New film celebrates 10 years since ‘moment in time’ victory over care charges in London borough

A new film released to celebrate 10 years since activists won a campaign to stop their local council charging for care shows how disabled people can achieve important victories by taking collective action, say campaigners who fought for that success.

The film* highlights the eight years of campaigning by Hammersmith and Fulham Coalition against Cuts (HAFCAC), which led eventually to their London borough scrapping home care charges in April 2015.

The campaign began in 2006 when the new Conservative-led council introduced a policy that imposed charges for home care.

HAFCAC was set up to fight the “discriminatory policy”, and it spent eight years lobbying councillors, holding protests (pictured) and pushing the council to change its policy.

Tara Flood, one of the HAFCAC steering group members, says in the film: “There’s something particularly awful about receiving, through the post or via email, a document, an invoice, that sets out how much you have to pay to enable you to live at home with the support that you need to participate in your community, to be a friend, to be a family member, to be a parent, to get to work.

“No-one else is experiencing that.”

HAFCAC also backed a judicial review legal action against the charges brought by three disabled people from the borough who received home care.

Although they lost the case, one of the high court judges described the policy as sacrificing home care services on the altar of council tax reductions.

The film describes how the coalition raised much of its funding with pub quizzes, at which disabled activists such as Flood, Kevin Caulfield and Debbie Domb – all members of HAFCAC’s steering group – began to build relationships with politicians, including Labour’s Steve Cowan.

Cowan, who would go on to lead Hammersmith and Fulham council, says in the film: “The crucial thing was what Debbie, Tara and Kevin were able to do, was educate me and my colleagues on the need for the social model of disability to be right at the heart of our Labour administration’s approach.”

Months after Labour won back control of the council in May 2014, Cowan announced that Hammersmith and Fulham would be scrapping all home care charges in May 2015.

It remains one of only two councils in England that do not charge for home care, after Tower Hamlets council in east London scrapped adult home care charges from April this year.

Caulfield says in the film: “That moment [in 2014] was a real moment in time to show that campaigning does work, that disabled people getting together and collectively taking action can really have an impact.”

David Webb, a fourth member of the HAFCAC steering group, who ran the fund-raising pub quizzes, describes in the film how having personal assistance has completely changed his life.

He says: “It has given me a measure of choice and control that I didn’t have before.”

Victoria Brignall, who has benefited from scrapping care charges in the borough, says in the film: “People don’t choose to be disabled.

“It’s a tax on disability and we would like disabled people to be treated in the same way as other people.

“You don’t charge people to send their children to school, or to use parks, or to collect your rubbish, so why charge disabled people for their care?”

She says she hopes other councils will now be inspired to abolish home care charges.

Last year, Disability Law Service published research which showed that disabled people across England were continuing to face unlawful discrimination and inequality on an “unparalleled” scale due to “unjust” social care charging policies.

Caulfield points out in the film that tens of thousands of disabled people every year are taken to court for non-payment of care charges.

“That’s just a disgrace,” he says.

He and his fellow HAFCAC veterans say the film serves as both a celebration and a rallying cry, and that they hope their success “will inspire more disabled people to take action”.

The film, launched on Tuesday, is dedicated to Debbie Domb, “a fearless freedom fighter for disabled people’s rights”, who died in 2018.

*The film, ‘£12.40 an Hour for a Shower: The Story of Disabled People’s Struggle to Abolish Home Care Charging in Hammersmith & Fulham’, was directed, edited and produced by disabled film-maker, journalist and author Richard Butchins, and can be accessed with BSL and subtitles only, or with added audio description.

**Inclusion London is campaigning to persuade the government to scrap all social care charges.

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