Update 15 February 2013:

Utter chaos last night as Ealing’s overview and scrutiny committee considered the cabinet’s 22 January decision to close two important services for people with learning difficulties – the Learning Curve training-to-employment service and the Stirling Road daycentre. I haven’t seen such a shambles for a while, which is saying something in this cuts environment.

There was outrage as the chair tried to restrict a presentation by speakers from the Power Group – a group made up of people with learning difficulties who the council is specifically supposed to negotiate with – to three minutes. (By startling contrast, the chair later told members of the public off for not giving director of adult services Stephen Day adequate chance to speak when he was rattling on about the “savings” these closures will purportedly achieve).

In the end, people from the Power Group got five minutes or so to state their concerns about the closures and the shoddy manner in which they’d been “consulted” about the council’s plans, before they were hurried off stage. That was as repulsive as anything I’ve seen. Everyone should be entitled to speak and if people need a bit longer, they should get that. Everyone who has something to say should have the chance to say it.

People were trying to say that they didn’t approve of the closure decision, didn’t feel they’d been given anything like enough time to consider it (“we were told about it, but we weren’t told about it until it was too late” said one speaker), were worried about the overwhelmingly negative response to the closures from people who use the services and their families, and felt the council had often failed to provide the large-print and illustrated explanatory literature that some people require. They should have been given an hour to speak if they’d wanted it. That would certainly have beat hearing from Stephen Day ad infinitum. The whole thing was an absolute wreck.

Unions revealed that people at Learning Curve and Stirling Road and their families had been given even less notice and time to consider the closures than staff – about 25 days, it was said. There were gasps as it became clear that the council had yet to formally needs-assess people who attended Learning Curve to confirm the personal budgets they’ll be entitled to – and horror as speakers confirmed that up to 100 people who attend Learning Curve won’t be entitled to paid support or services at all.

As I note in the post below this update, the council claims in cabinet papers that after closure, it will “provide individual budgets for all eligible customers. People will be able to choose either a council-managed or cash-budget option and will be offered professional guidance and advice to develop their support plans, and arrange their services.” The very big problem with this is that a lot of people won’t meet the council’s criteria for “eligible customers.” According to the council’s own cabinet reports (page 3, point 2.6.5), at least 96 of the 144 people at Learning Curve won’t be eligible. Some live out of the borough and will need to apply to their own local boroughs for support. Others who live in the borough won’t be eligible, because their needs won’t be considered serious enough. This is crucial. Many people who attend Learning Curve have, or will be, placed in the Moderate or Low needs categories when the council assesses them against Fair Access to Care criteria – the standards councils use to determine eligibility for funding for care and support services. Ealing council – like so many others in this harsh funding environment – no longer funds people in the Moderate or Low needs bands.

Council officers said they could push through all assessments by about the middle of year. A disability assessments officer stood up to say that was rubbish – that the assessment process was too complex and extensive for that and that she knew at least one person who’d been waiting for an assessment for two years. Some expert or other was trucked out to inform everyone that the days of “institutional”-type facilities like daycentres were behind us. This is the usual “this isn’t a cut – it’s an advance in social ideology” line that councils inevitably try and run at these things. It’s generally rubbish.

For one thing, as one parent whose son has completed two computer-skills certificates there said, Learning Curve is a training-to-work service – it aims to help people acquire skills that will lead to employment. She was very sure that Learning Curve was not an “institution.” She saw it as the service that might just help her 28-year-old son into a job, which is something she desperately wants for him.

For another thing, not everyone will be entitled to the personal budgets that the council keeps trying to assure everyone will release people from “institutions” like daycentres and allow them to “purchase” replacement services. Saying that these cuts are all about embracing the future is disingenous in the extreme. People won’t be “freed” from an “institution” when Learning Curve closes. They’ll be left standing on the side of the road with stuff-all. As we’ve already seen, by the council’s own admission, at least 96 of the 144 people at Learning Curve won’t be eligible for financial support. There was also a great deal of debate about the purchasing power of personal budgets – I’ll be posting more on this, but it was said last night that personal budgets weren’t substantial enough to allow people to buy equivalent services from the private and third sectors.

So. It was rowdy, it was angry and it was a complete bloody shambles. Council leader Julian Bell turned up to say a few words (largely some cowardly rot about having delegated responsibility for the closure to officers) and was given very short shrift. His “central government cuts are forcing our hand” line went down like a cup of the cold proverbial. As well it might. People are sick of it.

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Update Wedneday 23 January: in front of a full gallery last night and with a lot of verbal handwringing, if you can have such a thing – “it’s with a heavy heart that we make this decision,” etc – the cabinet voted for the closures. People who use the centres and their families were furious. The decision now goes to Overview and Scrutiny in February. I spoke to the chair of that committee briefly after last night’s meeting and he seemed worried. Parents are complaining about the council’s consultation processes with people with learning difficulties – they feel the consultation was rushed, not adequately geared towards people with learning difficulties and that feedback from representative groups was ignored. More on this soon.

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Original post:

This is the first in a series of posts I’m planning on Ealing council’s plans to close a training organisation and a daycentre for people with learning disabilities. The aim is to broaden this out into wider reporting about the consulting and treatment of people with learning disabilities as further council cuts are made and as the government continues with the ESA work capability assessment and brings in the overall benefit cap, the bedroom tax, council tax benefit cuts, DLA to PIP testing and universal credit. In the past few months, a number of people with learning disabilities and parents and carers have been in touch to talk about their growing concerns.

On Tuesday 22 January (see meeting item 7 here), Ealing council’s cabinet is due to make a decision that will radically affect the lives of a group of adults with learning disabilities, and their families and carers.

The decision will be to agree to close two organisations long used by people with learning disabilities: the Learning Curve training-for-employment service and the Stirling Road daycentre.

Learning Curve is, in the council’s definition – “a fully accredited training centre, which provides training in basic skills, preparation for work, job seeking skills, office practice and retail and information technology… it also supports disabled adults in work and can help find work experience placements…its aim is to help people obtain the skills needed to get into work.“

Stirling Road “provides a wide range of services… sport and leisure, health promotion, community based projects, work-based training and travel assistance. The service is provided to promote and support people to become more independent and access their community through community-based projects.”

It won’t for much longer, though – unless people can kick up enough rough to stall the juggernaut.

They’re certainly trying: I’ve attended several protests in the last month and spoken to centre attendees and parents who are desperate to keep the two organisations open.

“There’s nothing else like it. I didn’t have to explain anything to them – the staff understood his needs,” said the mother of a young man who has earned computer skills certificates at Learning Curve and wants to work towards paid employment if he can find it (I’ll be posting more interviews and feedback from people involved as things unfold).

People are made to tolerate monumental stress as they are pressured into giving up organisations like Learning Curve and Stirling Road – organisations, and staff, that they’ve relied on for years (many years, in some cases – the two services in this case have been running for several decades).

The struggle that people have is finding a means by which they might force today’s appalling political class to give a damn.

Appealing to the better judgement of decisionmakers seems a forlorn hope: You’ll find here, for example, a list of comments that the council received from people who responded to the Stirling Road closure proposals.

Examples include:

“This will affect me greatly, because the days that my son attends SRDC gives me a few days’ respite and when he is there I know he is safe.”

“We will lose the day to day continuity which will affect everyone’s day to day life! There will also be the issue of transport to several different places.”

“My daughter requires 1:1 care all day every day and my stress levels are extremely high. My health has deteriorated and I do need a break regularly. If my daughter were to simply to stay at home with me if an alternative facility is not provided, I am worried it would affect my health.”

“Looking at my age and health and looking at my son’s health, we’ll both be worse off with no services in place. The council is looking to close the day centre without putting any services in place for my son. According to the council, there are other services out there. I don’t know how this is going to help the service users and the carers.”

In humane times, page and pages of similar feedback would be enough to give councils permanent pause for thought. These are not humane times, though, and we are far from them. The council seems determined to make the closures, to “save” upwards of £680k and to prepare the buildings that both organisations use for sale (2.4 on page 2 of linked document).

The usual justifications have been unfurled. There’s the inevitable and increasingly repulsive “times are tough/government made us do it” line – that all-too-easy justification for bleeding austerity cash out of people who are least able to return fire. Ealing council has set a target of “savings” to the tune of £85m from 2011 to 2014 and the council would lead us to believe that a sacrifice from people at Learning Curve and Stirling Road is as crucial to that clawback as it is foreordained (“this proposal will generate savings by reducing revenue expenditure on the staffing and buildings and by sourcing support for customers in a more individual and cost-effective manner” – page 12, point 4.1 in next week’s cabinet report).

“The Council is legally obliged to pass a balanced budget and so as result of the Tory-led Government’s cuts, the council must make savings of £85 million by 2013/14” Ealing Labour reports on its website – an adequate response, presumably, for anyone who is a) hoping to cruise to electoral triumph on the back of a growing loathing for Tories and b) not forced to live with austerity’s disgusting consequences. Campaigners say that if the council is looking to make cuts, it might first dangle the sword over its own outlay on consultants, or hold back on projects like new carparks and desk-shortening (I kid you not). More on this and the general debate on capital and revenue budgets soon.

Independence

The council also argues – as councils that are looking to make closures do – that shutting Learning Curve and Stirling Road will represent another step towards “independence” for people with learning disabilities.

“Throughout the country, large numbers of social care customers now use individual budgets to purchase modern flexible forms of day support rather than attending institutionalised building based day centres.”

The problem here is that people I’ve spoken to feel that the services were helping them (or their children) towards exactly that independence. Learning Curve in particular has an emphasis on training and placing people in employment. The feeling is the services weren’t remotely like institutions because of that – and the council is keen to accentuate the positives of personal budgets in this case for financial, rather than genuine, reasons. I’ll expand on this point as I go on in later posts.

For a number of people, too, the concern is that the closures will mean that they end up attending nothing at all – because they won’t be eligible for funding at all under the council’s new plans.

The council says that its proposal is to “provide individual budgets for all eligible customers. People will be able to choose either a council-managed or cash-budget option and will be offered professional guidance and advice to develop their support plans, and arrange their services.”

One of the (very) big problems with this – particularly for people at Learning Curve – is that not everyone will get such a budget, because they won’t meet the council’s criteria for “eligible customers.” According to the council’s own cabinet report (page 3, point 2.6.5), at least 96 of the 144 people at Learning Curve won’t be eligible. Some live out of the borough and will need to apply to their own local boroughs for support. Others who live in the borough won’t be eligible, because their needs won’t be considered serious enough. This is a crucial point. Many people who attend Learning Curve have, or will be, placed in the Moderate or Low needs categories when the council assesses them against Fair Access to Care criteria – the standards councils use to determine eligibility for funding for care and support services. Ealing council – like so many others in this harsh funding environment – no longer funds people in the Moderate or Low needs bands.

These people, says the council, will be offered instead a “leisure pass, freedom pass, benefits advice, voluntary sector groups and activities.” The people who attend Learning Curve, parents and campaigners don’t quite see these options as like-for-like exchanges. The council offers a list of private, voluntary and third-sector “alternatives” here. You can see the costs and that many don’t offer a transport option.

It seems that people who attend Stirling Road are likely to be eligible for budgets – they’re in the funded Substantial or Critical FACS bands – but that doesn’t make their situation enviable. I listed some of the response comments to the council’s Stirling Road closure at the top of this post. Here’s another: “Given that we are the main carers, your proposal puts us in a very difficult position. We are also vulnerable, elderly people. We have various problems, such as physical impairments…therefore, if he did not attend [Stirling Road] regularly, he will be confined to the house and due to our vulnerabilities we are not in a position to promote him to have the maximum independence as we cannot take him out regularly.”

Consultation

Consultation is the other concern that people have raised with me – and this is very much worth pursuing. I’ve asked the council to send me details of its processes for consulting with people who have learning disabilities as a start. I understand that councillors are meeting with people tomorrow morning – the day before the cabinet meeting. Be interesting to see what happens. As I said at the beginning of this post, people have also raised with me the wider issue of consultation with people who have learning disabilities and who must deal with the likes of ESA work capability assessments, benefit caps, the bedroom tax, council tax benefit cuts, DLA to PIP testing and universal credit. Wonder how keen this government is to make sure they’re heard.