‘Not Safe as Houses’ first appeared in Mental Health Today inJune 2011. To subscribe to the magazine click here.
Cuts to the Supporting People grant are impacting on serviceusers in supported accommodation and leaving them facing anuncertain future. Richard Shrubb reports.
For many mental health service users, moving into supportedaccommodation is an important step in their recovery, andSupporting People has helped numerous people to do this.
Indeed, from a personal perspective, after diagnosis, sharedhousing with support was the best thing to happen to me. But cutsin the Supporting People budget are now putting this under threatfor many service users.
The Supporting People grant was formalised in 2002 by theprevious Labour government. It was designed to help vulnerablepeople who need housing-related support to live independently inthe community.
It offers support such as advocacy, developing life skills andin applying for benefits. It helps about 36,000 people with mentalhealth problems at any one time, according to governmentfigures.
Supporting People was given to local authorities as a blockgrant. It recognised that a stable home environment would savecosts across the board to statutory services.
In October 2010 the government’s comprehensive spending reviewcut the Supporting People grant, but the previous administrationhad already taken away the ring fence, allowing local authoritiesto spend the monies as they wished. This has resulted in cuts of upto 60% in expenditure on Supporting People in some areas, althoughit should be noted that in some areas spending on it hasincreased.
Nevertheless, in 2010 the Guardian reported that “more than400,000 vulnerable people, including pensioners and victims ofdomestic violence, could lose their homes and see care entitlementscrapped”. The cuts weren’t as big across the board as thenewspaper predicted, though in some local authorities the cuts toexpenditure were higher.
A 40% cut to a budget is cold, hard numbers. To the resident ina low-level support facility, a 40% cut could mean homelessness anduncertainty.
Inconsistent cuts
In regard to the overall cuts, Jake Eliot, policy officer at theNational Housing Federation, which represents 1,200 independentnot-for-profit housing associations in England, says; “Thegovernment says it [Supporting People cuts] works out at 12%.However, the national average is around 25%, since different localauthorities receive different settlements.
The lack of a clear pattern suggests this is down to localpriorities. The cuts in Supporting People grant money are notdirectly related to cuts in expenditure.
In December 2010, in a letter to local authority chiefexecutives the Department of Communities and Local Government(DCLG) stated that; “This funding has been rolled into formulagrant and it is not possible to identify a particular amount forSupporting People (or any other purpose) within formula grant forany individual authority.” A spokesperson from the DCLG defendsthis move: “It gives more power to local authorities, who know whattheir local needs are better than the centre.”
The result has been cataclysmic to recipients of SupportingPeople money in certain areas. For instance Cornwall County Councilcut its expenditure on Supporting People by 40% whileNottinghamshire slashed it by 60%.
Costs and benefits
Indeed, these cuts could prove to be a false economy. In 2008the DCLG commissioned a cost benefit analysis of Supporting Peopleby consulting and professional services provider CapGemini. Itfound that the overall savings were roughly £2 for every £1 spent.The report said that: “net financial benefits from the SupportingPeople Programme is £2.77 billion per annum for the client groupsconsidered (against an overall investment of £1.55 billion).”
With people with mental health issues the expenditure was £252million and a saving of £487 million. Put simply, a service userwith a stable, comfortable home is going to cost less overall dueto non-statutory funding than they will without that support and inneed of statutory services.
For instance, with a chaotic lifestyle associated with mentalhealth issues, you may not pay your rent. You get made homeless asa result. With homelessness comes the need to be rehoused – ifhousing stock is available. The stress of homelessness can lead todrug addiction and the health and criminal justice problemsassociated with that. Someone who disengages with the mental healthsystem and is in a high stress environment caused by homelessnesscould face sectioning or crisis team intervention – both cost thestate more than if they were on a maintenance dose of medicationand in a stable environment.
Cuts concerns
Nationally, a lot of organisations are worried about the cuts toSupporting People. A spokesperson for the Salvation Army says; “Weare encouraging local authorities to balance the potential savingsof any cuts with the extra costs that inevitably come when there isno tailored support for vulnerable client groups.”
Many people in the third sector have as great an impact on thewelfare of mental health service users as statutory sectorproviders do. A psychiatrist will see you once a month – but asupport worker whom you see three hours a week may end up mentoringyou on to better things. These people, who do such a sterling jobare facing uncertainties in their own employment.
With the cuts in place there is real risk of those it supportedso well will regress and face the difficulties they were preventedfrom facing by Supporting People.
Post uploaded May 2011 by Richard Shrubb
