Response to the Attendance allowance petition to No10

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Thursday 4 February 2010
AttendanceA - epetition response
We received a petition asking:

“We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to
recognise the vital support that Attendance Allowance (AA) and
Disability Living Allowance (DLA) provide to disabled people, and to
ensure that these benefits are secured and are not removed as part of
any future reform of the social care system in England.”
· Read the petition
Petitions homepage

Read the Government’s response
The Government understands that disability benefits
provide an important means of financial support for severely disabled
people who have extra costs as a result of their disabilities.
We also know that the care and support system that
we have at the moment is not sustainable. By 2026, population
estimates show that there will be double the number of people aged over
85 that there are now, and the number of people over 100 will have
quadrupled. In 20 years’ time, we expect over 1.7 million more adults
to have a need for care and support. We need to reform the care and
support system radically to meet these future pressures.
In a reformed social care and support system, which
offers more support to older and disabled people, we are looking to see
if bringing together the new care and support system and some
disability benefits into a single system may be a better way of
providing support. However, we will only do this if we can better
support the needs of older and disabled people, and we have ruled out
bringing Disability Living Allowance for those under the age of 65 into
the National Care Service.
Whatever the outcome of the consultation, we want to
ensure that people receiving any of the relevant benefits at the time
of reform will continue to receive the same level of cash support under
our new and better care and support system.
If consultation shows that integrating some
disability benefits into a simplified system is the right approach, we
would want to ensure that the future care and support system retains
and builds on the main advantages of the current disability benefits
system. We know that disability benefits are popular because they
provide a universal entitlement which does not depend on where a person
lives, they provide a cash budget which can be spent on the services
someone wants, and people often use them in ways that help them to stay
independent and well for longer.
These three aspects – a universal system that is
consistent across the country, flexible methods of payment through
personal budgets and investment in prevention – will all be important
components of the new system.
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