Disabled campaigners have gathered at a conference to help develop plans for a fightback against the independent living “catastrophe” facing users of support services across the country.
The Independent Living Campaign Conference heard that disabled people are now designing “a new vision” for independent living that is user-led and based on rights and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD).
The discussions are being developed by organisations that are part of the Reclaiming Our Futures Alliance (ROFA), including Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) and Shaping Our Lives, and began at the National Disabled People’s Summit, which took place earlier this month.
Mark Harrison, chief executive of the Norfolk-based disabled people’s organisation Equal Lives and a member of Norfolk DPAC, called for disabled people to set the agenda for reform, and define “what we need in order to live equal and independent lives”.
This will include a legal right to independent living, he said, which the UN has called for through its committee on the rights of persons with disabilities.
He said: “What we are facing at the moment is a catastrophe. That is what the UN said but that is also what disabled people say, with local authorities cutting people’s budgets by 50, 60, 70 per cent, and many disabled people having their social care completely removed in the assessment process.”
He said change was “not going to come from politicians or professionals, it is going to come from us. That is why this conference is so important, as was the disabled people’s summit.
“We think it is really important that we take control of our lives and the agenda around what we want from a right to independent living.”
He said that if policy-makers and politicians are allowed to set the agenda they will “water it down and corral us into systems where it is non-disabled people assessing us, measuring us, [and]restricting us”.
He told the conference about an article he has co-written with Professor Peter Beresford, co-chair of Shaping Our Lives, which suggests that social care in England and Wales “is broken beyond repair”.
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