Comments (8)

By Weasel, August 9, 2009 1:28 pm

I want to take a minute to talk about Attendance Allowance and Disability Living Allowance. These are non-means-tested benefits which help the elderly and disabled to pay the extra costs involved in simply living their lives in the way able bodied people do. They allow people to pay a little extra for informal help and care, help meet extra transport costs (taxis, bus fares, etc), pay for massage therapy and other medical treatments not nessc. covered by the health service and for families like ours, help meet the bills that didn't shrink when our income did, and help keep a few doors open that would otherwise have closed.

these benefits can be awkward to get. Contrary to popular belief, they do require regular medical assessment, sign-off by doctors and an awful lot of paperwork/admin to get hold of. But once you do get them, they're handled on a consistant, national basis with transparent and legally enforceable criteria. There are even official appeals processes in place if you feel you've been unjustly denied. All in all, they could be a lot worse.

And if a recent government green paper, currently in its consultation phase, makes it's way to policy, they may well become so. This document proposes doing away with the Attendance allowance, Care elements of the Disability Living allowance and potentially the whole of the DLA and handing these over to local authorities to administer as part of the social care system. Leaving aside the fact that in my experience, most local authorities couldn't find their own arses with both hands and a roadmap, this removes almost all the transparency and protection from the system. It also puts us in a situation where Disabled People go from managing their own budget acquired via DLA and AA to one where the money is spent on their behalf by social workers as part of the individual care allowance which is, in my opinion, a serious step backward.

(I strongly suspect the admin side of the Social Care system will be completely unable to cope as well. They currently manage social care allowances for around 1.26 million people. 3.82 million recieve DLA and AA currently, so either we're going to see most of the transferred budget soaked up paying for admin costs as the social care system expands to three times its current size, or a lot of people are going to be left sitting by the wayside in poverty).

I am not the most coherent or experienced writer on issues like this, so I encourage you to go and read up about this at the following links:

Adult Green Paper could be catastrophe for diasbility allowance reciipents by Neil Bateman.

DLA and AA Threat at Benefits and Work

DLA and AA under threat by Mary at Batsgirl.blogspot.com