Staying home: cuts hit those in care

The decision to scrap the mobility component of DLA for people in residential care not only ignores needs, says Peter White, but flies in the face of reality

Joe Coffin uses the mobility component of his Disability Living Allowance (DLA) in many ways: to get to his further education class, go shopping on his own, or meet friends for the odd drink.

Sometimes the care home where he lives lets him use its minibus, paid for partly by part of Joe’s and other residents’ DLA. When the bus isn’t available, Joe may get a taxi, but he’s also confident enough to use public transport.

Deaf and blind, Joe does have some hearing but some of his friends are both totally blind and profoundly deaf, and going on public transport without someone to accompany them is a pretty tough challenge.

You’d have thought that if anyone was entitled to a benefit meant to help people preserve some independ­ence by funding their own travel, it would be Joe and his friends. And yet the Government has decided to withdraw the payment of the mobility component of DLA for people in residen­tial care, to bring them in line with people in hospital who don’t receive it.

We’re still waiting for more details of welfare reform but the thrust was clear in George Osborne’s Comprehensive Spending Review speech.

It’s an interesting move, putting care homes on a par with hospitals, because it suggests that all the talk of “independence” and “self-determination” will count for nothing in the current climate of scythe-swinging.

It may be a good moment to remind Messrs Osborne, Duncan-Smith, et al, that it was their party, under a Mrs Thatcher, that introduced the policy of community care, to try and get people out of institut­ions wherever possible.

When questioned on this, the Government says that “assessed care needs should be met by local authorities’ contracts with care homes”, and refers to the two billion they say they’re putting into social care. The problem is, this money isn’t ring-fenced; in any case, getting money to meet your “assessed needs” is a million miles from exercising control over your own money.

By making residential care equate to hospitals, the Government is implying that there’s been “double-accounting”: that they’ve been paying for people’s care twice. They seem oblivious to the fact that people like Joe are contributing part of their mobility allowance to residential homes to fund their travel needs. It’s hardly surprising, when people see these kind of decisions, that they ask where on earth we’re going. It feels like backwards!

Old English proverb: give a novice a scythe, and innocent bystanders like Joe Coffin beware!