ADKC Personal Budget User Group response to Elaine McDonald Ruling

The members of the ADKC Personal Budget User group fed into the following statement, that was read out during the protest held outside the Town Hall on Thursday 21st July.

ADKC PB user group response to Elaine McDonald ruling

The ADKC personal budget user group would like to express their concern over the recent ruling in the case of local resident Elaine McDonald and at the same time to express disgust at the Council’s decision to replace personal care with incontinence pads, a method of meeting a need that Elaine has strongly objected to from the start.

As local residents, we were happy that Kensington and Chelsea had been at the forefront of piloting Individual Budgets, now Personal Budgets, which have allowed many people to exercise real choice and control over how their care needs are met.

However we are ashamed that Kensington and Chelsea is now at the forefront of depriving people who need assistance, some of the most vulnerable people in society, of dignity in care.

This case is about the lack of choice and control and lack of Personalised care – where the choices offered by the Council were so far from the expectations of the person in question that there was no way for her to make a choice between any of the alternatives offered.

The council stated that the option of using incontinence pads was best as it would be convenient and would be safer than having assistance to transfer to the toilet or commode – but convenient for whom? Definitely not for the lady in question who would be left in a wet incontinence pad until care workers came in the morning. And safer for whom – it can’t be said that incontinence pads are free from associated health problems, as anyone who has had to use these products, or indeed any of us that care for infants, well knows. And in terms of safety what about the risks to people who attempt to change the pad themselves rather than enduring the discomfort of waiting until assistance arrives hours later, and experience highlighted by a relative of a PB user who attended our own group meeting yesterday!

Obviously, if people are incontinent these pads do offer a modicum of security – however there is no need for anyone to be “functionally incontinence” – if appropriate assistance is provided there is no incontinence.

On a wider scale, this has opened the floodgates for widespread withdrawal of care- to people who don’t have the courage, energy or spirit to fight. In times when rationing of care is often seen as the answer to the Countries economic debts we are bound to see more people being given told that they have to accept a solution that is anything but personalised and empowering.

We hope that this case will draw more groups and individuals together in order to have a stronger voice and more strategic influence so that anyone, regardless of the degree of their impairment or ability to economically contribute to society is offered the full ranges of aids, adaptations or assistance to enable them to live a dignified and independent life.