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Care cuts threaten Disabled people’s right to independent living [1]

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Date: 2023-11

“Imagine you need some support to use the toilet and knowing that every time you're going, you are creating more debt that they’re going to chase you for.” That’s the reality, says Rick Burgess, for the 60,000 Disabled people local authorities brought debt proceedings against last year.

Because, for many Disabled people in the UK, social care is now a paid-for service, forcing us to pay a tax on impairment. Often, we are chased and hounded to pay for even the most basic support.

And this support, explains Burgess, a co-founder of Manchester Disabled People Against Cuts, typically lacks “the essential part of independent living” – the principle that Disabled people are entitled to the same control over choices in their lives as anyone else.

The situation is only likely to worsen in years to come. The average UK council faces a £33m deficit by 2025-26, a rise of 60% from £20m two years ago, according to a BBC investigation. The country’s largest union, Unison, has warned that local authorities might not be able to offer Disabled people the “legal minimum of care” as soon as next year.

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Care in the UK is based on a ‘medical model’ that frames the body or mind of a Disabled person as something that needs to be ‘fixed’. It suggests that ‘typical abilities’ are superior and that physical or mental impairments should be ‘cured’ with the help of an outside force.

This model means officials at local authorities in search of quick savings will feel able to resort to regressive, ableist policies that place us into residential care where they can meet our ‘needs’ and save costs, without regard to our independence or choice.

After a decade of austerity policies, we are already in dangerous territory. Grim research by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism found that deaths of people receiving social care support in their homes increased in England by nearly 50% between April 2020 and March 2021.

Just this week, the Homecare Association, a trade body representing homecare providers in the UK, reported that half of the 225 homecare agencies it surveyed had experienced a 25% fall in the number of hours of care that councils commissioned them to provide. This is despite demand for care growing, with the latest census showing that 1.2 million people aged 10 to 24 in England and Wales now declare themselves Disabled – more than double the number a decade earlier. A third of respondents to Homecare’s questions said they thought the decrease in commissioned hours was due to councils’ squeezed budgets.

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[1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/oureconomy/disabled-rights-social-care-independent-living-budget-cuts-campaign/

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