Disability experts from the University of East Anglia (UEA) are calling for an eleventh-hour turnaround on government plans to close the Independent Living Fund
Together with researchers at the University of Essex, they are also calling for rates of disability benefits for older people to match more closely the costs of living with severe disabilities.
They are presenting two new pieces of research that reveal the true costs of disability and independent living at the House of Lords today.
- The first, ‘Closure of the Independent Living Fund: how is it affecting the users?’, shows that the ILF transfer, scheduled for the end of June, has left disabled people facing uncertainty, vulnerability and stress as a result of poor communication and lack of understanding from local authorities
- The second piece of research shows that older disabled people face a gap between the true costs of their care, and the disability benefits and publicly funded social care they receive, especially at high levels of disability.