Charity axes disabled support staff

Sunil Peck

Charity and service provider Leonard Cheshire Disability (LCD) looks to have pulled back on two of its major commitments to disabled people.

Users of LCD services and those employed to support them have been left “angry and “betrayed” by the charity’s plans to close its service user support team in the face of a commitment made last year to involve service users when deciding how it spends its income.

But the service users’ network association (SUNA) says that it has not been consulted about the proposals to close the support team.

The support team has 30 staff who are employed by LCD, of whom 26 are disabled. Disability Now understands that all the posts in the support team are at risk and that only five new posts, which would not be reserved for disabled people, would be created.

These cuts come at a time when disability charities are trying to lead by example by increasing the number of disabled staff they employ.

One service user said that LCD’s plans reflected a lack of awareness of the work the support team had done to transform disabled people’s lives.

The source added that LCD had benefitted financially from its support team because people had been attracted to choose and pay for LCD services because of the added level of support it provided.

But the source added: “Because there will be a lack of support from the service user support team, the service users network will fall apart in two to three years, because there will be nobody to train and bring any new people through.”

The service users support team provides one-to-one peer support to develop users’ confidence and skills, in addition to supporting users with learning difficulties and communication impairments to access LCD’s services and external services like counselling and mentoring for people who wish to live independently.

Another SUNA source added: “If you wanted to put a compliment or complaint in and didn’t know how to do so, the support team would be there to act as your advocate. Users will lose their voice without the service user support team.”

An LCD spokesman told Disability Now that the charity’s proposals had been prompted by “financial pressures”.

“Voluntary income from individuals and business has fallen during the recession and there is no sign yet that charitable giving is set to improve.”

A support team source said the team accepted that cuts had been inevitable, but there was nevertheless a mood of resentment and anger at the way LCD was handling the situation.

“The organisation had a strategic review last year which involved numerous people being made redundant. Our team was kept out of that process and were promised that there would be a full and in-depth six-month review of the team’s work. That meant that all the new jobs available as part of the strategy were only open to people at risk of redundancy. Now we are at risk there are very few jobs open to us.”