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| TX: 16.02.06 - Home care for the disabled PRESENTER: LIZ BARCLAY |
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| Downloaded from www.bbc.co.uk/radio4 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. BARCLAY Thousands of disabled people in Wales, who were waiting for the Welsh Assembly to act on its pledge and provide free home care, have been told it won't be happening. The health minister said a specially commissioned report into cost and a row about the definition of who is disabled shows it's unaffordable at the moment. Our disability reporter Carolyn Atkinson is here. Carolyn, explain the background to this. ATKINSON Well the pledge to provide free home care for all disabled people - so that's everybody under 65s and over 65s - was made at the 2003 Assembly election. Now that, not surprisingly, was welcomed by disability groups who said it would help 30,000 disabled people in Wales who were currently paying for their care. Now that is personal care - things like bathing, dressing, toileting - and also home care - things like preparing meals. Now if this had gone ahead it would arguably have gone further than the situation in Scotland because Scotland, at the moment, only provides free personal care for disabled people over the age of 65. BARCLAY There are other big differences between Wales and Scotland too - Wales has more disabled people per head of population. ATKINSON That's right, in fact Wales has more disabled people per head of population than anywhere else in the UK and between 30 and 40% more people claiming disability benefit. Now at the centre of all of this is a report carried out by Professor David Bell from Stirling University, who was asked to work out what it would cost if Wales did go ahead and he is the expert in this area because he's the man who's also recently assessed how Scotland is coping with paying for free personal care. BARCLAY The other key problem in all of this was the defining of the word "disability", that is who is disabled and therefore who would qualify for this free care. ATKINSON Well this was a very tricky one. Traditionally local authorities used the 1948 National Assistance Act to get their definitions of disability, not surprisingly this is arguably very archaic and indeed offensive, they use words like "lame" and "deaf" and "dumb", but that is the fact, that is what is used. Now the Welsh Assembly had not wanted to use those definitions and instead they were going to define disability as being people who receive one of two disability benefits. Those are called attendance allowance and disability living allowance. Now for every person who gets home care in Wales four or five times as many people get those benefits, so clearly that would have massively increased the numbers of people who would have been eligible for this free care if it were ever to be introduced. BARCLAY In our Cardiff studio is Rhian Davies from Disability Wales, who's also chair of the Coalition Against Charging Cymru, which represents a number of groups like Help the Aged. Rhian, what do you think the impact of this decision will be? DAVIES Well I think disabled people are going to be rightly devastated by this news and very angry because the free home care pledge was made by the Assembly government in 2003 and so people - thousands of disabled people, older people and carers, across Wales have been waiting for the last three years for free home care to come in and having to put up with quite a number of anomalies in the current fairer charging guidance. And now to be told that they're not going to get that free home care I think is obviously going to make people very much worse off and having to pay for essential human rights - being able to get out of bed, get washed, get dressed and sort of take part in the life of the community. BARCLAY But if people are assessed as being able to pay then surely they should? DAVIES Well I think - but the thing is that people get community care services because they have a need for those services because they do have support needs and we see those as about people's basic human rights, this isn't a luxury item and this is about just literally being able to get out of bed and being able to live every day independently. So we feel that it is a legitimate cost for the government to pay for. BARCLAY And what evidence is there though that people are not taking up the care they need purely because they can't afford it? DAVIES Well I think this is a very real issue in Wales. Lots of people - I think for two reasons - lots of people could qualify for community care support but because they don't want to face the very intrusive financial assessment which literally goes through people's bank accounts, you have to have receipts for almost everything, prove everything that you spend. So people are quite rightly put off that. But also people if they do go through that assessment then find out what they're going to have to pay often can't afford it because here we're talking about people who generally are on incapacity benefit, they perhaps get disability living allowance, maybe they're on an occupational pension, we're talking about people on very low incomes, maybe £9-10,000 per annum, that's well below the annual average income, certainly in Wales, which is around £22,000 per year. BARCLAY Just briefly Rhian, we heard Carolyn talking about definitions for disability, who had you wanted to be eligible? DAVIES Well we were prepared to accept the definition under the National Assistance Act, and we know it is very archaic, one day we'd like to see a social model definition but that's the simplest definition - that's the gateway to receiving community care, it was perfectly adequate in the context of this policy. BARCLAY Rhian Davies from Disability Wales thank you. We asked both the health minister and his deputy to appear on the programme but they were unable to leave a committee meeting. Carolyn Atkinson is still here. Carolyn, what is the Welsh Assembly saying? ATKINSON Well they say they commissioned this independent report from Professor Bell, costing this policy out, and they say that report highlighted a number of issues which makes the plan for free personal care inequitable and unaffordable at the moment. They say though instead that people will benefit from a £76 million package of support, that's for older people, for disabled people, and they point out for people's carers as well, which will improve services and reduce, they say, the impact of some of this charging on the most vulnerable people and those on very low incomes. Now, for example, they've widened the gap and increased the income that people can be on before they're told that they have to start paying for care. Now as far as this definition discussion goes, which they say - they say whichever definition of disability is used, and there are numbers as we've heard, that the numbers of people who would become eligible for free care would still be too many, whichever definition you use, so therefore there is just no matter at all, it is unaffordable which every definition you use. BARCLAY Carolyn, thank you. Back to the You and Yours homepage The BBC is not responsible for external websites |
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