Right to Control - Steve scott

ALISTER: Hi Steve. STEVE: Hi. ALISTER: What can you tell me about the Right to Control? STEVE: Right to Control is a programme that pulls together five or six separate funding streams to allow individuals not to have more money, but have greater say and greater flexibility in how they use those funding streams to manage their life; whether that's their personal life or their journey into work or to be able to stay in work. ALISTER: When you say funding streams, what do you mean? STEVE: Funding streams are the, the money, allowances and resources that either the Government or local authorities use to support disabled and individuals living with a health condition. To live independently and overcome the barriers that everyday living may throw at you and also carry out sort of personal care needs, whether that's support workers or friends and family. ALISTER: A few people have been talking today about 'The Right to Control'. Is this something that everyone's got? STEVE: The Right to Control at the moment, is a Trailblazer - which is similar to a pilot - but the rules are still being developed as we go along. And there are five Trailblazers across the UK. This one - the best one - there are six I understand across the UK. This one is called the Manchester area, and is made up of Bury, Oldham, Stockport, Trafford and Manchester. You have to be resident in those local authorities to be eligible for Right to Control. ALISTER: So, are you in one of those areas? STEVE: I am. I am a resident of Trafford and live in Timperley. ALISTER: Very good. Are you in receipt of Right to Control? STEVE: I am in receipt of only one element. I get Access to Work, but mine is the fixtures and fittings, so mine is reviewed every couple of years; for equipment. ALISTER: I have heard a lot of these people who we've been speaking to today talk about things like 'the Design Group'. Can you tell me a bit more about this 'Design Group'? STEVE: Yeah. The Design Group are a great bunch. What the Design Group have been doing is working with the decision-makers and the strategists across the Manchester Area Partnership to ensure co-production happens. That means disabled people themselves are involved in developing and designing and implementing the Right to Control across the Manchester Area, not just being consulted. So it is not professionals, sitting in the board room designing something and then coming asking people what they think about it. Individual service users and disabled people themselves have been involved in writing the programme and the policies from the start. ALISTER: Tell me a bit more about this, this particular Trailblazer that you are a part of. STEVE: This particular one is the largest one and probably one of the most complex. It is made up of five local authorites, rather than just one or two. So we're covering half of Greater Manchester, so it is an enormous population of both rural areas in Bury through to inner-city Manchester and parts of leafy Cheshire in Trafford. So there is a real mix of people and demographics there; all of whom have different ways of accessing funding streams. And part of what we are trying to do is to bring some commonality and reduce bureaucracy within those areas. ALISTER: And if I wanted to be a member of this Design Group, what would I... What qualifications would I need? STEVE: Lived experience. You need to be a resident in one of the Manchester areas, that's Bury, Oldham, Stockport, Manchester and Trafford. You need to recognise yourself as either disabled or having a long-term health condition and you need to get in touch with an existing member of the Design Group or contact myself, either at the Greater Manchester Coalition or Breakthrough UK. ALISTER: Okay, thank you. Give me some idea now, if you can, about the sort of involvement the Design Group have had. I know you've told me things on a broad level. Can you give a more specific idea on how they've been involved? STEVE: People's involvement varies enormously. We have groups of people that work with directors of Adult Social Care at a strategic level, looking at the policies that go to make up this programme called Right to Control, right through to the local involvement working with local user-led organisations and disabled people's organisations providing either peer support - supporting other disabled people to understand the Right to Control. We engaged JobcentrePlus and Access to Work... um, discussing how their programmes can be more effective and how they can engage more disabled people on their programmes and we talked to disabled people themselves in the community about whether or not Right to Control would be suitable for them. ALISTER: You mentioned the phrase 'peer support'. I'm not too sure I understand what you mean by that. Is that a bit like advocacy? STEVE: Not really. It's an element of it, but peer support is just a phrase. But the outcome, it's enabling the individual to sit down and talk to someone who's had similar lived experience than they've had, except they may have done it last week, last month, last year; somebody who comes from a similar understanding without judgmenting. Not there to represent them, just there to say "Well it happened to me. This is how I felt. Here's my view." ALISTER: And is this all part of this Right to Control, this peer support? STEVE: It is a significant part of Right to Control and it is to me it comes under this 'chunk' of co-production. Its people with that lived experience, working with decision makers saying "This is how effective your programme could be if you change it here or tweak it there". Bring that down to the individual level, it's allowing the individual to say "Yep. We've been there. We can understand some of the things you're going Here's how I did this, here is how I coped. Or we can signpost. I have particular experience in a person's physical impairment, but don't know much about mental health, but I can signpost you to support groups who may have that experience you're looking for". ALISTER: It sounds good, this Right to Control. I noticed the title is Right. To what extent is it a Right? STEVE: In the Trailblazer areas it is defined in law as a legal right. You cannot opt in or opt out. You have a right to control your personal budget. Now, there's lots of caveats that hang behind that. You have to be eligible, you have to be in receipt of one of the funding streams, either Access to Work, Work Choice, Disabled Facilities Grant, Independent Living, Supporting People or Adult Social Care (I think I've forgotten one of those). And if you are, you're able to express your right to control, to use that resource in a more flexible manner. ALISTER: This Trailblazer sounds good, this Right to Control. Is there any chance of it being extended to the rest of the country at all? STEVE: The programme itself will be running until December 2012 and then they will be a review across all the Trailblazers throughout the UK and that review will take place in 2013. During that period, consideration will be given to rolling it out, if it's successful. And we've started that, at the moment, by doing things like these flip cams and putting on the web to raise the profile. If it is successful, it will be rolled out and we very much hope so. ALISTER: Who makes that sort of decision? STEVE: Decisions will be made by the Department of Work and Pensions, in particular the Office for Disability Issues, but it will be a ministerial decision from my understanding. ALISTER: Thank you very much. How do you feel it's going? STEVE: I think it is going well. It... I think it would be good if we could increase the uptake and that's all about raising profile and people being aware of it. We have to admit, there's no more money. It's just giving people the flexibility to achieve the outcomes they want with the resources they're given. ALISTER: Right. And the um, I think you call them 'funding streams'. Are they really working towards this? Do they see it as a problem or what? STEVE: Mixture, there. I would say some funding streams are already more flexible than they were. Other funding streams are coming to terms with a new process and a new culture. And new cultures take a long time to bed in. ALISTER: Excellent. Thanks very much. STEVE: Thank you. [Subtitles provided by Mark Watts at Breakthrough UK]