Disabled people and budget cuts

Dear Greenwich Borough Council,

Could you please inform me about all plans that will impact on
disabled people due to budget cuts in the council.

Particularly any proposed plans to change;

Charges for social care, residential, day centres and domicillary
care as well as Direct Payments.
Will these be increased or changed in any way?

Will the rate for Direct Payments be increased per inflation next
year?

Will it affect disabled peoples rights to have a holiday when in
receipt of care services?

Will you pay extra direct payment, when appropriate, for disabled
people to have a holiday particularly to give a break to family
carers?

Currently it is a legal requirement to undertake yearly care needs
reviews will these be affected in any way by your budget cuts?

Will disabled people face reviews where they will be told their
care packages will have to be reduced due to the budget cuts?

Why have you reduced one disabled persons care package to four
hours a day when they are assessed as needing 24 hour care?

Social Care eligibility criteria is currently reduced to only those
with 'substantial' or 'moderate' care needs is this planned to
change in any way?

Adaptations to local authority homes for disabled people, will the
budget for this be reduced? if so by how much?
Will all current agreed adaptations be carried out?

Funding to Greenwich Association of Disabled people which provides
essential services to disabled people, will this be reduced in any
way? or made harder to access?

Will any other funding to disability organisations in the borough
also be affected/reduced?

How will you be processing an Equality Impact Assessment on all
such plans?

How will you ensure you meet your legal 'duty of care' to those
clients already assessed as needing substantial or critical care?

I would like to see all proposals for budget cuts in full that will
have any impact on disabled people that I may have omitted like
changes to council tax, housing benefit, supporting people scheme
etc.

Yours faithfully,

Anne Novis

Dear Greenwich Borough Council,

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of
Information reviews.

I am writing to request an internal review of Greenwich Borough
Council's handling of my FOI request 'Disabled people and budget
cuts'.

This response is overdue

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is
available on the Internet at this address:
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/di...

Yours faithfully,

A. Novis

Dear Alan Soskin,

Thank you for your response which I have now received and
understand you sent within the time constraints.

I understand you may wish to defer answering some of these
questions but think in the public interest you should be consulting
with disabled people about any proposed budget plans which may have
an impact on them.

This is a requirement under the DDA duties where disabled people
are meant to be involved from the very outset to any policy changes
not after decisions are made or progressed.

Therefor I am formally requesting an Internal Review on this
response and hope by the time this is progressed you will respond
in full to my enquiries.

Yours sincerely,

A. Novis