Austerity Bites 10 Years On
Mary O’Hara
Policy Press, 2024
£12.99This is an edited extract
According to learning disability charity Mencap, by the end of 2013 the revision of all eligibility criteria for support was having a “devastating” effect on disabled, sick and older people.
A spokeswoman stressed: “When it comes to social care, it’s been a bit of a lottery so far. Local government is having budgets slashed and, if [a benefit] isn’t ringfenced, there are no guarantees. The changes to eligibility criteria are extremely significant.
“Our worries are that, for many people with mild or moderate learning difficulties, the support will no longer be there. This is about the fundamental things – being able to live with independence and dignity.”
According to Mencap, viewing any cut or reform in isolation led to a diminished understanding of the true consequences for those affected by multiple policies.
A worrying feature of the cuts to social care and benefits was that eliminating what might, on the face of it, seem like a non-essential care package could precipitate a complex chain reaction.
A charity spokeswoman told me: “One woman we know of [with a moderate learning disability] is an example. She is in her late 20s and was able to visit a day centre two days a week, which made a huge difference to her ability to live independently. It helped boost her confidence and she had contact with others.
“It doesn’t seem like much but, when the funding criteria was tightened [by her local council] and she couldn’t attend any more, she ended up getting lonely and depressed. She had to move back in with her parents and her mother had to give up her job to care for her.
“There are so many effects and the awful thing is that, unless someone is personally affected, they don’t really understand what these cuts mean for disabled people. It is a enormous problem and we are having to fight harder than ever as more [cuts] are to come.”
Shifting eligibility for care was having a significant impact but, by early 2013, a group of leading charities – Scope, Mencap, the National Autistic Society, Sense and Leonard Cheshire Disability – were pointing to a much wider issue. In a landmark report, The Other Care Crisis, they stressed that there was an urgent need for the government to reassess how disabled people’s needs would be met over the longer term.
The report found 40% of people with disabilities were not having basic social care needs met – such as help with washing, dressing or leaving the house – and that the £1.2 billion gap in social care for disabled people aged under 65 was a glaring indication of a system “on the brink of collapse”.
It was so dire, the charity said, that hundreds of thousands of people with disabilities and carers were left sick about how they would manage.
Clare Pelham, chief executive of Leonard Cheshire Disability, said: “This research reveals how many people are living in the care gap and it is a disgrace. No government and no right-thinking person should allow this to continue in their street, their town, their country.”
The task of repairing the UK in a post-austerity era was enormous, precisely because so much avoidable harm had been done over so long a period.
George Osborne and David Cameron could try to rewrite history but the fact remained that austerity had left the country woefully under-equipped to respond to additional, unforeseen challenges.
A new set of problems awaited the incoming government in 2024. Whatever the issues, though, after 14 years of devastating austerity, people needed hope. More of the same was out of the question.
