UK Government ignores court ruling

...but disabled people vow to fight on.

The UK government has announced that it will go ahead with its planned closure of the Independent Living Fund despite a unanimous ruling in December by the English Court of Appeal.

The Independent Living Fund (ILF) is a £320 million ring-fenced fund which has enabled 16,000 disabled people to employ their own personal assistants and live in the community.

In June 2010 the government closed the fund to new applicants, and in 2012 it announced its intention to close it altogether and reallocate the money to local authorities.

In December the Court of Appeal unanimously ruled that the government had failed to properly consult disabled people over the closure, but earlier this month the Department for Work and 

Pensions announced that it would close the fund in June 2015 anyway.

But Sue Elsegood, an ILF user from London, said disabled people had not given up yet.  Users of the fund intend to discuss their next move at a conference organised by the Disabled People Against Cuts 

group, DPAC, on 12 April.

Elsgood said they would demand the government and a future Labour government keeps the fund open and that it is re-opened to new applicants.

"We want the ILF to stay open because it is working. It is a national scheme. The social workers in the ILF are specialised.

"As a service user I can get more continuity than with the local authority where there is a different person every time," she explained.

"For all we know the funding [when allocated to local authorities] may not be used for current recipients. 

There is a sense of insecurity around the planned closure.  I only got my letter the day before yesterday."

Elsgood said disabled users of the fund feared they would be placed in residential care or forced to rely on agency staff.

"At the moment I employ people directly, so I can choose who I employ and who works for me and when I get that support.

"Everyone should be offered direct payments but if you only have a few hours it can be very difficult to recruit people, so some people are reliant on agencies who have such a turn-over of staff, the quality of support is not as good.

"I am much happier employing my own staff," she said.

Anne Pridmore, one of the five ILF users who took the court action against the government last year agreed.

“We are not going to go down without a fight.

“Quite a lot of people on ILF go to work and they won’t be able to do that.

“I have six or seven women working for me and I feel very responsible because their jobs will end.

“Because I am of a certain age it looks likely that they will stick me in an old people’s home,” she said.

Story published on Women's Views on news, 20 March 2014.

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.

Disabled people slam ‘hypocrisy’ of Paralympics sponsor

Story published on Women's Views on News, August 31, 2012

This week disabled people have been protesting against ATOS, one of the Paralymics’ main sponsors.

WVoN spoke to Ellen Clifford from Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) to find out why.

ATOS, a giant IT company, which holds £3bn worth of contracts with the UK Government, has been carrying out assessments on disabled people who claim Incapacity Benefit.

DPAC say ATOS have wrongly assessed up to 100,000 people as ‘fit for work’. Those wrongly assessed have subsequently been put under pressure to work when they can’t.

This week DPAC has been hosting the ATOS Games, to expose what they see as the hypocrisy of its sponsorship of the Paralympics and to challenge public perception of disabled people as benefit scroungers.

“Focus groups show the public believe benefit fraud amongst disabled people to be 70 per cent, when in reality it is 0.5 per cent.

“The Government is taking benefits away from genuinely disabled people.  It is taking the means of survival from disabled people.

“That’s why numbers of disabled people have taken their own lives in desperation,” said Clifford.

On Wednesday DPAC held a vigil for the dead.

A coffin, filled with over 100 messages from both disabled people who have had work capability assessments and found them traumatic, and families and loved ones of disabled people who have died after being declared ‘fit for work’, was delivered to ATOS’ London offices.

On Monday, DPAC hosted a ‘medal ceremony’ outside London’s City Hall.  Former paralympian Tara Flood had her medals and car keys taken from her and declared no longer disabled by ‘assessors’.

The campaigners are concerned that ATOS has been given a further £400m contract to assess claimants of Disability Living Allowance (DLA), a benefit paid to help disabled people in the UK meet additional living costs.

“The Government wants to reduce the number of DLA claimants by 20 per cent.

“It is arguing that this is about austerity, but there is an economic case for independence,” said Clifford.

Clifford points to a review by the Office of Disability issues, which found that if independent, disabled people could contribute to the economy, pay taxes and employ personal assistants.

“This is an attack on the welfare state and anyone who requires state intervention,” says Clifford.

Clifford is unsure whether the Paralympics will help people understand the daily struggles faced by disabled people.

“It’s always helpful for the movement to have representatives who can break the glass ceiling, showing what people can do physically.

“But it might worsen attitudes towards disabled people who can’t do that, as there is not an understanding of the barriers (the athletes) faced to get there.

“There’s this rhetoric of disabled people as scroungers, and there’s a danger the public won’t connect the two.

“They won’t understand we are actually talking about the same group of people,” she said.

And DPAC is not interested in working in isolation.  On Friday, they will join forces with UK Uncut for an ATOS Closing Ceremony.

“We are linking with other campaigns, unions and the left, which is something we have not done before,” said Clifford.

After the Games, DPAC will host a Pauper’s Picnic and a lobby of Parliament on September 13, in defence of the Independent Living Fund (ILF), which the Government is proposing to close.

The ILF helps 16,000 disabled people meet the costs of personal assistants so they can stay in their own homes and out of residential care.

Another concern for DPAC is education. Clifford believes the Government green paper on Special Educational Needs will increase segregation.

“The emphasis on academies is detrimental to disabled people.  They are notorious for discriminating against disabled people.

“Special schools mean non-disabled people grow up without being around disabled people,” she said.