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 | You and Yours - Transcript BBC Radio 4 |
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| TX: 22.11.05 - Disability budgets PRESENTER: JOHN WAITE |
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| THE ATTACHED TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT. BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF MISHEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE BBC CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY. WAITE Now disability organisations have always claimed that when it comes to knowing what services disabled people need the best people to ask are disabled people themselves. And at last this theory's being put to the test. This week 13 local authorities have been given over two and half million pounds of government money to trial the idea of individual budgets, where the client decides how the money allocated to their care should actually be spent. Now Peter, as the BBC's Disability Affairs Correspondent, in your view how significant a step is this? WHITE Well at this stage, John, more significant in terms of attitude I think than of the numbers of people involved. It's really a development of a direct payments idea that we've talked about before on You and Yours. That's where usually quite severely disabled people are given the money directly so they can hire and fire their own personal assistant, have independence in other words. The idea behind individual budgets that this could include a far larger range of people and it could be applied to every aspect of their care - help in the home, meals on wheels - it could even cross boundaries to include other departments, such as education. WAITE So how does the system actually work? WHITE Well you're not actually handed a brown envelope stuffed with notes, for a start. You're given your resource allocation, which in plain English means the money you can spend. And then as I understand it it's more or less up to you to spend it the way you think fit. Somebody who's already tried it is Caroline Tomlinson in Wigan. Her 17-year-old son Joseph has learning disabilities as a result of childhood meningitis and she feels that the control the system has given her has made a huge difference to Joseph's life, both at home and at college. TOMLINSON In the past we were actually told what type of support we were going to be given and we were given it and we had to put up and shut up. With this system I feel that Joseph's been treated as an equal citizen. He now has a team of five people who he's chosen to work with him. Previous to this he might have had about 13, 14 different people, just in one day. WHITE I gather one difference is literally how he gets to and from college. TOMLINSON Oh absolutely. I mean one of the super things that has happened from it is that one of the things that we asked other young people was how they got to college and where they made their friends, I think, which was really important. You know they talked about catching the bus and sitting with your friends on the bus etc. So now his support starts at home, he gets on an ordinary bus meeting members of his community and travels to college like that. People are saying hello to him and he's really making himself known within the community and people are really getting to know him as an individual. We've got him a bus pass, so he gets free transport and we just pay for his personal assistants to actually get on the bus. So all in all it works out cheaper than a taxi and an escort and sitting in traffic for lots of lengths of time really. WHITE Caroline Tomlinson, who also says that by transferring Joseph from a special school outside of the local authority to a mainstream one inside she's also saved Wigan a lot of cash, around £60,000. WAITE So is that the attraction Peter, from the government's point of view - that it's cheaper? WHITE Well I don't think anybody really knows for sure at the moment whether it's going to cost more or less. Though some of the in control projects, which have been started, which are aimed at people with learning disabilities, they have proved to be cheaper in general. It's certainly in keeping with the government's stated aim to put disabled people more in control of their lives and that ties in, I think, with the determination to get as many people back into work as possible and therefore off benefits. There are also some people who suspect that somewhere down the road the government might be thinking of trying to use some of the benefits disabled people already get and they're so worried about the cost of, at the moment people receive money for their disability living allowance, and incapacity benefit and once it's there - once it's gone into their bank - then it's up to them how they spend it, there have always been rumours the government would like to tap into that money at some point to help pay for services. I asked health minister, Liam Byrne, what he thought the idea behind individual budgets was. BYRNE Well what we've noticed is that when people have the chance to personalise their own care they're able to put in place a range of support that very often quite literally change their lives. So what we want to do is try and give that opportunity to as many more people as we can. WHITE Now there's no new money for this, the money that you've put up is for people to explore these schemes but could this not be the victim of its own success, I mean the fact of what are you going to do if everybody wants to use this kind of method? BYRNE Well no what's interesting about the in control pilots, and I would stress that we didn't have an enormous evidence base, but what was interesting about those is that very often the total amount of resources that were being spent actually went down, often quite significantly. I mean a good example was a story that somebody told me on Monday when we launched these in Oldham, and he told a story about his son who was in the mental health system, was consuming a package of about two and half, three thousand pounds a week, actually he was able to use direct payments to bring his son home and put in place a package of care that was far more appropriate for his son and now actually his son is only consuming about an hour's worth of support from social services a week. Now we're not going to hear stories like that for everybody but it's just interesting that where this has been tried actually the amount of money that's needed has gone down. WHITE Given the long term concern expressed over the amount of money spent on benefits for disabled people, things like incapacity and disability living allowance, some people suspect that in time there'll be a temptation to tie in the funding of this with these disability benefits. Is this yet another attempt perhaps in the long time to get the benefit budget down or at least control how the money's spent? BYRNE Well the benefit budget will come down if more people are given the chance to increase their skills and go back to work but very often that will be exactly what many people want themselves in order to live a more full and fulfilling life. Now when we add up how much we spend on social care, how much we spend on related benefits, we very quickly get to a number of about £20-25 billion and I think there is an important question for all of us, which is that are we spending the money in the right way, are we genuinely allowing people to personalise their own care in a way that helps them become a full member of society and lead fulfilling lives - that's the real question here. WHITE So is that a yes then, you might well consider in the longer term using these benefits as part of this cash stream for people's health? BYRNE Well no I mean that's not the plan at the moment. What I would say is that what we are interested in is reducing the red tape and paper chase that people have to go through. So very often people have to apply to different agencies for different sorts of benefits and one of the important wins that I think there is, is just simplifying assessments, so that it's much easier for somebody just to go to one or two places in order to access a much bigger range of payments. You know when we did the research on this we identified over 25 different income streams from across government which could be put into an individual budget. In this first pilot we're putting in six income streams. I mean you can just imagine the red tape that's involved in going between different agencies to access that at the moment. WHITE But you did say that's not the plan at the moment, does that mean it could be in the future? BYRNE Well that'll be a decision for future governments and administrations I think. These pilots are going to run for the next couple of years. WHITE Liam Byrne, thank you very much indeed. BYRNE Thanks very much. Back to the You and Yours homepage The BBC is not responsible for external websites |
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