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In a surprising move, the UK government will not roll out a scheme to provide disabled people with integrated personal budgets after an evaluation found no evidence of improved outcomes.

Incoming minister for disabled people Mark Harper announced the decision not to roll out the Right to Control scheme in a written statement to Parliament last week.

Right to Control was designed to enable disabled people to pool resources from up to six funding streams – adult social care, Supporting People, Independent Living Fund, Disabled Facilities Grant, Work Choice and Access to Work – and exercise choice and control over how the combined budget was spent. It was tested in seven “trailblazer” areas from 2010-2013.

An evaluation published last year found outcomes for people using Right to Control, in relation to choice and control and wellbeing, were similar to people in a control group who were not using the scheme, meaning there was no evidence of positive impact.

The main suggested reasons for the lack of impact was that, in practice, Right to Control did not work as intended, and many service users received the same service they would have done before. 

“While the evaluation of this pilot may not have resulted in any measurable impact on outcomes, it was popular with those individuals who exercised their right to control and they valued the greater flexibilities it gave them. It also acted as a catalyst to developing local relationships and partnerships,” the minister said.

Read a longer article in Community Care

One of LDAS's members has won a very important award for their work on harassment and bullying.  There were  winners of the 2014 Frances Nelson MBE Awards in Tayside.

 Us and Housing are a group of people with learning disabilities who came together in June 2011 at a conference to discuss housing issues. The conference showed that people suffered daily discrimination which led to group to work with Perth & Kinross Council to produce an educational DVD and learning resources to challenge injustice and inequality. The DVD titled ‘It Goes On and On and On’ is a series of short dramas that explore and expose the discrimination faced by people with learning disabilities. A clip from the DVD can be viewed on the TIS website at www.tis.org.uk.

 

An Arbroath family have organised a ‘Loo Tour de Britain’ to follow on from the Tour de France in Yorkshire.  This family have teenage twins, Kelsey and Kein, with muscular dystrophy and require Changing Places toilets.  Their uncle, Grant Speed, has organised the tour to raise awareness of Changing Places toilets and to raise money for the installation of a CP toilet in Arbroath and is cycling from Leeds to Arbroath, starting on Monday July 7th.  

We are looking for volunteers to join the ‘tour’ at Murrayfield, Edinburgh, including the twins mother, Lois, on Friday 11th July at 8am to cycle to the Tay bridge (or as far as you can manage).  

The cyclists will be passing through Fife, stopping at Lochore Meadows for coffee and to publicise the CP toilets in Fife.  

For more details 

 

A week ago the Audit Commission published its report on "Self Directed Support".  It found that there was a mixed picture across Scotland about how well councils were preparing.   As usual in reports of this kind, there were plenty of positive stories about how Self Directed Support is helping people make a change in their lives.  

But there are plenty of other stories which paint a much bleaker picture.   Yesterday LDAS spoke to the mother of John, who has severe autism and learning disabilities.  He actually has a good service right now that helps him live a much better life.  But it does cost a lot.  The local council is now working on a reassessment programme for those who already get services.  John has been given his first indicative budget for planning his care under SDS.  It was a range budget of between 25% adn 50% of the cost of the current service.  

His mum explained that John psychiatrist, his GP and up to last week the social worker had been happy with his current service but on this new budget he would no longer be able to use the service.  Here's a snippet from the conversation. 

Mum:   How did you arrive at this budget for John?

Social Worker:  The computer told us.

Mum:   How did the computer know what was needed to meet John's needs?

Social Worker:  We feed lots of very complicated things into it and then it tell us what is a fair budget.

Mum:   speechless!!!

Only now after Mum getting external help is there a prospect of this budget being changed.  

There used to be an old saying in the early days of computers if the data put into a computer was wrong, then the answer it fed out would also be wrong.  The computer cannot make a judgement, it only produces results.   Such stories as John's rarely make it into official reports but unless they are taken seriously we are storing up problems.  

If we are serious about transforming social care in Scotland we perhaps need to be a little better about thinking about real people and a little bit less obsessed with the latest computer system or spreadsheet.  

 

 

Kingspark School in Dundee opened in 2009 but very quickly concerns emerged.    By 2013, there were 20% more pupils in the school that had been planned. By 2014, it was nearly 140% more – 175 instead of 125. 

In 2010 a new electronic recording system encouraged school staff to see themselves as the victims of attacks by school pupils even where there was no malicious intent such as a child having an epileptic fit whose involuntary hand movements touched a member of staff. 

Recorded “violent” incidents grew from 100 in 09-10 to over 1,000 in the first 6 months of 2013.  But no one seems to have asked what was happening. 

Meanwhile allegations were being made that a small but significant number of children were being illegally restrained or subject to physical abuse. 

One 12 year old child was restrained on the ground  by four teaching and support staff. Bruising and blood spots on his chest indicated that he had been held face down in  what is an illegal hold.   The incident was repeated on two subsequent days.  His mother said “Four teachers held my small epileptic child on the floor till he passed our and urinated. Then they let him go!”

 

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