I’ve recently changed my mind about something important and I can’t decide if the reason I’ve done that is because I’m being flaky, or if its because a situation has changed and after a careful review of this new reality I’ve come to a different conclusion.
Well the conclusion I’ve come to is that Mencap, in its current form and structure and with its current leadership, is no longer likely to play a significant role in improving the life chances, rights and well-being of people with learning disabilities in the UK. Now don’t get me wrong, Mencap and the people who work for it do a lot of very good things, I believed that before I changed my mind and I believe it now. But strategically Mencap has navigated itself into a position of dependency on the government and in doing so has become powerless to advocate for any kind of meaningful change. There are two issues in particular that underpin this dependency: the first are the massive cuts that have been made to social care budgets; the second is the sleep in crisis and the government’s unwillingness to come up with a solution.
A small but important and very personal example of the impact of the cuts was seen today in testimony to the Tozer inquest, where a local authority social care manager stated that they believed that the impact of staff shortages usually expressed itself in a reduction in the number of activities available to the people using a service. This small piece of anecdotal evidence dovetails with national data on social care funding. The chart below illustrates the gap between help needed and help received for people aged 65 and over according to income bracket.
It is important to acknowledge that this data is not specifically people with learning disabilities and that the activities that this covers only include key daily living activities such as bathing, eating and dressing. However, it gives an indication of the pressures on social care departments and so, it is perhaps unsurprising that the social care manager giving evidence at the Tozer Inquiry was quite as sanguine as they were about cuts to people’s daily activities. This is in contrast with the Care Act 2014 which states that an authority has a responsibility to promote an individual’s well-being:
Evidence of the scale of the social care cuts is also found in the reduction in the numbers of people in receipt of a service.
The key figure there is the stark statistic, that between 2005/6 and 2013/14, there was a 27% reduction in the number of people receiving social care. Again, this data doesn’t specifically relate to people with a learning disability but it does include them. And we have to ask ourselves – how many people with learning disabilities are included in this figure? What impact have these cuts had on their lives and in the context of the requirements of the Care Act, how many have had their well-being damaged by them? Even for those who have been assessed as qualifying for a service, the impact of the cuts to social care funding and the gap between identified need and available funding is increasing rapidly as the graph below shows.
It is in this context that we need to place Mencap’s exposure both as a provider of social care services that are systemically underfunded – a situation that is projected to get far worse – and as an organisation that has had to go to the government with a begging bowl because of the liability it has incurred over the sleep in crisis. So, it is perhaps not surprising that in its Annual Report for 2017 the CEO and the Chair of the Trustees choose to focus on other stuff:
It is probably worth noting that whilst 7,500 is a lot of people, there are estimated to be over 1 million people with a learning disability in the England – so in “an incredible year, and a huge step forward as we fight for inclusion” Mencap assisted less than 1%. So, I think it is fair to say that the idea that Mencap is the voice of learning disability is hyperbole; there are over a million learning disabled voices in England and no single organisation can reasonably speak for all of them.
The Mencap report for 2017 goes on to outline just how important the sleep-in crisis is for the organisation.
The brutal reality of the sleep-in crisis is that the government is using it to keep many of the big campaigning charities in line as it continues it’s assault on our social care infrastructure.
To some extent the same is true of the cuts to social care budgets. As central government and local authorities continue to cut and expect more for less, providers become complicit in the pretence that a person’s well-being is undamaged by their combined failure to properly implement their responsibilities under the Care Act. To be fair, it is not just Mencap that has allowed itself to get navigated up a very smelly creek without a paddle. By allowing themselves to become as dependent as they have on government, most of the big charities have compromised their independence – one the key requirements for their success as campaigning organisations.
The nett effect is that politicians are able to stifle resistance to their political agendas. They can sustain the pretence that there is such a thing as a social care infrastructure on the cheap and that the well-being of people with learning disabilities has not been profoundly damaged by their actions. Because the organisations best placed to challenge them are in bed with them, trying to keep them sweet.
As for whether or not I’ve changed my position on Mencap because I’m flaky or because I’ve responded to a changing situation – who cares – it’s probably both.
The Tired Optimist 
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