just don't. Cutting benefits just makes poor people poorer.
Neil Bateman is a welfare rights specialist. www.neilbateman.co.uk
Taking in to account all the 'leaks' in the media last weekend, ahead of the launch of the Green Paper.Add those to the discussions on many sites the last 2 days, and this has to be the best article out of them all.
Thank you Neil for covering these issues,nice to see someone with what many others seem to have lost...common sense but more importantly knowledge of the consequences should some of these proposals be seriously considered.
it won't just leave people poorer. It will leave them without transport to get to the Dr, supermarket, school,dentist, hospital, etc etc. Not all of us have an accessible or regular bus or train service.
The only way my two carees would acees the help they need in that case, would be if I walk out. There will be no other way. It would also cost the Government a lot more money, as these are two people with totally different needs, and one is 52, the other 23, so likely to be around for many years.Unless the plan is to starve Carers and their carees to death?
DLA is essential, and please don't forget, Councils are already taking it into account for clients to be able to access services, and they take the MAXIMUM they are allowed to by law. They are not going to make it easier for those of us to already need to beg for help.
I gave up work to become a Carer.I was earning over £200 a week 14 years ago, in a professional career. I now pick up £53 a week, the equivalent of 30per hour for my 24/7 work. (plus some of it is then taken off our entitlement to Income Support).
We are struggling so much. I do not need any more pats on the back telling me what a good job I am doing. What I want is an income replacement equivalent to the nurses salary I was receiving 14 years ago. I am earning it, believe me, as are so many of us.
Thanks Neil for this. What a terrifying prospect to have national welfare entitlements reduced to money put in to an inadequately funded discretionary social care system, where increasingly we can expect people will be told to pay for themselves. peter
I believe it would be interesting to compare spending on the Afghan War and Gordon Brown's recent Prime Minister's Question Time boast of continuing real terms 'defence' spending budget increases over the course of New Labour, against the year-on-year 'efficiency savings' upon 'efficiency savings' that Gordon Brown as Chancellor inflicted on the social care budgets of UK local authorities.
While UK involvement in the war in Afghanistan is linked to accessing diminishing global commodities such as oil, New Labour and Tory plans in welfare reform are making commodities of some of the poorest members of society. The privatisation of welfare is for the financial advantage of mercenary, bonus-guzzling companies such as Atos Medical Services, Unum, Serco and A4e, at the taxpayers' expense. For disabled people and carers, life in the market economy is more than taxing, anyway.
Meanwhile, the Green Party of England & Wales is working on pledges toward making disabled people's, carers' and older people's wellbeing into election issues.
As yet I have only scanned the green paper but it does at least provide a welcome opportunity for public debate re the funding of social care. I don't comment on the merits of DLA / AA for those who manage to leap the fiery hoops. I do wonder what the cost of administering these benefits is (including advice worker time, reviews appeals etc.)? This duplicates what is an already existing and funded means of assessing peoples needs through local authorities. What individuals need is access to the means to provide their needs that they can use in a flexible imaginative manner that is fair and consistent across the country.
THANKS NEIL FOR BRINGING THIS OUT IN THE OPEN. AS PETER BERESFORD SO RIGHTLY STATES - A TERRIFYING PROSPECT. WHAT MOST PEOPLE SEEM TO HAVE FORGOTTEN WAS THAT THIS ALLOWANCE WAS ORIGINALLY MEANT TO HELP TOWARDS THE EXTRA COSTS OF BEING A DISABLED PERSON. THE ADD ON COSTS HAVE NEVER BEEN ACURATELY RESEARCHED AND ARE NEVER TAKEN INTO ACCOUNT WHEN EMPLOYING PA'S (CARERS) OR JUST MY PERSONAL EXPENSES OF TRYING TO LIVE IN THE COMMUNITY WITH ALL THE ADD ONS THAT DISABLED PEOPLE FACE
So, will there be a massive expansion of social services when everyone now on DLA needs a social worker to look after their money? And that is going to save money is it? Have the authors been is drinking ? Maybe they need someone to look after their money.
Thank you Neil!
I'm 23, on LRC and HRM due to incurable and chronic mental and physical illnesses, and I'd like to keep as much of my independence in everyday life as I can. Yes, it can be a struggle, but I do NOT want the last of my chance at being an independent adult taken away from me against my will!
I had a hard enough time getting DLA in the first place, and because my council assessor could not _see_ how ill I am by looking at me, it was decided I didn't need any care from them. I struggled to get even the little help I am getting now; if it were taken away, I have no doubt the stress of trying to live as best I can with making adaptations on only Income Support would make two of my major conditions steadily worse, as stress is a major flare factor for both of them. I don't know what I'd do...
Neil Bateman,
Spot on again. I just don't know what is wrong with these buffoons who make these ridiculous proposals. The vast amount of money from AA and DLA goes back into local communities anyway. If discretionary rights are given to Social Services, we are going to have armies of people with no experience of disabilities or associated problems, telling claimants what they can or cannot have. That being the case, most claimants will tell them to keep their allowance. However, that is probably what this out of touch Government wants.
They should go back to their £100,000 a year jobs, and stop trying to penalise genuine people and trying to make them pay for the mess they caused with their smug deficiencies. Why don't they apply the same ferocity to altering their disgraceful expenses system?
Neil Bateman,
Spot on again. I just don't know what is wrong with these buffoons who make these ridiculous proposals. The vast amount of money from AA and DLA goes back into local communities anyway. If discretionary rights are given to Social Services, we are going to have armies of people with no experience of disabilities or associated problems, telling claimants what they can or cannot have. That being the case, most claimants will tell them to keep their allowance. However, that is probably what this out of touch Government wants.
They should go back to their £100,000 a year jobs, and stop trying to penalise genuine people and trying to make them pay for the mess they caused with their smug deficiencies. Why don't they apply the same ferocity to altering their disgraceful expenses system?
why cant one of morning papers PUT THIS BIG ISSUE ON THE FRONT PAGE AND BRING IT TO EVERYONES ATTENTION AND ON THE TV AND RADIO IT HAS TO BE BROUGHT OUT IN THE OPEN BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE OTHERWISE WE SHALL SEE THE BIGGEST CRIME OF THE CENTERY.
Is there any real hope that people will see sense before this becomes Law? I'd like to hope so, but given the current record of this Government, and the media frenzy over benefit fraud, I doubt it. It's not about people, need or society any more, it's about power, wealth and influence and about surviving! Every man for himself - and that phrase alone is politically incorrect as far as some are concerned - how much more so objecting to a Green Paper trumpetting the setup of a National Care Strategy. Oooer! To add a personal note, it took two tortuous years, a humiliating Tribunal and a barrow-load of paperwork finally to get my £17 a week. But even this paultry sum is very welcome when you are only on a pension. It helps us pay for our car, which I need for my mobility. I have every suspicion that, if this small help is removed from me and millions like me, it will NOT be replaced by adequate help. A further point is this: at present not only physical but psychological needs are awarded disability benefit - exactly HOW will "services" cater for those whose only escape from depression is a friend's lift to the shops once a week?
After reading your website something has just clicked. I have a mentally handicapped brother who has been living for about 20 years in a house behind a hostel and been looked after with medication and cooking etc. by the hostel staff. Now Social Serviceds want to move him out into a house (in a rather rough area of Wolverhampton) and "buy in care" for him. He is very vulnerable, cannot talk on the phone or hold a coherent conversation, and I feel all his outings out and help getting to the day centre will be taken from him. The Social worker said they were going to "buy in" care morning and evening for him. I've just realised Social Services and trying to dump him and the reasons why are set out in the paper I've just read.
As psychiatric survivors/recipients we have enough problems trying to survive on existing benefits.
The administrative costs that the Green Paper ideas
put forward would, in effect, cost government more
than the existing structures.
Here is another cynical cost cutting exercise that will create more chaos, if it is ever implemented,
defeating its own objectives as only governments can.
I have cerebral palsy. I receive high rate of mobility and mide rate of care. Who would be giving the job of dealing with my mobility and care. It would cost more to employer social workers and admin staff. I born disabled.
more and more Teenager are having babies and getting help with benifits etc.
Disabled people can not help being disabilities.
It seems we are going backward regarding supporting disabled people.
I have cerebral palsy. I receive high rate of mobility and mide rate of care. Who would be giving the job of dealing with my mobility and care. It would cost more to employer social workers and admin staff. I born disabled.
more and more Teenager are having babies and getting help with benifits etc.
Disabled people can not help being disabilities.
It seems we are going backward regarding supporting disabled people.
Whats happened to 'FREEDOM OF CHOICE'? Whats happened to everything in the Disability Discrimination Act? Yes, I agree, things are definitely starting to go backwards. Instead of progress to help and support us, its turning into totally the opposite!
I agree with Anthony Scholes this matter really does need to be brought into the open, I only found out about it by reading an article in my friends local paper, she lives in Lincs and I live in London, I had not heard anything about it at all. This must not happen it would be criminal.Does anyone know if there is any kind of petition set up?
If they take my DLA away I will probably have to give up my part time work! It took me two years to get DLA granted and it makes a major difference to my life and my independance. I work for adult social care and know how the budjets are stretched - they could not cope with what is being proposed. Also it would mean once again a 'quango' getting exhorbitant wages to administer the new system and budget. When the budget runs out, what then? We remain prisoners in our own homes, starve? socially isolated! Filthy? This should be front page news so the world knows what is being planned, in my opinion this is discrimination against disabled people!
Good article-make sure that you go on th egreen paper website and make your voice heard.
Thought you maybe interested in
The e-petition against the Disability Living
Allowance (DLA) and =
Attendance Allowance (AA) threat.
http://www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/disability-living
-allowance-%28dla%29/dl=
a-aa-cuts
Petition at
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/AttendanceA/
regards
Mike Dazer
could everyone please sigh the petition to save our AA/DLA? we cant let the government do this..write to your mps,write to Mr.brown himself..anyone who will listen!! make as much fuss as possible!!!
many thanks sue xx
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/AttendanceA/
Thank you for the great article. I am a lone parent and without any further support from ex- husband or family have to survive with my child. She has become my main carer and, guess what, is getting NOTHING for it. The DLA is our means to be able to carry on. For example: My daughter went into secondary education this year. She is attending a normal state school but with very good standards. Sadly this also effects the standard in school clothing, PE equipment and other additional expenses. Even before she started I already had to pay for a school trip. Total costing approx. for just the basic kitting out 300 £ !!! In our local area there is no from the council available at all. The DLA was needed to pay bills because I had to find the money somehow.
And how we supposed to get to appointments without DLA? Roll down the hill? Even shopping on the internet comes with a delivery charge.
We will be unable to afford living on just basic
benefits.
Maybe we all should get on to our local MP. After all they are responsible for changes like this. If they get more and more complaints from their voters, they might act, you never know...
glad someone is taking notice.my husband had his care worker taken off him 5years ago,so i became his carer.i wonder if they will d0 the work for 53 pounds a week.