What the politicians have promised and what campaigners want

Labour

• Personalised budgets in social care where people can decide
  what they need and how it should be provided.
• Investment in, and improvement of, mental health services
  including behavioural therapies as well as drug treatments.
• Appropriate resources and support from trained staff for
  children with special educational needs in a mixture of mainstream
  schools and special schools.
• Services designed to meet the needs of disabled children and
  their families.
• Incapacity benefit reforms, under which people with the most
  severe conditions will receive more money than they do now.

Conservative

• Expansion of respite care to make looking after a relative
  easier.
• Introduction of a Mental Health Bill giving patients the right
  to choose the treatment they need and a pledge to protect civil
  liberties.
• Expansion of the number of psychiatric care places for
  adolescents.
• Suspension of the closure of special schools.

  Liberal Democrats

• Appropriate training for all teachers and teaching assistants
  working with children with special educational needs.
• Encouragement of the take-up of direct payments and greater
  support for service users, such as help with financial
  administration.
• Introduction of a £200 winter fuel payment for people with
  severe disabilities.
• Introduction of a single equality act.

Scope

• A guarantee that all disabled people will have control over
  their day-to-day lives.
• A guarantee that disabled children will have the right to
  mainstream education.
• Practical support to disabled people seeking employment. Better
  access to justice through establishment of equality tribunals.
• An extension of anti-discrimination legislation to cover all
  public transport.

Mencap

• A review of the disabled facilities grant, used to pay for
  essential adaptations to their properties, to abolish means testing
  when being used for children.

Rethink

• Increased access to, and reduced waiting times for, mental
  health services.
• Protected spending of primary care trust funds on mental health
  services.
• New mental health legislation giving people access to mental
  health care when and how they need it.
• An increase in annual spending on countering the stigma
  attached to mental health in England from the current 1.5 pence a
  head of the population to 36 pence a head within five years.