Call for direct action protests to build support for ‘radical’ social care reform

A disabled activist has called for a new campaign of direct action to build public support for a “radical overhauling” of the social care system.

Ellen Clifford, a member of the national steering group of Disabled People Against Cuts and author of The War on Disabled People, said disabled activists and users of social care needed to “start putting our messages and our demands out there”.

She said campaigners needed to learn from the achievements of disabled anti-cuts activists through their campaign of direct action over welfare reform changes.

Clifford was taking part in an online event hosted by Policy Press, part of a series on developing “participatory, inclusive and sustainable” public and social policy.

She said it had been difficult to engage those in positions of power with the National Independent Living Support Service proposals produced by the disabled people’s movement.

She said this was because it was “not in the interests of any parties that control local councils” to get rid of the current system, which relies on outsourcing and privatisation.

She said: “We do need to look to build public support and to put pressure on those politicians from outside.”

In response to a question from Disability News Service, Clifford said she did not think the Labour party would move towards supporting an end to social care charges until activists have “made space for them to do that by changing public opinion”.

Donald O’Neal, an adult social care user for more than 35 years, and author of The Lack of Care Act 2014, said he believed Labour was “not interested in making social care free because they feel they have won the race already”.

He said: “I think if they were put in a position where they thought they were going to lose a lot of votes then they might want to change their mind.

“Labour have just said time and again they are the party of the working people and beyond that they don’t really care because they feel that is enough votes to win an election.”

The Secret Welfare Rights Worker, who was taking part anonymously and has worked previously in the social care system and now provides welfare rights advice to older and disabled people, said: “We somehow have to convince [Labour] that it will be popular if changes are made and then they will have the guts to go forward because they are gutless and they won’t want to go forward unless they think it’s going to be OK for them.

“Somehow we have to engage people and encourage people to see that these are issues that affect all of us and we all might need social care and we all might need benefits, and nobody is safe from that.”

O’Neal said earlier in the event that he believed the way to highlight the need for reform was to enlist the support of celebrities with connections to social care and use social media to “embarrass the government”.

He said: “It sounds idiotic… but unfortunately this is the way our society works.

“We’ve tried co-production, we’ve tried working in partnership, we’ve tried other buzzword methods and they just have not worked.”

He added: “I’m not a fan of co-production. They are happy to work with you as long as you say what they want to hear. Co-production is just greenwash.

“I do believe that every local authority ought to have a user-led organisation that is there to run the local authority adult social care service [and] to provide other things such as advocacy.”

Dr Sally Witcher, disabled author of Inclusive Equality, and a freelance consultant and former chief executive of Inclusion Scotland, said the experience of social care reform in Scotland under the SNP showed it was “not enough to have a good vision for social care, declared political support for human rights and independent living, acceptance of the importance of involving end-users in policy development, and doing that increasingly well.

“It’s not enough to have a manifesto commitment to remove social care charges or multiple stakeholder advisory groups, some of them chaired by ministers, and it isn’t enough to have legislative action to create a National Care Service and remove the postcode lottery.

“Right now, despite all of the above happening, outcomes for people in Scotland who are using or needing social care support are no better, I would say, and possibly even worse than before.”

She said disabled people’s social care outcomes have been negatively impacted by the Covid pandemic and Brexit-related staff shortages, with “entrenched power struggles between local and national government” and between healthcare and social care due to integration of the two systems, all “compounded by the current attempts to legislate for a National Care Service”.

She said the “dysfunctional system” meant that “good quality conversations about personal outcomes” had “hit against financial realities” and a “vastly complex bureaucratic system” with “little if any transparency”.

She compared social care reforms with social security reforms in Scotland which have also involved “innovative participatory approaches” but have “translated and worked well and are now delivering improved services”.

The event yesterday (Wednesday) was chaired by Professor Peter Beresford, co-chair of Shaping Our Lives, who said social care “feels like the policy that politicians want to forget”.

He said the present government had “made a habit” of overlooking and ignoring social care, “repeatedly promising reform and never quite getting round to it”.

He stressed the importance of grassroots engagement and said that “people engaging with each other” is “absolutely critical”.

Richard Humphries, author of Ending the Social Care Crisis, a senior policy advisor to the Health Foundation and a former director of social services, stressed the importance of a “long-term approach” to social care reform, and securing public support for the significant investment that was needed so as to “make that politically possible for whoever forms the next government”.

He said: “Reform will not work without the active engagement of people with lived experience, who should very much be driving the changes.”

Clifford added: “Disabled people, our organisations, people who use social care services, absolutely have to be involved in designing and co-producing what we would seek to replace the current system with.”

Picture: Donald O’Neal (left), Ellen Clifford (centre) and Sally Witcher

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