Living not just surviving

Disabled activist talks about winning the battle to save fund allowing people to live independently.

The English Appeal Court has unanimously ruled that the Government misinterpreted the law when it decided to close a £320m ring-fenced fund that supports just under 19,000 disabled people to live independently.

Recipients receive an average £300 a week which helps pay for support to enable them to continue living independently in the community.

On 6 November the three Appeal Court judges decided unanimously that the Government had failed to properly consider disabled people’s views when they made the decision to close the Independent Living 

Fund (ILF) last December.

The Government was planning to reallocate the money to local authorities, who provide most social care support, but the five ILF recipients who brought the case feared that if this happened, councils faced with funding cuts elsewhere, might use the money to support other services. They risked losing some or all of their funding and might have been forced into residential care.

If this happened, the claimants argued, they would lose the ability to participate in work and everyday activities on the same basis as non-disabled people.

In the ruling Lord Justice McCombe, said that if the ILF was closed, ‘independent living might well be put seriously in peril for a large number of people’.

Sue Elsegood, a disabled activist who receives ILF funding to help pay for round the clock support, said she was relieved and elated by the decision.

Speaking to WVoN she said, “The ILF allows me to have a quality of life. It means that I can live. It means I have been able to go to university and do a post graduate counselling course.

“I can participate in the community rather than surviving within four walls. It means being able to visit my parents and my brother and just do day to day activities.

“Without the iLF my life would not be worth thinking about.

“If the ILF closed we may be left with the threat of not having enough support at home and having to go into residential care, which we all know can lead to all sorts of abuse. I was very frightened.”

The Government has indicated that it will not appeal the High Court decision, so the fund will stay open for now.

But Elsegood is clear that disabled people will have to keep fighting for the right to lead a full life.

“We are still having to defend the rights that we won years ago, and I for one am not prepared to see those rights disappear without a fight,“ she said.

She added that disabled people intended to put pressure on the Minister for Disabled People, Mike Penning, to extend the ILF to new applicants and with adequate funding to meet their needs.

But Elsegood, who plays power chair football, said the victory had encouraged some of the young disabled people she plays with.

“Lots of them are not yet old enough to be eligible for the ILF, but they want to know that in the future they can live independent lives as well,” she said.

Story published in Women's Views on News, 20 november 2013.