More than 2,000 disabled people receive payments from the Independent Living Fund, which maximises self-directed support for disabled adults through additional person-centred payments – however it has been closed to new applicants since 2010.

The chair of the ILF told the NHS conference earlier this year that the organisation stands ready to reopen and is desperate to do so.

Dr Jim Elder-Woodward, OBE, Vice Chair of Inclusion Scotland and disabled activist, has spoken frankly on the importance of the fund to disabled people across Scotland on an episode of the ALLIANCE Live podcast, voicing fears that, until it reopens, disabled people will face barriers to living in their communities.

“Back in 1983, the government set up the Independent Living Fund in Nottingham, and this fun was aimed to keep people out of institutions and keep people in their community, in their own homes and with support designed around their needs.

“That was back in 1983. That was so successful, that by 2015 the government was spending millions and millions of pounds on the fund, and they wanted to stop the exponential rise in funding so they closed the fund in 2015.

“They were going to give the money to local authorities to swallow up in their old institutional provision.

“We in Scotland, we disabled people in Scotland, got together and persuaded the Scottish government not to give the money to the institutions supported by local authorities but to set up an Independent Living Fund in Scotland.

“The First Minister announced that they were going to listen to disabled people and set up the Independent Living Fund in Scotland with the promise in 2015 to open it up at a later date.

“Now we are several years down the line and, through attrition, there’s less and less people being supported by the Fund because they die, or they move into care permanently.

“But despite disabled people asking the Minister “when are you going to open the Fund?”, we fear the Scottish Independent Living Fund will wither on the vine because more and more people will die and move on.

“Now it’s been researched and investigated that the way the Fund is working, it involved disabled people in the policy making, it involved disabled people in their own care planning and disabled people are really, really happy with the fund because it is about them being equal citizens, to participate in the community as they want to participate.

“But, even so, no more money is going into the Fund and we are thinking that that is just a diabolical situation, particularly when social care is in such a mess as it is run by local authorities.

“We need to open up the Fund. We need to prove to people that disabled people can and want to live in the community; that they can and want to be equal citizens and, unless they close down the institutions and give more money to the Independent Living Fund, that will never happen.”

 

 

Read more from Dr Jim Elder-Woodward: A rebuttal to the National Care Service discontents; The right to have needs met by the NCS; The Assisted Dying Bill - The thin edge of the wedge?

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