While searching for any reaction or follow-up to the CSJ’s report ‘The Need for Community’ (a study of housing for adults with learning disabilities), we stumbled across an excellent page on the Housing LIN website, entitled ‘Supported housing and independent living’ . Thanks are owed to whoever had the initiative and energy to create and publish it.
The webpage, headed ‘Supported Housing and Independent Living’, pulls together a range of material published in the last decade or so (since the Valuing People White Paper) on learning disability, ‘independent living’ and housing. If you follow the web-links, you will read read a range of guides and reports.
The overwhelming impression is of how wide the gap between aspiration and reality has been and remains. The ‘progress’ reports on the ‘Independent Living Strategy’ (launched 2008) are a particularly depressing read: “Disabled people are experiencing a reduction in housing opportunities and an increasing number are living in accommodation which is not suited to their needs”.
Well worth a browse. Above all, we recommend once again the recent CSJ report ‘The Need for Community’ , which, against this background of consistent failure to meet aspirations and targets, states the case for the availability of a range of housing options, including residential provision: “The CSJ’s view is that both supported living and residential care have an extremely importantplace in the spectrum of provision. We do not take a position that one model is inherently preferable over the other. People with learning disabilities have a wide variety of needs as wellas different wants and preferences.” (Introduction, p.8).
Rescare feels that the CSJ report generally endorses the position Rescare has adopted, of being ‘pro choice’ – while recognising the viability of residential provision as a housing solution in certain cases. We are also grateful that the CSJ considers the circumstances and needs of those who have severe learning disabilities or who lack capacity entirely, and thus recognises a spectrum of disability and need.