To think we’re returning to a time of institutional welfare?

[Clawdya]

We can’t afford to pay poor pensioners to live alone in large council houses with a team of regular carers dropping in.

We can’t afford to pay two parents to care full-time for a disabled child, whilst also funding their entire household.

We can’t continue pushing children with complex needs who can’t function in mainstream schools into them, where they can’t learn and disrupt everyone else.

Surely the answer is large, state-run, state-funded institutions to meet these needs, with trained and skilled staff, regulated monitoring and the benefit of economies of scale?

I have a severely disabled DC and another child with complex needs. I work a few hours when they are in school and cannot claim carers allowance. I do about 70-80 hours per week of caring. I earn a very low wage as I cannot increase my hours. I do not get a single penny from the government. I have to count every penny, do not go out, not on holiday. I either work or care and I am what most would consider poor. Nobody pays you 3-4k because you care for a disabled child. I have no life and I can assure you you wouldn't want to swap with me!!!!

Perhaps you could go on a fact-finding mission to discover the best way to deal with the dregs of society the old and vulnerable. Now, where could we send you🤔
I know - North Korea!

I think people actually do want mainstream, but with the funding and resources to make it actually work.

That has never been in place, ever. No matter how blindingly obvious it has to be that if you are moving a pupil from a specialised placement into a mainstream placement, they were there originally for a reason and they are going to need some of that support - it's mad.

My guess is that the cost of properly supporting and resourcing SEND pupils in mainstream would be less than the cost of the equivalent amount of places in a special school, but why this doesn't seem to translate into actual funding I have no idea - is it that they come from different budgets? So they can cut the disability support budget by closing a special school, but then the money isn't actually reallocated, so an education budget is suddenly needing resources and funding to the cost of say 30% of the amount of what the special school was costing. And (obviously) that's a huge amount for them to just pull out of nowhere so they just stick the kids into normal classes with the normal amount of resources and hope for the best. Or maybe they have been allocated 5% of the amount or something, so the resources they have are totally inadequate to actually cover the pupils' needs.

And then it's like <shocked pikachu face> but these students are disruptive!! They are affecting other students!! - Well yes? That's what will happen when their needs aren't being met, it's exactly why they used to be placed in other schools. Moving them back is great, but moving them back and not meeting their needs is going to get you right back where you started in the first place!

Honestly it's so ridiculous the way this goes round in a destructive little circle and it's basically because the people making the decisions don't think these children matter, and don't consider them. They get written off as mad/bad/stupid/lazy. And so it's either a waste of time to include them in education because they're too stupid to get qualifications so it is a frivolous waste of time and money to educate them. Or they are too bad/lazy/mad and will become criminals or layabouts instead. Not to mention that even if you do have this despicable view (which many people do even though they won't outright admit to it, it's very clear) you OUGHT to care about the education and experiences of "bad" and "lazy" and "mad" children because maybe, just maybe, if they think they have a chance to grow up and do/be something decent instead of turning to crime or thinking of themselves as worthless, it might actually reduce crime/antisocial behaviour/benefits claims and save money? And you ought to care about the education of "stupid" children because it is the decent thing to offer everyone the opportunity whether it has an economic reward or not.

I think this is what I meant, I don’t get paid this amount to look after my daughter. I worked in a low paid school job for years to fit around her , then reduced my hours and claimed carers allowance. Eventually had to take early retirement as it was all just too much to cope with.

I have 2ND DSs now adults, never claimed a penny for them. Do they still get to live in your workhouse?
Edit... I always worked part time (DH full time) so even if I'd claimed DLA my wages would have been over the threshold to claim Carer's Allowance, all £90 of it.

No, not necessarily. There are specialist units or care homes for people with specific health conditions, who need more care than they would get in an ordinary residential care home.

Afaik, until the 1980s, about 50% of NHS beds were long stay for the elderly or people with learning disabilities - they have practically all gone (apart from ATUs).

As I understand it, the CQC favours smaller units/houses to provide residents withmore personalised care and opportunities to develop independence skills and autonomy, over large institutions these days?

I do think each LA should do long term planning - ie say to themselves

“We have say [a million people] living here. Statistically, that means there will be x number of people with severe learning disabilities/severe autism/MS/MH conditions/dementia/etc. We need to ensure there are enough special schools, smaller care homes/units, whatever locally to meet their needs.”

It is ludicrous to leave this kind of planning to market forces, and then pay the providers’ profit on top, whereby people who are unfortunate enough to live in the wrong place, with no local provision, are left to struggling families to bear the physical and mental costs of unmet needs.

Ha ha.

Thatcher closed all the state run mental asylums for care in the community.

Because it was cheaper.

Asylums were massive overcrowded and underfunded (hence the miserable conditions), and even with this being the case they were still massively expensive.

They weren’t closed for humanitarian reasons (although this was very much used as a justification), they were closed because ‘community care’ is significantly cheaper.

What are their main socialist policies?

I think we are all allowed to be 🤔 when you see taxpayer money being used inefficiently. I’m not begrudgingly a disabled person a holiday but I think often we can have a lot of money spent on individuals and it’s not necessarily best use of resources.

For example would more generous carers enable that person to stay with family rather than in an expensive placement, which is what a poster was complaining about. There was a story about a disabled lady who’d been in hospital a year unnecessarily as her accommodation had declined to have her back and she didn’t like alternative offered. So just hanging out in an acute care bed at a cost of hundreds per day whilst people get stuck in A&E as there are no beds. Violent children being sent to private placements to be supervised 3:1 at a cost in excess of half a million pounds a year each! Councils who piss money away on vanity projects.

It just feels like decisions are made like money has no bearing which would be fine if there was enough of it . However the country is skint so because you fund x you cut something else.

"Violent children being sent to private placements to be supervised 3:1 at a cost in excess of half a million pounds a year each!"

I don't like private placements but those children will be 3:1 regardless of where they are placed and there isn't suitable state provision for them. In fact these days there is less and less private provision because private provisions can pick and choose who they take.
Children requiring 3:1 are usually severely disabled rather than "violent".

i can't actually read that article, but It's very hard to know, because this contradicts other articles out there (one example)

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/10/friday-briefing-the-myth-of-the-fleeing-super-rich-and-the-real-tax-debate

It also contradicts various studies which have been run
https://arunadvani.com/papers/AdvaniBurgherrSummers2025_TaxationAndMigrationByTheSuperRich.pdf

https://www.nber.org/papers/w32153

I'm more inclined to believe that we are led to think the super rich will leave, so it's a non starter from a taxation perspective. Plus, no party wants to stop them donating!

Try this

https://archive.md/UkTl2

The issue with the attempts by Tax Justice to portray wealth flight as a non issue and something that isn’t really happening, is that they did so by extending the definition of HNWI to include those who are millionaires on paper due to rising house prices (aka ones that aren’t in a position to shoulder a huge tax burden). They also only considered the numbers for one year. Liquid millionaires are far fewer, and a significant proportion of those are leaving and have left. The UK is the only country in the G10 that has seen negative millionaire growth since 2016, and this has only accelerated.

Quite a lot of that 17% will be in age related older people’s social housing. Sheltered housing, age banded flats and bungalows, and housing with care.

I actually think that we will move towards more institutions because people are mean spirited!

But I dont think it would be cheaper pn the whole, unless the conditions were inhumane. Most residential care for a child with disabilities is around 100k or more a year.

These institutions woukd rapidly become for profit and take huge funds from the tax payer. In the way a lot of childrens residential care is now.

The vote on this is depressing. The time is ripe for people to turn on each other, and here it comes.

I thought everyone knew that informal carers keep the country running. Apparently not.

So you want my special needs child put in an institution because he has special needs?
you really are quite the piece of work aren’t you OP.

Possibly they are but I’m talking children who are caught up in drug violence etc The provider has previously justified the 20k a week as due to high levels of supervision needed. Questionable whether they get it to be fair.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crlrl0rkjr6o?app-referrer=search

As someone who has been severely disabled since birth, I can only imagine how much better my life might have been had I been raised from infancy in a faceless state-run institution by poorly-paid and over-worked strangers rather than enjoying the wonderful and nurturing upbringing I experienced with my parents, surrounded by people who loved and supported me. I had believed that the rich and fulfilling life I now lead as a still severely disabled adult, very happily married with a perfect baby, doing a job I enjoy, financially comfortable and surrounded by great family and friends, was a testament of how important it is for children to have good family support in their early years. However, having read your definitely well-considered, completely logical and intelligent and not at all offensive post, which you surely didn't extract from your fundamental orifice without giving it the slightest thought, I now see how mistaken I was.
I now realise how much better my life would surely have been had I been raised in a state-run asylum away from my loved ones and with no opportunities for improvement or development, because disabled children obviously don't deserve the same chances as their non-disabled peers and they and their families should just be grateful to the state for graciously providing a roof over their worthless heads. Yes, it will mean that the quality of life for disabled children is drastically reduced, but since they are unlikely to ever become productive members of society, who really cares? According to the OP's doubtless well-calculated and absolutely cast-iron understanding of the costs involved in social care, it will save the tax-payer a few quid and that, after all, is surely all that matters, far more important than the lives and well-being of disabled people.
A previous poster quoted Scrooge's wise lines about the wretched scrounging poor which made me think that maybe the OP has not gone far enough, maybe it would be more prudent to humanely dispose of the elderly, ill and disabled as soon as they reach that stage, imagine how much money that would save the country!
For the sake of the OP and other similarly minded posters, of whom I am afraid there are plenty on here, rubbing their hands with glee at a potential revival of Victorian workhouses and asylums, I am being sarcastic, just in case anyone couldn't tell!

So you want to bring back asylums basically 🤔

Thank you - brilliantly put 👏👏👏

Respectfully OP, are you on glue?

My last post was a little tongue-in-cheek, however, this one is absolutely serious. I am extremely alarmed and dismayed that MN has allowed a post that advocates for the wholesale segregation and detention of the sick and disabled, including children, into state-run institutions to stand this long. I know there are some appalling attitudes towards disabled people exhibited daily on this site, but I had hoped that the moderators would not allow such blatant and disgusting ableism to remain undeleted and am horrified to find that they do not seem to take even outright hatred towards disabled people seriously. There is nothing nuanced about this OP who wears their disdain and disregard for the lives, well-being and dignity for those of us with disabilities in utter contempt.

I do think your suggestion of 'halls of residence' for young professionals has some value, particularly in big cities. I used to work in a large central London hospital that got rebuilt, and all the nurses quarters were razed and not replaced. I can't believe that wasn't detrimental to recruitment, particularly of the many foreign staff who were coming over for a few years only.

Good quality halls of residence with staffed receptions and ensuite rooms with kitchenettes would surely be a great option for young people starting out in big cities.

But most of your suggestions don't make financial sense. As someone who has raised an adopted child to young adulthood, and cared for someone who developed young onset Alzheimers for years, and received not a penny of state support, I can promise you I was the cheaper option!