Stuck at home – can you place a price on an individual with disabilities' entitlement to a normal life?

by Saima

I commend Mencap for their report ‘Stuck at Home’, which shows the impact that cuts to day services for people with disabilities are having. It truly reflects problems they and their families are facing.
 
I have a brother who is visually impaired and has learning difficulties. He is currently attending a day centre run by Sense. My brother loves the day centre – it is a place where he can go out and live a normal life. He takes part in many of his favourite activities including horse riding, horticulture and cookery lessons. Since he attended the day centre, I have seen my brother’s confidence and independence grow rapidly over a short space of time.
 
Unfortunately, as you are aware, many local authorities are trying to cut costs on day services and this affected my family to an extent. The local authority has requested us to pay the costs of his activities however we are unable to as they are costly. Like many others, we have expenses to pay and, with the rising costs, we do not have sufficient funds.
 
My family are very fortunate; Sense has supported us and requested the local authority to pay most of the costs. However, due to the cut on day services funding, we have to pay some of the costs and my brother’s attendance to the day centre has reduced from five to four days a week. 
 
My family are very lucky compared to others. I am disgusted to hear some individuals attending day centres one day a week. I cannot imagine my brother staying at home most of the week. Before he attended the day centre, he stayed at home most of the time as he heavily depended on others to take him out. It reached to a point where my family was considering one of us to become his full time carer which was a problem.
 
I was appalled to read the case studies in Mencap’s report. Individuals with disabilities and their families are entitled to live a normal life like any other individuals; the local authorities cannot place a price on this. This is clearly an issue that needs to be addressed on a larger scale. Many people are suffering in silence which needs to end now.
 
Originally published in June 2012

Comments

Sue Turner

19 August 2012 - 5:42pm

This sounds like this reduction in services will mean more isolation for your brother and the potential for isolatiion and depression due to lack of stimulation. As a parents of two deafblind sons I am also familiar with the never ending work to keep the right services available for deafblind people - when will we ever get a rest, I have been fighting for 46 years and am past retirement age now. In the end this situation could lead to a complete breakdown in services and potentially the need for a more expensive service to meet the need that has been caused by the lack of stimulation and communication.

David Evans

19 August 2012 - 5:43pm

I am a member of Sense and Deafblind UK. Living in Essex as I do I know there are over 1,000 registered deafblind people and of those 1,000 deafblind people I know of 18 that are getting some sort of service. The remainder have no service whatsoever. There are attempts to form local clubs so that at least some deafblind people can meet occasionally for peer support. Sense have a club they run in Essex. These clubs help to deal with isolation of individuals who may not go out of their home apart from visiting the clubs. This goes nowhere near supporting those individuals that have no service at all.

M H

19 August 2012 - 5:44pm

Wonderful that you have found a service which meets your brother's needs. Long may it continue. Sense is a place where I have found support where nobody else could give it because they are specialist and have a holistic view of a person.

Safeena Javaid Khan

19 August 2012 - 5:45pm

I enjoyed reading your blog, hope there's many more to come, it's sad to know as a tax payer that local authority's use public funds to build roads that have nothing wrong with them and to support edl demonstrations but cut resources to organisations such as sense....it's a shame that such cuts our not challenged as they affect service users

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