When the leaders of Birmingham’s Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition revealed a plan to cut £53 million from the Adults and Communities budget towards the end of last year, they naturally did not say that this saving could only be achieved by rationing social services provision for thousands of the most vulnerable people in this city.
Such an announcement would have been far too near the truth for politicians and senior council officers who, even now, steadfastly deny that they are presiding over potentially devastating cuts to public services.
In fact, the proposal was more or less slipped out in a hefty document listing ways in which the council intended to deliver £212 million of Government spending cuts over the next year.
Buried away in the small print a single line proposed restricting council-funded care packages to claimants whose needs were deemed to be critical, while everyone else would be “signposted” to the voluntary sector.
I’m not the first person to use the words “potentially devastating” in this respect. That accolade must go to Mr Justice Walker, the High Court judge who found the decision to deny care packages to disabled people with substantial needs to be unlawful and in direct contravention of the council’s obligation to promote equality under the Disability Discrimination Act.
The basis of the illegal plan rested on the contention that every disabled adult currently receiving help would continue to do so, although in most cases the source of assistance would come from the voluntary sector rather than the public purse.
To quote Peter Hay, the Strategic Director for Adults and Communities, who masterminded the cuts plan, no one in Birmingham with substantial needs would go “unheeded or unassisted”.
These words of comfort cut no ice with Mr Justice Walker, who declared when granting a judicial review sought by four disabled adults that Mr Hay had failed to make clear what alternative delivery of care would mean “in practical terms for those affected”.
Let us dwell for a moment on that splendid local government phrase “signposted”. It gives the impression, does it not, of an orderly process in which applicants for social services are simply directed from one provider to another in a manner such that they may not even notice that anything has changed?
The fact is that Mr Hay could never have been certain there would be sufficient third sector provision in Birmingham to provide care for the 4,500 adults with substantial needs whose council-funded care was to have been scrapped had Mr Justice Walker not intervened.
We are not talking about simple social care that could safely be carried out by volunteers popping in a couple of times a day to cook a meal, clean the house, do the ironing and have a chat.
