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http://www.benefitsa.../dla-threat-faq
DLA threat FAQ PDF Print Email
What exactly is the Green Paper about?
The green paper is about the problem of paying for care as the UK’s population ages. It proposes setting up a National Care Service, like the National Health Service, to provide a universal system of care throughout the UK. Much of the document is devoted to discussing how to pay for this service, including:
making everyone pay a flat rate of £25,000 before or after they die, whether they ever need care or not; or
making everyone over retirement age pay into an insurance scheme; or
making people pay for part of their care depending on their means.
This is in addition to the proposal to take disability benefits off claimants and hand them over to the care service.
The National Care Service would only deal with your care needs. If you had to go into residential care you would still have to pay for accommodation, heating, lighting, food, clothes, toiletries, etc.
But at least under this system everyone would have the right to the care they need, even though it might mean getting rid of disability benefits, right?
No, not at all. Everyone would have the right to have their care needs assessed but only the most severely disabled would actually receive any care.
The way it would work is that under the National Care Service everyone in the UK would have their care needs assessed using the same criteria wherever they live. This might be done by a national body – it’s easy to imagine a company like Atos who currently do benefits medicals being employed to do the assessments – or it might be done by local social services departments all working to the same system.
As a result of the assessment, some people would be awarded a ‘personal budget’ – a cash amount that could be used to meet their needs. Many people, however, would receive no care whatsoever, because their care needs would be below the threshold set nationally or by individual local authorities.
For example you might be assessed as needing help with washing, dressing and undressing because of arthritis. But you’d be very unlikely to actually get this help from the National Care Service. Resources would be reserved for those with higher needs than yours.
One of the concerns of disability agencies, including RNIB, is that many people who are currently entitled to DLA or AA would not be entitled to a personal budget from the National Care Service. At the moment, most local authorities do not currently provide help for people who ‘only’ need help with washing and dressing.
Still, those with the highest care needs would be able to purchase whatever they wanted with their personal budget, wouldn’t they?
No, not at all. How the budget would be spent would depend on what agreement individuals were able to reach with a social worker.
If you have ME/CFS, for example, you may rely on your DLA or AA to pay for alternative therapies such as acupuncture, homeopathy, herbalism or chiropractice or you may use it to pay for dietary supplements that you know help you. However, professionals may dismiss these as quack remedies and you may not be able to use your personal budget for those sort of things. It wouldn’t be your cash to spend as you choose, in the way that DLA and AA are.
Won’t there be some sort of transitional relief for current claimants?
Yes, there may be. But you might not like it.
One proposal is to ensure that all current claimants get a care package of at least the value of their current disability benefits payments. But the amounts paid for DLA and AA wouldn’t get you very much care.
Middle rate care DLA and lower rate AA are worth £47.10 a week, for example. This might get you help with washing and dressing in the morning and getting into bed at night for two, or at the most three days a week. The other four or five days you’d have to manage alone.
If your care needs are at night, your benefits would pay for one night a week for someone to sleep in your house and not even a single night for someone to stay awake.
Lower rate DLA wouldn’t pay for even two hours of care a week. In fact it might not get you any hours at all, but instead be used to pay for aids or adaptations.
A government green paper has revealed plans to stop paying disability benefits and hand the cash over to social services instead. The consultation period for the green paper ends on 13 November. If there has been no significant outcry against the plans by then, it seems very likely that whichever party is in power after the next election will seize this opportunity to cut public spending by over a billion pounds a year. Although the actual changes may take years to be brought in, it is what happens between now and November 13th that is likely to seal the fate of attendance allowance and disability living allowance.
The Shaping the Future of Care Green Paper published by the DWP and the Department of Health on 14th July sets out government plans to get rid of attendance allowance and, depending on public reaction, also leaves the way clear to end the care component of disability living allowance.
Initially, the response from many disability organisations was muted or non-existent.
This is in spite of the fact that a report in November 2008 by the Institute for Social and Economic Research warned that taking DLA and AA from claimants and making it part of a ‘personal budget’ administered by social services will leave millions of disabled people worse off and with less independence.
Since they have been deluged with emails from campaigners, however, most disability organisations have now realised the importance of representing their members interests on this issue. This includes the Disability Benefits Consortium, who have given an undertaking to oppose any cuts in disability benefits.
The lack of initial protest was caused at least in part by ministers deliberately choosing ambiguous terms for their plans. The green paper refers only to cutting ‘disability benefits, for example Attendance Allowance’. Some organisations with predominantly younger members clearly believe that because DLA isn’t specifically named, that therefore it isn’t in the firing line.
But they are forgetting all the deception and weasel words that have surrounded the introduction of employment and support allowance. For example, ministers said that ESA would be paid at a higher rate than incapacity benefit. In fact, it turned out that cuts in related premiums mean that many people are very much worse off on ESA than they would have been on incapacity benefits.
The reality is that if the government was intending to axe only AA it would have said so clearly, instead of deliberately and repeatedly using the term ‘disability benefits’ to cause uncertainty and confusion. Writing on Rightsnet, Neil Bateman, a respected welfare benefits consultant who also writes for Community Care magazine argued:
“Based on what I heard last week at the DWP Policy and Strategy Forum, both DLA and AA are in the DH's [Department of Health’s] sights and DWP are closely, involved in these developments.”
Even Paul Treloar, until recently Disability Alliance’s Director of Policy and now Head of Information at Gingerbread, wrote that:
“From what I understand at the moment, it is certainly attendance allowance that is being considered for the chop and reallocation to means-tested social care provision via local authorities - but given that the ultimate aim is to come up with a comprehensive and sustainable system of social care for all ages, it's difficult to see how DLA care component won't be similarly up for inclusion, in my opinion.”
Here at Benefits and Work, we’re convinced that the threat to DLA as well as AA is very real and the that time to act is short.
As a result, we’ve launched our own campaign to save these vital benefits. So, if you think that Disability living allowance and attendance allowance are benefits worth fighting for, then please fill in the boxes below.
You don’t need to be a claimant – you might be a carer or support worker, for example – and you don’t need to be a subscribing member of Benefits and Work. You also don’t have to send any emails if you choose not to and you can remove yourself from the list at any time you wish. And, of course, we will never pass your details on to anyone else under any circumstances (other than to www.icontact.com who manage our mailing list for us).
On the other hand, if you think that here at Benefits and Work we’re just being doom and gloom mongers and that only attendance allowance is really under threat then please consider this:
If we let them get away with this, if we all look the other way as one and a half million sick and disabled pensioners have their attendance allowance stolen from them and are plunged into deepest poverty, how long do you honestly think it will be before the government comes back to steal your benefits as well?
And who will you ask to speak out for you in the future, if you remain silent now, just because you don’t think this affects you?
It’s time to make your voice heard: sign up for the No More Benefits Cuts campaign now
http://www.benefitsa...la)/dla-aa-cuts
Edited by wheelywendy, 18 September 2009 - 11:05 AM.
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