Unable to apply for Independent Living Fund – Barry and Natassia’s stories

After a long wait the day for the court hearing re Independent Living Fund is now here. Full details about the hearing and vigil can be found here.

There will also be an interview shown on Ch4 news at 7pm March 13th.

Please show your support throughout the afternoon by sharing these details as wide as possible. A few attending will hopefully be tweeting using hashtag  #ILF

I am Barry McDonald, I am 28 years old. I am a wheelchair user. I enjoy watching football and going out to the pub with my friends. I do a lot of volunteering around sports and improving services for Deaf and disabled people. I am ambitious as I have life goals I want to achieve: to be in a long term paid job, to move out on my own and to be in a position where I can be actively involved in doing all I can to improve services provided for disabled people and working towards a world that can one day be fully accessible for all.

I can’t do these things on the level of support I get from my local authority. I receive 45 minutes of social care per day for personal care. I receive nothing for domestic, social or leisure activities because my local authority will only fund support for basic personal care needs.

As a young person the hardest thing I find is not being able to

DAY 7 – Independent Living Fund, Kathys story

Kathy’s  Story

Without a Personal Assistant my quality of life would be greatly diminished.  I suffer from clinical depression, and become very lethargic and inclined to withdraw into myself and miss meals, if alone for long periods and unable to get out.  My deaf blindness makes me feel very isolated and I am unable to deal with paperwork mail and form filling without assistance.

Having a PA helps me to access local services such as Doctor’s, Dentists and hospital appointments, also to the bank and library. It enables me to take exercise like swimming; or shopping for food,  and clothes as one needs to be told what is there in order to make  choices.  I need someone to guide me to a place:  to get drinks and find toilets: to interpret what is being said in noisy environments or if people have accents.

I need assistance to make phone calls because of dexterity problems as well as not being able to hear.

I want to participate in meetings, and also be enabled to socialize with friends or other groups

I have little useful sight which is blurred, so it is not safe to go out alone to avoid hazards which I don’t see, both inside and out and to prevent falling, because my balance is poor, so I use an assisted wheelchair and sometimes a walking stick with support from my PA.

My PA also assists with meal,  personal care and domestic chores, with choosing clothes which match and saying if they are stained.

It is important to me to gain knowledge which involves reading study material and visiting places of interest; the theatre or cinema.  I feel it is important to stimulate my brain, as my short-term memory sometimes lets me down and I can’t remember where things are and occasionally need reminding of things I need to do.

This overview is by no means exhaustive, but shows the importance of PA’s in all aspects of my life.  I have suffered from mental illness and dread slipping into that downward spiral of self neglect and deeper depression.

Please allow me to keep my PA’s and lead a more balanced and fulfilled life than would be possible without their support.  In order to have this I need financial assistance, which has been possible through the ILF. Those who administer the service have an understanding of the needs of participants whereas other agencies may not.

Also with the government cut backs, there is no guarantee that necessary funding will be available from Local Authorities.

Further information of court hearing can be found here

 

 

DAY 3 – John, Paul and Evonne’s Independent Living Fund story

Ahead of the court case in London on March 13th 2013, several disabled people are sharing their stories of how the Independent Living Fund has such a positive impact on their lives.

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John, Paul and Evonne’s story

Through support from the Independent Living Fund my step son John is able to enjoy a much more independent way of life, than would otherwise be possible. He can at the moment, go out & access his local community and feel part of society and valued as a person. He is a young man of 30 who wants to continue to live at home and have the best possible chance of some Independence in his life. His mother has been able to set up her own small florist’s market business because the support John receives through the ILF means she does not have to support him full time.

The support John receives now through the ILF is working for him and for our family.

John stays with me now every weekend from 3pm on Friday to 9pm on Monday, which allows Evonne to work the market and to go to the wholesalers too. I also go over several evenings and mornings to bath and shower John. Because of the ILF John gets to

Update – Campaign for Benefit Justice

.Come and have your say (details here)

7pm   Thursday 14^th February 2013

at Camden Town Hall, Council Chamber

Judd St, WC1H 9JE

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UPDATE

Further information received. Please share with your networks.

Campaign for Benefit Justice

Cuts in benefit are an unjust attack on the poor and they must stop. People are already being driven into debt, hunger and homelessness. From April millions more will be hit by the Bedroom tax, cuts in council tax benefit, ending Disability Living Allowance and further vicious cuts. In one of the richest countries in the world, the rise of food banks, destitution and poverty is not acceptable. People receiving benefits did not cause the banking and economic crisis and we do not accept them being scapegoated to pay for it.

The Campaign for Benefit Justice, a network of grassroots campaigns fighting the Tory attacks invites

DPAC and Inclusion London Press Release on the Closure of the Independent Living Fund

Received from DPAC and InclusionLondon

Disabled people with the highest support needs have been left in fear and distress as they face the prospect of being denied the right to have Christmas in their own homes following a government decision announced this week to abolish a key source of independent living support.

The government decision to close the Independent Living Fund and instead devolve responsibility to local authorities follows a consultation that disabled people claim is unlawful and on which an urgent hearing has been scheduled by the High Court to go ahead on 13/14 March 2013.

Kevin Caulfield Chair Hammersmith & Fulham Coalition against Community Care Cuts said,

EDM 651: Independent Living Fund

Received from DPAC

Katy Clark has just launched another EDM on the ILF so it would be really helpful if people can pass this onto contacts and get people and organisations to ask their MPs to sign up to it.

If you have a website could you advertise it there as well please.

EDM 651: Independent Living Fund

That this House deplores the Government’s proposal to close down theIndependent Living Fund which currentlyfacilitates 19,373 of those with the highest support needswith theright to live in the community with choices equal to others, and their full inclusion and participation in the community, as anticipated by Article 19 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities; regrets that the Government proposals to transfer the responsibilities of providing this support to local authorities and devolved administrations contain no commitment to maintain the current level of support, which will inevitably lead to an increasein isolation and segregation for many adults and the loss of independence and unnecessary admission of many others into residential care; believes the recent consultation on the issue lacked detail and based its assertions on outdated research; and calls on the Government to review this regressive step and look at ways of expanding the Independent Living Fund to provide needs-based support to all adults in the UK who require it.

Sponsors: Clark, Katy/ Durkan, Mark / Gilmore, Sheila / McDonnell, John / Ritchie, Margaret

House of Commons / Date tabled: 29/10/2012
Put your MP to work  – demand they sign EDM 651

Early Day Motions are very good ways of raising issues in parliament, which may not get debated in normal sittings of parliament.

You can contact your MP for free, through: WriteToThem.Com

http://www.writetothem.com/

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Please sign Pats Petition

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/20968

and then share asking others to do the same

 

 

Legal challenge to government plan to close the Independent Living Fund

Received from DPAC  

click here for full press release

A judicial review has been launched to challenge the DWP consultation on closing the Independent Living Fund (ILF).  Six disabled claimants who receive support from the ILF have started judicial review proceedings to challenge the consultation, which closed on 12 October.

 

 

PAUPERS’ PICNIC for INDEPENDENT LIVING

Received from DPAC

SEPTEMBER 13^th 2pm CENTRAL HALL, HOUSE OF COMMONS

MEET 1.30pm- 1.45pm at College Green, Abingdon Street if you want to go in as a group.

We hope to organise a meeting with MPs before the lobby but even if we can’t do this due to the summer recess we will be lobbying MPs and then having another picnic in the Central Hall. Please bring plenty of bread and water to eat and share. We then hope to make a visit to another relevant building nearby.

“The Independent Living Fund is a ring fenced resource, for disabled people with high support needs that can provide a better lifestyle and outcomes for service users whose full needs would not be met by local authority funding. “

Unlike local authority and health care funding which tends to focus simply on keeping disabled people alive and clean the funding available from ILF helps disabled people to take part in society on an equal basis to non-disabled people.

In 2010 Maria Miller, minister for Disabled People announced ILF was unsustainable and it was immediately closed to new applicants. It is planned to close completely from 2015 with no replacement funding put in place to provide this vital support to those with the most complex support needs. There is currently a very unsatisfactory consultation taking place about the future of ILF funding.

We must make it clear that we will not be silenced by this government’s injustices nor will we simply disappear.

To lobby your MP you need to go to the House of Commons visitor’s entrance and fill out a green card or contact your MP beforehand and tell them you want to lobby them about keeping the Independent Living Fund and why it is important to you.

You can find your MPs contact details at www.parliament.uk or you can write to them at House of Commons< London, SW1A 0AA.

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Over 41,000 people have supported Pat’s Petition.Have YOU and your contacts?

Please sign and share asking others to do the same

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DPAC and Independent Living Fund

The Future of the Independent Living Fund (ILF)

This consultation  seeks views on the impact that closing the Independent Living Fund (ILF) in 2015 would have on users, local authorities and the wider care and support systems across the UK. The Government would also like your views on how closure could be managed in a way which would minimise disruption to the care and support needs of existing ILF users.

DPAC are campaigning strongly about this. See further details below and on their website here

Responses to ILF consultation

The Failing Local Authority Care System

How Henwood and Hudson 2007 fails to provide adequate justification for closure of the Independent Living Fund

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Condem Government set to Strip Disabled Peoples’ Basic Human Rights

Received from Linda Burnip   at DPAC

The government’s ill-thought through plans to scrap the Independent Living Fund (ILF) from 2015 will not only wreck disabled people’s lives but potentially push them into residential institutions rather than being able to live in the community. This is in spite of these rights being guaranteed by the ratification of a United Nations Convention.

 

Leamington Lobby

The planned changes will cost taxpayers millions of pounds more every year by forcing disabled people back into institutions, and by creating greater ill-health leading to a greater drain on the NHS all at public cost.

The ILF supports independent living for some 20,000 disabled people with the highest support needs across the UK, enabling real choice and control over how they live their lives and creating employment. It contributes to UK tax gains and public savings.

Minister for Disabled People, Maria Miller, announced the permanent closure of the ILF to new applications in December 2010.  Her statement then, and her recent statement of December 2011, point to the permanent closure of the ILF by 2015. 

A Disabled People Against the Cuts (DPAC) led campaign is being launched on February 13^th  when Jamie Bolling Executive Director of European Network for Independent Living (ENIL) will be flying in from Sweden to support UK campaigners. Jamie says “Cuts across Europe must stop! They are breaches of human rights and are taking the lives of disabled people. Without the ILF there will be no choice for disabled people and choice is a right.”

Campaigners plan to