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Meeting of the Parliament 24 September 2013

24 Sep 2013 · S4 · Meeting of the Parliament

Item of business

New Learning Disabilities Strategy

Adam, George SNP Paisley Watch on SPTV

I welcome the debate and the strategy, “The keys to life”, which builds on the strategy, “The same as you?”, which was published in 2000. I agree with Mary Scanlon that, in this building, we tend to strategise till the coos come home, so we must decide what we are going to do with the very good information that is in front of us.

We need to ensure that there is equality and fairness in society, as Dennis Robertson—and Stewart Stevenson in his intervention—mentioned, and we need to empower people with learning disabilities.

I was at an event yesterday that was organised by the PACE Theatre Company and Police Scotland to address the issue of disability hate crime. As Margaret McCulloch said, we have moved very far on such matters through the work that has been done since the publication of the 2000 strategy. The event showcased a very powerful drama about someone with learning disabilities living in the community, which will tour schools in Renfrewshire to get the message out. It showed how a 24-year-old man had difficulties with dealing with autism, and with the fact that some people were not quite so understanding about his learning disabilities. The drama was powerful and the ending was happier because the mechanisms were in place for that individual to get out of the difficulty they were in.

As I watched the play, I wondered whether the ending would have been the same before 2000 and the strategies that we have put in place since then. Would those mechanisms have been available for that individual? I think that it would probably have been difficult for him. “The same as you?” started everything off in 2000 and the strategy was successful in shifting the balance of care to support more people to live in their communities. That is exactly what the play discussed.

It is important that we encourage local authorities to review their day care centres. As a councillor, I had to go through the difficult process of reviewing day care centres and look at providing a new model because some individuals prefer a form of day centre care. In the Mirin at the Lagoon leisure centre in Paisley, we now have a modern and different facility, but the individuals involved at the time and their parents did not want to move because they were comfortable where they were. However, things have moved on and worked out. Although it is not easy, sometimes politicians have to make the decision to look at new ways of delivering services. That was an example of making progress by identifying the needs of individuals and seeing how we could make things better for them.

The flexibility that I like was mentioned by the minister when he talked about the Social Care (Self-directed Support) (Scotland) Act 2013. That gives the individual the flexibility to be, live and work within their community and run their life on their own instead of people telling them how they should be receiving support. They, or their family members working with them, are the ones who decide and can tell everyone exactly what they are looking for. That is an extremely important part of this debate. We can sit here and talk about what we think is best, but we have to engage with the families and people who have learning disabilities themselves.

Mention has been made of the unfair Westminster welfare reforms that will affect some families who will have great difficulty in dealing with things like the bedroom tax, although the Scottish Government has given £20 million to support them. However, we have to look at ways in which we can continue to support such families. Again, we see that it is a tale of two Governments, one of which is supporting its people while the other seems to be having difficulty with that.

Coming from a local government background, I like recommendation 3 on the commissioning of public services. It says:

“community planning partners should ensure that local arrangements for joint commissioning are developed across relevant partner agencies and service areas to support the delivery of agreed outcomes”.

I understand that that is the way forward, but we need to find a way of packaging it for individuals. I have sat in council meetings and engaged with the public to tell them about the single outcome agreements and the like, and we have tried to get the language right.

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Meeting of the Parliament 24 September 2013

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