MSP Debate Briefing: ‘A Fairer Scotland for Disabled People: UNCRPD Disability Delivery Plan

  1. Introduction

1.1.Inclusion Scotland is a national network of disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) and individual disabled people. Our main aim is to draw attention to the physical, social, economic, cultural and attitudinal barriers that affect disabled people’s everyday lives and to encourage a wider understanding of those issues throughout Scotland. Inclusion Scotland is part of the disabled people’s Independent Living Movement.

1.2.In general Inclusion Scotland believes that the Scottish Government’s Delivery Plan sets out a positive direction of travel towards a fairer Scotland for disabled people, which is to be based on a firm foundation of human rights. It also provides a useful overview of how it is proposed to make progress towards that goal.

1.3.Specific commitments on internships, funds to promote volunteering and action to address the under-representation of disabled people in politics and public life are particularly welcome.However, the challenge now is to transform welcome ambitions into action that will, in turn, transform disabled people’s lives and the country we live in.

  1. The Disability Delivery Plan

2.1.The Plan outlines the Scottish Government’s 5 ‘ambitions’ and 93 ‘actions’ which are intended to progressively realise the rights contained in the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD). However, many actions remain to be clearly defined, in terms of who is to do what, how and by when. The Plan brings together a raft of strategies and initiatives, the majority already underway.

2.2.In sum, as a strategic framework the Plan provides a helpful basis on which to go forward. However, more remains to be done to turn it into a delivery plan that can be implemented and monitored. Meanwhile, disabled people have borne the brunt of austerity cuts to their benefits, and have experienced reductions in social care packages. There is much to be done and no time to lose.

2.3.The Plan marks the culmination of two and a half years intensive engagement with disabled people and their organisations to establish their views and priorities, and with Scottish Government officials.This work, led by Independent Living in Scotland project (now part of Inclusion Scotland), worked with Disabled People’s Organisations (DPOs) and, through them, engaged directly with disabled people, to identify their priorities for action when it comes making their human rights a reality.

2.4.Inclusion Scotland warmly welcomes the seriousness with which the Scottish Government has taken the need to engage with disabled people, and their recognition of the value of disabled people’s lived experience. We also pay tribute to officials in the Scottish Government’s Equality Unit who have worked tirelessly and collaboratively throughout to develop a Plan that is as strong as possible.

2.5.As pointed out by Inclusion Scotland’s Chief Executive,Sally Witcher, “It is vital that action to make disabled people’s human rights a reality is led by us, disabled people ourselves. Only we know first-hand what needs to be done” (quoted in the Plan). Indeed, Inclusion Scotland’s mission is to ensure that policy affecting the everyday lives of disabled people in Scotland is informed by and reflects their views.

2.6.The approach taken by the Scottish Government stands in stark contrast to the UK Government’s failure to draw up a similar plan and its refusal to accept the UNCRPD Committee’s report and recommendations on the systematic breach of those same rights. The UNCRPD Committee’s report[1] concluded that these breaches had occurred due to austerity policies and the pursuit of welfare “reforms” which had a disproportionate and negative impact on disabled people.

  1. Disabled People’s Priorities

3.1.Nonetheless, the Disability Delivery Plan does not necessarily reflect all the views and priorities expressed by disabled people. Perhaps it would be unrealistic to expect that it ever could. However, where it has not been possible to respond to disabled people’s expressed views and priorities, it will be important to provide feedback to explain why this is so. Otherwise there may be a risk that the credibility of such engagement exercises might become compromised, or that they start to be seen as a distraction that puts off action that is already clearly and urgently needed.

3.2.Despite the many strengths of the Plan, and the expectation that it will continue to evolve and be adjusted over the 4-year period, as new priorities, threats and opportunities emerge, there is one area in particular that we feel urgently requires more attention, namely social care support.

3.3.There are fears that,in the context of health and social care integration, social care support is being reduced to little more than healthcare within the community, rather than seen as an investment in independent living and in enabling disabled people to contribute fully to their communities and to the economy.

3.4.Even narrow goals to reduce expenditure on healthcare will not be realised without investment in a social care system that enables people to have a life, rather than just stay alive. Furthermore, the gap between rhetoric and reality is nowhere more stark than when it comes to Self-directed Support. And, as debated in Parliament just this week, social care charges – often known as the ‘care tax’- exacerbate disabled people’s poverty and deprive us of our human rights.

3.5.Disabled people and partner organisations have called for a Commission on the role and funding of social care, to take a wide-ranging look at how to fund a social care support system worthy of the name[2].

3.6.Other areas where we would urge further attention to be paid include access to justice (the case for a disability law centre could usefully be pursued) and housing (DPOs have argued that 10% of all new build homes should be fully wheelchair accessible).

3.7.However, there are a number of specific commitments that Inclusion Scotland warmly welcomes, even if not all go as far or as we might wish(see annex for further detail):

  • To work with disabled people and COSLA to improve the portability of care packages.As it stands, if a disabled person moves from one local authority area to another, they may have to wait months without social care support, until the new local authority carries out an assessment. The best way to address this would be to establish a nationally-defined entitlement to social care support, thereby removing not just portability issues but ensuring that the fulfilment of disabled people’s human rights is not contingent on a post-code lottery.
  • To fund 120 Internships in the third and public sectors and in politics
  • To provide funding to enable more disabled people to be involved in volunteering.
  • To provide £5 million in new funding to the Scottish Independent Living Fund.Inclusion Scotland has made a strong case for doubling this amount to £10 million. This is small money in terms of Government expenditure that would have a disproportionately large and positive impact on the lives of disabled people
  • To pilot a work experience scheme specifically for young disabled people in transition.
  • To actively promote the DWP’s Access to Work scheme to ensure higher take-up and awareness across Scotland.
  • To provide young disabled people with the highest level of Modern Apprenticeship funding until the age of 30.
  • To hold a major congress on disability, employment and the workplace in partnership with disabled people, the STUC and employers.
  • To establish a Scottish social security system that treats disabled people with dignity and respect. This is very welcome. Current DWP assessment procedures singularly fail to treat disabled people with dignity and respect. However, it is not just the process that needs to embody such principles. The benefits awarded need to be adequate to enable disabled people to live free from poverty.
  • To effectively abolish the Bedroom Tax.
  • To extend Winter Fuel Payments to families with severely disabled children.
  • To abolish fees for employment tribunals.
  • To continue funding the Access to Elected Office Fund until 2021
  • To maintain Scottish Government funding of Disabled People’s Organisations (DPOs) at the current level throughout the lifetime of this Parliament.This is obviously very welcome. However, while retaining the current level of funding for national DPOs, and in view of apparent increasing emphasis on engagement with DPOs, we feel there is a strong case for additional funds to be targeted at local DPOs. It is not just individual disabled people who require support but disabled people collectively. Moreover, local DPOs are increasingly going to the wall as local authorities cut their funding, at a time when Scottish Government is seeking to promote community empowerment and local democracy.
  1. Conclusion

4.1.Inclusion Scotland welcomes the Plan as a good foundation on which we now need to build. We look forward to being involved in the next all-important implementation phase and to working collaboratively with Scottish Government and many other partners to achieve our shared goal of a fairer Scotland for disabled people, rooted in the full realisation of disabled people’s human rights

Annex

The Five Ambitions – further detail, facts and figures

1Support Services that promote independent living, meet needs and work together to enable a life of choices, opportunities and participation

1.1Social care is part of the essential infrastructure that is required to enable disabled people to participate in family, community and economic life and enjoy their human rights on an equal basis to non-disabled people. Cuts to social care packages, whether as a result of higher eligibility criteria or reductions in the level of service provided, directly impact on disabled people’s rights, and therefore increase inequalities.

1.2Disabled people have consistently told Inclusion Scotland that charging for social care is akin to charging for Health services. Charging for support equates to asking some people (who require social care) to pay more money than anyone else to achieve the same basic human rights and to participate in their communities. Disabled people are being forced into poverty as charges for social care rise. Indeed, there was a parliamentary debate earlier this week on the ‘care tax’ and its destructive impact.

1.3Inclusion Scotland, like many other DPOs, is supportive of the Self Directed Support agenda but evidence on the ground is that, far from promoting independent living, choice and control, too many disabled people have experienced it as nothing more than an excuse to reassess and cut their social care packages.

1.4The evidence is that Self Directed Support is not yet providing the step-change in choice and control or disabled people about how their social care is provided. A survey of users carried out on behalf of Disabled People’s Organisations by Self Directed Support Scotland, showed that there was a low understanding of what the SDS options are with only 44% of respondents actually having heard of SDS.

1.5A third of people said that the person who they met to discuss their support needs had not discussed all four of the SDS options with them and 42% said that they had not been informed of their indicative budget. A substantial proportion of respondents did not know what SDS option they were on, and 34% said they did not feel they understood the options well enough to decide which one they wanted.[3]

1.6Latest statistics show that the NHS failed to meet the waiting time targets for Children and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS), of 90% to be seen within 18 weeks by December 2014. Indeed for CAMHS, waiting times are increasing with only 76% being seen within 18 weeks of referral in the quarter ending December 2015, compared with 85% in October 2013. In some Health Board areas less than half of children are seen within the 18 week target.[4]

1.7The NHS has also missed the 90% 18 week waiting time target for adult psychological therapies, with only 83.5% of people starting their treatment within 18 weeks of being referred in the quarter ending December 2015.[5]

2Decent incomes and fairer working lives

2.1Inclusion Scotland warmly welcomes the commitments in the Delivery Plan aimed at improving the employability of disabled people, particularly young disabled people (e.g. the commitment to pilot a work experience scheme specifically for young disabled people in transition).Since 2008, the proportion of Scots working age disabled people in employment has fallen from 49% to 42%.[6] Just 2% of working age disabled people in Scotland get support from Access to Work, proportionately less than the rest of the UK.[7]

2.2After one year school leavers with impairment related Additional Support Needs are more than twice as likely to be unemployed or workless (18.1%) than those with no Additional Support Needs (8.3%).[8] Although disabled people make up 11.6% of all 16-24 year olds, in 2015-16 only 3.9% of Modern Apprenticeships went to disabled people. That is an improvement on the shockingly low 0.4% of places in 2014/15.[9]

2.3Evidence suggests that participating in internships schemes significantly improves the future employment prospects of disabled people. For example, 10 of the 12 disabled graduates who participated in the Scottish Parliament Internship Scheme run by Inclusion Scotland moved into employment or full-time academic research.

2.4Based on DWP projections, the Scottish Government has estimated that by 2017/18 105,000 Scots disabled people will have lost all or part of their entitlement to disability benefits. The budget for the disability benefits to be devolved will have fallen by around 40% - from £793 million to £483 million.[10]

3Places that are accessible to everyone

3.1There are 836,000 households in Scotland where there is someone with a long term condition (LTC) or disability. 129,000 homes are in need of adaptation to meet the needs of people with a long term condition or disability who live in them.[11] This is 5% of the total housing stock.There is an estimated shortfall of 17,042 barrier-free houses, affecting 14% of wheelchair users.[12] Therefore whilst we welcome the commitments contained in the Disability Delivery Plan we would go further and ask Scottish Government to adopt the target set in the Independent Living in Scotland project’s “Statement of Ambition for Scotland’s Housing” that 10% of all new build homes should be fully wheelchair accessible.

4Protected rights

4.1The introduction by the UK Government of fees for employment tribunals in July 2013, there has been a ‘46% year-on-year reduction’ in disability cases’.[13]This has reduced disabled people’s access to justice and we therefore support the proposal to abolish Employment Tribunal fees.

4.2Disabled people are more likely than non-disabled people to be bullied at school or to face harassment when going about our daily lives. 65% of respondents to an Inclusion Scotland survey felt that attitudes towards disabled people had worsened over the last 5 years and 43% rated societal attitudes towards disabled people as ‘mostly negative’.

4.3Hate crime with an aggravating factor of disability has been recorded in Scotland since 2009. There were 201 charges reported in 2015-16, a 14% rise on 2014-15.[14] It is estimated that disability hate crime may actually have risen by 41% in 2014-15, with many more cases going unreported.[15]

5Active Participation

5.1Disabled people face massive physical, informational and attitudinal barriers to participation in Scottish political life. As a consequence, we are under-represented as Local Authority Councillors, on Health Boards and in the Scottish Parliament. Only one of the 129 MSPs elected in May 2016 has self-identified as disabled.

5.2Inclusion Scotland is therefore delighted to have been invited by the Scottish Government to administer the pilot £200,000 Access to Elected Office Fund.[16] The fund will support disabled candidates for a range of additional costs that they face by to ensure they have a fair and equal opportunity to campaign for election, including: Personal Assistance (e.g. with mobility issues), communication support, adaptive technology (such as dyslexia aids, note taking aids and software) and addressing higher transport costs.

5.3The applications are carefully anonymised with recommendations for support based on individual needs and local context, and advice from expert support assessors. The first round of funding awards has been completed with candidates awarded support budgets totalling nearly £60,000. The awards, with individual budgets ranging from £580 to £26,718, were approved by the Fund’s independent Decision Panel, which consists entirely of disabled experts in making and using reasonable adjustments and includes two disabled former MSPs (Dennis Robertson and Siobhan McMahon).

5.4In 2008 the Scottish Government set a target to have 15% of all public appointments held by disabled people.[17] However, only 12.7% of public appointments are currently held by disabled people.[18]

For more information contact:

Bill Scott

Director of Policy

Inclusion Scotland

0131 281 0861

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[1] “Inquiry concerning the United Kingdom carried out by the Committee under article 6 of the Optional Protocol to the Convention Report of the Committee”, Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Nov. 2016

[2] ‘Our Shared Ambition for the Future of Social Care Support in Scotland’:

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[4]Table 1, CAMHS Benchmarking Toolkit 2015/16

[5]NHS Waiting Times - 18 Weeks Referral to Treatment 31 May 2016,

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[7]DWP Access to Work Statistics for 2014/15

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[13]Trade Union Congress (2014) At What Price Justice?

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