Letter for publication 27-Nov because Enable Scotland misleads & upsets ARC users

Sir.  The lies of ‘personalisation’ and ARC closures.  Disability issues are complex and emotional, sometimes hard to appreciate by those not directly affected.  A very grave disservice to everyone has been done by D&G Council, seemingly in covert collusion with Enable Scotland, by conflating ‘personalisation’ with ARC closures.  They jointly plan and suddenly announce radical changes and “cutbacks”, all promoted in highly misleading and upsetting publications that are simply untrue. 

With the required advance planning to book Easterbrook Hall and print flyers, it is now clear that Enable must have been informed of these planned changes, including the ARC closure ‘option’, long before elected Members, let alone the superbly dedicated front line D&G staff, service users, families and carers.  Because of this and the steadfast refusal of the SW Director and Enable Scotland to answer our simple questions, we are forced to issue a public correction, to be handed out on Monday 30^th at the hall.  Vulnerable service users are being misled.  What is being presented as innovative new ideas are not new at all.  The real facts are as follows:

• Personalisation is not a new idea or policy and ARCs have used personalisation for the past 15 years.
• Nothing has suddenly changed this year and all ARC Clients have Individual Personal Plans today.
• Direct Payments are not the same thing as ‘Personalisation’.
• There are no ‘Changes’ or ‘Cutbacks’ and there is NO ‘Brave New World for Social Care’.
• Direct Payments do benefit some people, but may not be an advantage for others.
• Service users already have choice and  control to decide whether they wish to keep and use their ARCs.
• If D&G Council and Enable Scotland, Chair Alex Russell of Castle Douglas, get their wish to close ARCs to save money, there will be many fewer choices and options, not more as John Alexander, Judith Proctor and Enable so misleadingly suggest.  

We can only urge everyone to ignore untrue, meaningless scaremongering hype and then question why such important strategic decisions are being announced so cynically via Enable Scotland, a national charity that should support the learning disabled.  We must make clear that criticism does not apply to the autonomous local Enable Branches, like Castle Douglas and Wigtown.  These are wholly separate registered charities with OSCR, they raise their own funds locally and do excellent front line ‘hands on’ voluntary work to support individual learning disabled people.  This is in stark contrast with the national ‘campaigning’ charity, which has an income in excess of £26 Million a year, yet as we now see supports cuts in local services, just as Enable has supported other closures in the past.  We have asked the Social Work Director to explain all this and dissociate the Council from this highly unsatisfactory situation.  He has not done so and so we are forced to draw our own conclusions.  From:  Concerned carers and parents in defence of Dumfries and Galloway ARCs and their clients.