09/09/05 - Direct Payments Scheme Failing

Since 2002, local authorities have had a legal obligation to promote Direct Payments, a scheme where the local authority provides funding to people to hire their own staff as an alternative to social work care provisions.  However, in one local authority only 24 people are receiving funds.

Direct Payments Scotland, the organisation set up five years ago to encourage a greater uptake of the scheme, will close at the end of the year, after losing its Scottish Executive funding.

Jim Elder Woodward, chairman of Direct Payments Scotland, and a Direct Payments user, said he was concerned that the organisation is folding when users are still facing problems.  He said "There is a lot more work Direct Payments Scotland could be doing, especially to develop user controls and support organisations.  I think this scheme will take about ten to fifteen years to bed down and we've only been going five."

A spokesperson for the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA) said the reasons for the poor uptake of Direct Payments is that local authorities have not been given funding to implement the scheme.

Mike Holmes, director of campaigns and marketing at ENABLE, called for an independent body to distribute Direct Payments rather than local authorities.  As of March 2004, only 135 people with learning disabilities had opted to use Direct Payments, which represents less than one per cent of people with learning disabilities known to local authorities.

Organisations working in care provision in Scotland gave evidence on Direct Payments to a Scottish Parliament Health Committee care enquiry consultation last week.  In a written submission, South Lanarkshire Council admitted that only twenty four people in their area are currently receiving Direct Payments.   Other local authorities also admitted low uptakes.

The SNP committee convenor Roseanna Cunningham has now drafted a series of questions to ask the Scottish Executive.