Disabled people under 65 are a third of all social care users, but too often social care is viewed as an issue that only affects older people.
Scope has published new research that aims to understand how social care affects younger disabled people and the impact of the funding crisis.
The charity spoke to 500 disabled people aged 18-64 who use social care. It asked how far services support them to live, work and participate in their communities. It also asked how services can become better at supporting disabled people to live independently in their communities.
Among the key findings were –
- over half of disabled people using social care (55%) can’t get the support they need to live independently;
- half (51%) of social care users with fluctuating needs say support does not fit in around their changing needs.er than one in five disabled people (18 per cent) get the right social care;
- while 27% feel services consistently support their day to day living needs, 38% say this never happens;
- 52% of social care users want more help to be active in their communities, while 30% receive help towards this from social care services; and
28% of disabled social care users have ‘complete’ or ‘a lot’ of choice and control in planning their care but 41% have ‘very little’ or ‘none’.
In addition, more than half of social care users under 35 want help with working or looking for work, but only 15% are currently getting support with working and only 13% are getting support looking for work.
Disabled people's experiences of social care is available @