Shaping future support: the health and disability green paper – Consultation response from the DPO Forum England
The DPO Forum England brings together disabled people’s organisations (DPO’s) across England to work collectively to act as the voice of disabled people. The DPO forum offers a unique and valuable perspective, as the members are all DPO’s that are majority run and controlled by and for disabled people. We are truly able to speak as a voice of disabled people because we represent disabled people.
This is an extremely interesting and informative report but very worrying for the future of disabled people.
Just a snippet from the report:
“A major concern is the Green Paper’s repeated references to “affordability” and the rising spending on disability benefits, which, the DWP says “suggests there is more we can do to enable independent living and employment”. there are recurring suggestions that these concerns with limiting spending are driving longer term plans for reform. For example, the Paper mentions “reviewing how money is spent”, and how “checks are made on disabled people’s needs” with a view to ensuring the “sustainability” of the system.
This framework of austerity, carried forward from previous reforms, is entirely at odds with recent evidence collected by the government’s own Disability Unit. The purpose of this survey was to inform the government’s National Disability Strategy, the Health and Disability Green paper is a key plank of delivering this strategy. We would therefore expect the Green Paper to address issues raised by the Disability Unit survey.
