We are a Wales-based alliance of individuals and organisations working for a Wales in which people with learning disabilities and autistic people enjoy full human rights and are not sent away – or kept away – from their families and communities.
This is our hope for the future.
But things need to change first.
Our three asks for the next Welsh Government
all underpinned by the need to protect the human rights of people with learning disabilities and autistic people.
Ask 1: Close to home
Bring people back to where they feel safe, welcome and independent – and prevent them from being sent away.
Provide the leadership and make the changes needed to bring people back to their communities, and out of remote and unsafe locations – and create the preventative approaches that will stop this happening in the first place.
Ask 2: Infrastructure
Develop the infrastructure we need.
Develop, plan and deliver infrastructure, communities and housing so that people can live in a place they can feel welcome, safe and at home.
Ask 3: Funding
Merge funding for a dedicated resource to do it.
We need merged funding that brings the complex mix of funds and grants together, and cuts through disputes and red tape.
Why is this work important?
- The problems with long-stay institutionalisation for people with learning disabilities were identified as far back as the 1970s.
- Placing people with learning disabilities and autistic people in hospitals and care homes for years on end, far away from their families and communities, usually has a detrimental effect on them, and their families.
- Regular scandals have shown that people living in these places are at higher risk of abuse and neglect.
- Families have described their sons and daughters as having had their lives stolen.
- The overall cost is much higher than the cost of providing good local services.
Some key facts
- Too many people are currently in long-stay hospitals or large residential institutions.
- That is costing a fortune every year.
- That is money that could be spent on providing good local services to support individuals and families.
What about the challenges?
- People can fall in between systems and there isn’t a seamless transition through services, and people with learning disabilities and autistic people, as well as their families, don’t feel like their voices are heard.
- We need much more joined-up planning and funding, particularly across health, care and housing.
- The pattern of local community-based services that people need is not consistent across Wales and needs to be agreed and reinvigorated.
We can get this sorted in Wales
- Wales did this before, after the Ely Hospital scandal – and we can do it again.
- The foundation of that track record was decades of close cooperation between health and social care – something that has slipped and needs to be restored.