Anger as ILF changes threaten independent living

Sunil Peck 

The Independent Living Fund's (ILF's) decision to restrict new applications for financial support to disabled people who work more than 16 hours a week undermines the government's commitment to advancing equality, campaigners claim.

The ILF is funded by the Department for work and Pensions (DWP) and at present provides money for claimants between 16 and 65 with high support needs regardless of whether or not they work and who receive local authority support worth more than £320 a week.

But changes are being introduced that mean that from May 1, the ILF will only accept new applications from people who are in paid work for more than 16 hours a week.

Jim Elder-Woodward, Convenor of the user-led project Independent Living in Scotland, accepts that cuts are inevitable in the current economic climate. But he says that the changes will bring about a contradiction that could have been avoided if disabled people had  been consulted about changes.

He said: "Local authorities are prioritising very severely disabled people who have no real chance of getting a job because of the extent of their impairment. But the ILF are only interested in supporting those people who can work for more than 16 hours a week."

Rachel Hurst, Director of Disability Awareness in Action, said that the fact that the ILF was making changes without consulting disabled people showed that despite its rhetoric, the government was not interested in co-production or personalisation for disabled people.

She said: "I am angry, frustrated and sad that disabled people are the butt of cost-cutting exercises from government."

In 2007 an independent review criticised the ILF for a lack of user involvement and lack of accountability and transparency in the ways it made decisions.

Commenting on the new changes to eligibility criteria, Sue Bott (pictured), Director of the National Centre for Independent Living, said: "I'm really very angry about this. This completely goes against the review of the ILF which the government seems to have shoved aside because it raises too many difficult questions."

She warned that the changes would be "devastating for disabled people".

A spokesman for the ILF told Disability Now that the decision to restrict eligibility for new applicants had been prompted by the rising costs of existing users' care packages.

He said that existing claimants were the ILF's first priority and that they would not be affected even if they did not meet the employment requirements for new applicants.

The ILF is also increasing the threshold sum that local authorities are required to meet in order to access ILF funding, and for increases to existing users care packages, from £320 to £340 a week.