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What that means in practice seems to be that if it is cheaper for the council to put a disabled person in a care home or some type of residential unit, rather than have them stay at home independently, supported by visiting carers, the council You could, or should, choose the cheapest option if it’s ‘best value for BCC’.

The council released a draft version of this new ‘Fair and Affordable Health Care Policy’, stating: “We want to make it clear that this policy will be invoked particularly where there is an option available that represents better value to BCC than providing you with the level of care needed in your own home.” The policy suggests that the board will “usually seek to select the option that provides the desired results for the best value,” and exceptions to this rule will be “rare.”

Bristol Live understands that the new policy is still being proposed and is in draft form, but the implications of this are that disabled adults currently living at home could be forced to move to residential house if it is cheaper for the council and they cannot make up the difference in cost themselves.

When the policy was first published in February, activists vowed to fight the proposal. Mark Williams, the founder of Bristol Reclaiming Independent Living (BRIL), told Disability News Service that the policy could “place people in institutions rather than living independently in their own homes, something the movement for disabled people has been fighting for over 40 years. years’.

BRIL accused Bristol City Council of “marginalizing disabled people” and said the policy document was “very alarming”.

“It is terrifying for people that they could be thrown out of their homes. We are very concerned,” he told Disabled News Service, adding that he believed he might be violating article 19 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which guarantees the right to live an independent life, adding: “We will fight to the end.”

Bristol’s draft policy appears to be an adaptation of a similar one in Devon which actually goes further and explicitly states that council would identify the ‘best value support scheme’, and that this could include a residential care home ‘at a lower cost.

The West of England Center for Inclusive Living (WECIL) also told Disability News Service of their concerns. Alex Johnston, WECIL’s head of business and social enterprise, said everyone at the center felt the same way about the proposed policy: they were all very concerned. “We are afraid of what this could mean for the independence of our community. We understand the limited financial resources of our local council; it is a national problem that the national government shot down for the local councils to try to solve,” he told the DNS.

“But we constantly see that people with disabilities are the only group whose rights are viewed through the lens of affordability.” He said the policy could have a “dramatic impact on people with disabilities, taking away choice and control over how their care needs are met.

“This is a setback for the independent living movement, particularly if people with disabilities will be forced into residential care if this is determined to be the ‘best value’ option,” he added.

A Bristol City Council spokesperson confirmed that the new policy was still in draft form and an updated policy would be published for consultation later this month.

“We are in the process of updating the draft policy after initial engagement work with community partners, including people who use care and support services. An updated policy will be released for consultation later this month along with a full equality impact assessment,” he said.

The council also confirmed that the policy had been adapted from a “similar policy that has been well established and implemented” in another local authority (BRIL said it was from Devon) and the council maintains that it complies with our “statutory duties under the Care Act of 2014”. .

That law allows the local authority to take the costs of any care package into account when deciding how an individual’s needs should be met, and also requires councils to ensure they have enough money to go around.

Bristol Live understands that the council chiefs proposing the new policy do not see it as a ‘marked change in practice’, but rather as a ‘reaffirmation of our position in relation to consideration of resources’, when making decisions on packages of care for disabled people. “Given the current national challenges around financing adult care, we need to reaffirm this position to ensure that wherever possible we are ordering the best value options,” a spokesperson added.

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