Britain to close NHS institutions for people with intellectual disabilities, give them their own homes

From the BBC News:

Nearly 2,000 people with learning disabilities are to be moved into their own homes from the NHS institutions where they have lived for years.

Some £175m is being made available to rehouse inhabitants - who have spent at least a decade on the so-called "campuses" - within the community.

The campuses, many of which are former hospitals, will be closed by 2010.

The Department of Health has insisted no-one would be left on their own to fend for themselves.

Each person will be individually assessed and given their own care plan, a spokesperson said.

"Whatever they need help with - from dressing and shopping to 24 hour care, they'll get it. No-one will be left alone."

The proposal is seen as a significant challenge as so many have spent so long institutionalised.

The last referrals to campuses were made in the mid-1990s, so those within them have spent at least ten years on the site.

Campaigners have long argued that the lives of campus inhabitants have been far too limited: all their needs beside food and accommodation must be funded by £20 of hospital pocket money each week, and they have not been able to take part in simple every day activities like cooking for themselves.

Jo Kidd, director of The Skillnet Group, has been working with the Department of Health to start moving people into the community.

"It is a very complicated process and cannot be rushed. We have welcomed the moves to close the campuses from the beginning, but it has to be done in the right way, with the emphasis on what the individual really wants."

Even the choice of where someone wants to live may be a challenge. Many have spent so long on campuses that they no longer have a sense of where they came from, nor family to return to.

Local authorities and Primary Care Trusts are to bid for a tranche of the £175m being made available to provide the required housing and day care facilities.

"The funding provides the incentive for Primary Care Trusts, in conjunction with local authorities, to get on with closure plans, so people with a learning disability can live their lives the way they want, within their community," said Dame Jo Williams from Mencap.

"People with a learning disability should have the opportunity to make choices about where and how they live."

Care services minister Ivan Lewis said the move would bring to a close "one of the darkest chapters in our nation's history".

He added: "People who are neither a danger to themselves or others have the right to live in the community.

"Every individual will receive high quality support at a level required to ensure they have a full life.

"This decision underlines the government's belief that people with learning disabilities are people first with a right to expect equality of citizenship."