This Local Government Association (LGA) consultation kick-starts the debate on how to pay for adult social care and rescue care services from collapse
View LGA paper: The lives we want to lead
View DR UK's reponse to LGA consultation
Sue Bott, Deputy CEO of Disability Rights UK said:
“We welcome the publication of LGA’s Green Paper and this initiative in stimulating the much needed debate on how to overcome the crisis in social care provision.
“That debate should not be confined to how we pay for social care but include its purpose.
“The Independent Living Strategy Group (a grouping of disabled people’s organisations including DR UK chaired by Baroness Campbell of Surbiton says: “People of all ages, who need assistance to go about their daily lives, want to be connected to their communities and to have choices equal to others.
“The best practice that currently goes under the heading of ‘social care’ is about enabling the lives we choose to live. When this is achieved it is the most important thing that our society can do for its citizens. Our public and political debate should therefore be about how do we achieve this because, if we do, all our lives will be improved.”
Disability Rights UK has now responded to this consultation
Highlights from our response
- In our view we need to be looking at people’s whole lives and how we, who need support, can fulfil our aspirations and live in society as equal citizens. We need to go beyond wellbeing to looking at not just having a good quality of life but what we want to do with our lives – what we call independent living.
- Our aspirations for independent living are, therefore, a shared enterprise between disabled people, government and the wider society - and they will only be achieved if policies and their implementation are carried out in partnership with us.
- The amount of support people receive should not be dependent on where you live and the ability of the local authority to scare national government into gifting additional resources. We think there should be a national system that delivers for people wherever they live in England.
- Being able to put that support together in one budget would lead to more choice and control in how we lead our lives, increased efficiency, and improved outcomes in allowing us to determine what our personal priorities are and what would be most effective to reach our aspirations.
- There can only be integration if support, from whatever source, is free at the point of use. Therefore, support should be funded from general taxation.
