If you look at Mencap’s website, you will see it says 2.5% of children have learning disabilities and 2.16% of adults do. The population is supposed to be 68,300,000. If we take, for arguments sake 68,300,000 x 2.16%, we get 1,475,000 approximately. I imagine the majority of children or adults will be claiming DLA/PIP, and adults will be claiming UC/ESA. I suspect only a token few adults with LD are able to get a job, which is likely to be NMW anyway.
If adults with LD alive with their family, they have to pay for any care and support from Social Services, out of their benefits, leaving them with about £26 per week for all other expenses like clothes, entertainment, holidays, a tv, etc. Likewise, if they live in a care home funded by Social Services, Social Services can take all their UC/ESA to pay for their care, except for the £26 a week. Therefore any cuts to UC/ESA for severely disabled people, unable to work, will impact directly pound for pound on the Adult Social Services budget - as Social Services will have to make up the cut in benefits, by paying more to the care providers themselves.
Likewise, severely disabled adults in supported living are expected to claim housing benefit to pay their rent, and claim UC/ESA and PIP to pay their living expenses. Social Services prefer this to funding care home places, because they pay all the hotel costs for a care home, but only pay for the care package in supported living, as the service user pays their own hotel costs (there is no real difference to the tax payer, as it just a question of government versus local authority funding). Local authorities are trying to move all disabled working age adults from care homes to supported living, because it saves them millions in hotel costs.
If benefits are cut for the most severely disabled, who will never be able to work, how are local authorities going to persuade families, their relative can move from a care home, into supported living, when the families realise their relative cannot pay the hotel costs? They will either starve or freeze to death. They are just going to refuse!
If I were a carer getting approximately £80 a week carer’s allowance, and was using disabled DC’s benefits to fund the household’s living expenses, and these were cut, so the household was going to starve or freeze to death, I’d ask Social Services to accommodate disabled DC, so I could go out get a job, pension contributions, promotion prospects and respite!
Cuts by central government in benefits equals increased costs for Social Services for a substantial minority of disabled adults of working age in need of social care, because they are too disabled to ever work. No real savings for tax payers!