The document discusses the challenges facing positive social policy in the UK, including cuts to social services and benefits. It argues that cuts disproportionately impact disabled people and other vulnerable groups. The document proposes alternative policy principles focused on citizenship, community support, and equal rights and entitlements. It calls for integrating taxes and benefits to reduce stigma, establishing minimum eligibility levels for support, and constitutional rights to support. The goal is to move away from means-testing and develop a system of "family security" that values social justice.

1. Developing Positive Policy
Proposals
March 2011 Webinar

2. 1. The historical context
2. Cuts & the challenge
today
3. Positive policy
alternatives

3. 1. Our History...
Moving beyond the institutional
walls and building community...

4. There is a long history of
confused policy on
disability and old age...
• Benefit or services?
• Local or central?
• Personalised or
institutional?
But there has been
progress...

5. There is a long history of resistance and
innovation by disabled people and their
allies

10. ‘Personalisation’ is just another name for the long-
term effort to restore citizenship to the many who
lose it through prejudice and institutional responses
‘The technologies of personalisation’ include:
supported employment, supported living, self-
advocacy, citizen advocacy, individual budgets,
person-centred planning, direct payments, self help,
centres for independent living and many more...

11. Six Keys to Citizenship from Keys to Citizenship by Simon Duffy

12. Real Wealth from A Fair Start by Pippa Murray

13. Personalised Transition from Personalised Transition by Alison Cowen

14. I want patients to have far more control over the care they get. So
people with long term conditions get to be part of designing the care
they need. Choosing what suits them - and making it work. For
mental health patients. For pensioners in need of care. For people
with disabilities. It works.
A couple of weeks ago in Sheffield, I met a wonderful woman called
Katrina. She's got three disabled sons. The oldest is Jonathan, a
charming, warm hearted young man of 19. He can't walk or talk
clearly, or feed himself alone. He's had a breathing tube in his neck
since he was a toddler. Under a scheme the new Liberal Democrat
council in Sheffield is extending, Jonathan's just got his own
individual budget and care plan.
Now he's doing work with a local charity, attending a music group,
has his own personal assistant. A child whose potential seemed so
limited. Finally as a young man, engaged in life in a way he and his
mother never thought possible. Katrina told me with the biggest
smile I've ever seen. She said: We've gone from having nothing to
having everything. I wish every child's needs would be taken this
seriously.

15. All this enthusiasm and rhetoric,
but...
• Virtual budgets used to maintain status quo
• Individual budgets bureaucratised and
controlled
• Rationing becoming more obscure, entitlements
weaker
• Commissioners limit choice and market
development
• Advocacy and legal aid slashed
Personalisation is struggling to
survive

16. Reform has always been met with resistance - and that
resistance takes different forms at different stages...
Personalisation will not move forward unless we tackle
the deeper systemic blocks of power, money and
legislation that undermine it.

17. 2. The Unfair Cuts...
what do they mean for disabled
people and other vulnerable
groups?

18. An economic crisis caused by the
bursting of a bubble created by...
• Bankers who benefited from bonuses
• Home owners who benefited from unsustainable
house price increases
• Investors who benefited from unsustainable
profits in finance industry
• Politicians who benefited from the illusion of a
booming economy
Who did not benefit from the bubble?
- the poor and disabled people

19. But where will the cuts fall?
Part 1 - on Local Government services
Local government will face (excluding police and
fire) a cut in funding of 28% from £28.5 to £22.9
billion - in real terms. However approximately £21
billion of local government expenditure is on social
care services (for children and adults). By 2014 - in
order to deliver these cuts - local government will
be forced to:
• Cut £5.9 billion from social care
• Reduce eligibility - 250,000 people will lose vital
supports

20. Where will the cuts fall?
Part 2 - on benefits, income and
housing
The multiple benefit reforms and the creation of a
system of Universal Credit mean final impact is
uncertain in many areas. However government strategy
is to:
• protect and strengthen pensions
• invest more in back to work programmes to reduce
the tax burden on those on the verge of work
• reduce the overall cost of benefits
The only way of squaring this circle is to reduce
spending on disabled people, families and carers.

21. Benefit (£ billions) 10/11 (mn) pc pa
Retirement Pension £72.392 protected 12,509,000 £5,787
Tax Credits £24.000 protected 7,200,000 £3,333
Housing Benefit £21.519 vulnerable 4,750,000 £4,530
Disability Living Allowance £12.467 vulnerable 3,214,000 £3,879
Attendance Allowance £5.436 vulnerable 1,635,000 £3,325
Child Benefit £11.000 questionabl 7,200,000 £1,528
e
Income Support £5.763 vulnerable 1,746,000 £3,301
Pension Credit £7.673 vulnerable 2,664,000 £2,880
Council tax benefits £4.085 vulnerable 5,794,000 £705
Jobseeker’s Allowance £4.841 questionabl 1,402,000 £3,453
e
Carer’s Allowance £1.000 vulnerable 566,000 £1,767
Employment Support £6.869 questionabl 2,469,000 £2,782
e
Allowance + IB
Independent Living Fund £0.200 terminated 21,000 £9,524
TOTAL £177.245
2010-11 Figures from DWP for major benefits - child benefit and tax credits from other sources

22. Examples of cuts already lined up
include:
• a change in indexation of uprating benefits from the
higher Retail Price Index (RPI) or Rossi to the lower
Consumer Price Index (CPI), said to save £6 billion a
year by 2015
• the reassessment of claimants of Disability Living
Allowance (DLA) to drive a 20 per cent reduction in
costs [c. £2.4 billion]
• and the reassessment of Incapacity Benefit (IB)
claimants to move more onto JSA – a plan first
proposed by the previous government and intended
to save £1.5 billion, and which the current
government believes will see 23 per cent of IB
claimants moved to JSA

23. This is a pincer attack on the rights of disabled
people. If we just focus on the 1.5 million people
with the most significant disabilities - they will lose:
• £5.88 billion in social care support
• £1 billion in disability living allowance
• Termination of ILF
• Cuts to Supporting People
• Many further cuts in housing support and other
benefits
So, more than £7 billion of the total £27 billion
(>25%) which government is saving from
departmental budgets is being born by less than 3%
of the population - those who are least able to bear

24. This is an
unprecedented
attack on the
rights of disabled
people
- which must be
challenged

25. And many other cuts will continue to
fall on:
• People with less severe,
but still significant,
disabilities
• People with mental
health problems
• Women suffering
domestic violence
• People not in work
• Refugees and asylum
seekers

26. 3. The future...
beginning to challenge the
third institution: the welfare
system itself

27. There are opportunities,
amidst the madness
• Lets remember and clarify the values that have
helped us make progress
• Lets keep working at the technologies that we
know work,
• But let’s also propose policies and legislation
that will support progress
• And let’s build bridges with other disadvantaged
groups

28. At the heart of our values
Everyone is equal, no matter their differences or
disabilities. A fair society sees each of its members as a
full citizen - a unique person with a life of their own. A
fair society is organised to support everyone to live a
full life, with meaning and respect.

29. Seven key principles...
1. Family - we give families the support they need to
look after each other.
2. Citizenship - we are all of equal value and all have
unique and positive contributions to make.
3. Community - we root support and services in local
communities.
4. Connection - we all get chances to make friends
and build relationships.
5. Capacity - we help each other to be the best that we
can be.
6. Equality - we all share the same basic rights and
entitlements.

30. Good work must continue

31. But current policy must be
challenged
• Weak entitlements - eligibility thresholds high and
rising, housing rights weak, legal rights weak - the
cuts demonstrate the fragility of the current system
• Super-taxation for disabled people - means-
testing, charging
• Poverty traps - benefit systems that punish
families, savers, earners and disabled people
• Weakened families - support focused on
crises,family control undermined, families
disrespected
• Imprisonment for many - up to 20,000 people
with learning difficulties in prison, 7,000 with IQ
less than 70 and many more people with mental
health problems

32. Instead
1. Integrate tax and benefits - remove stigma and
complexity
2. Take means-testing out of benefits - we’ve
already paid our taxes... we don’t need extra taxes
on vulnerable people
3. Define minimum level of eligibility for all -
transparently define a level sufficient for
citizenship
4. Constitutional rights to support and control -
clear law that can be tested and protected
5. Fix a robust organisational framework - escape
the era of ‘organisational fixes’

33. A system of ‘family security’ is
necessary

34. Current system panders to the swing
voter and median-earner...

35. Current system undermines local
democracy and centralises power
From Women at the Centre (forthcoming) by Simon Duffy & Clare Hyde

36. Can we build the necessary bridges?
• Avoid blaming local government, instead make
alliance with local government
• Avoid falling back on a defence of ‘services’,
even when services are not the answer - we
need rights
• Build an alliance across and beyond ‘disability’
• Connect to the general public’s common-sense
understanding of fairness and social justice

37. www.campaignforafairsociet
y.org
The Centre for Welfare Reform
The Quadrant, 99 Parkway Avenue,
Parkway Business Park
Sheffield, S9 4WG
T +44 114 251 1790 | M +44
7729 7729 41
admin@centreforwelfarereform.org
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