Comment on Disability Charity & User Involvment from Peter Beresford

Peter Beresford is Professor of Social Policy at Brunel University and a long-term service user.

The Remploy Closures: Disabled people, segregation and the small matter of user involvement

Hurray! Three cheers. Drinks all round. Some more segregated employment to close. Remploy is shutting down a number of its workshops for disabled people. The big disability charities – that is to say those longstanding charities for, rather than controlled by disabled people – are applauding and supporting the closures.

Admittedly, not so long ago they were praising the benefits of such segregated provision (some indeed still offering such services themselves). They were also criticising the disabled people’s movement for calling for an end to segregation. Now though they are on the side of the angels - and who knows what government money this might free to come in their direction.

Or is it really all as simple as this? How come some trade unionists and some disabled people, included disabled people employed by Remploy aren’t so keen on the closures? Do they need consciousness raising, some additional empowerment perhaps ? Do they need to have their internalised oppression further challenged? Again, I don’t think it is quite as simple as that.

Because yet again what we are seeing is policy being developed and implemented without another key principle which the disabled people’s movement has long campaigned for – the active and effective involvement of disabled people, other service users and their organisations.

The fact is that we are yet again seeing top-down paternalistic policy at work. Admittedly the rhetoric is right-on, but the traditional non-user controlled charities have become increasingly skilled, as disabled people increasingly argue, at voicing disabled people’s demands, if not necessarily so good at embodying them, themselves.

This policy shift can be seen to follow from broader government policy, committed to moving people from welfare to mainstream employment, as well as the EU’s direction of travel.

No matter about the nature of the mainstream labour market and employment conditions. No discussion about how discriminatory and excluding these still are. No questioning of the benefit traps many service users will continue to be placed in. No guarantees for the people who will be out of a job. No consideration of the pressure to be in a job, any job, regardless of its nature, conditions or quality. No mention of he real and justifiable anxieties disabled people will have because they may not be able to work full-time (or indeed any time) in the harsh world of modern employment practices.

No suggestion that workplaces like Remploy, for all their ideological limitations, might have a place to serve in some people’s lives, where they can contribute alongside others and earn some sort of a crust (albeit not enough) - until some really serious work is done to make open employment truly inclusive, accessible and non-disabling.

There is a big principle here. When people have half a loaf – don’t just take it away, as is now happening, both with Remploy and indeed many more day centres. Instead involve them fully and equally in the process of working to ensure that they can have a whole loaf - like non-disabled people – a truly inclusive, flexible and humanistic labour market and other alternatives. Don’t shut down an existing inferior arrangemenet until you guarantee for everyone the mainstream options all should have a right to.

Peter Beresford is dead right to raise questions about the top down decision making of the disability charitites over the closure of Remploy's factories but he falls foul of his own argument in assuming that the gurantee of 'mainstream options for all as of right' is a realistic or even desirable proposition.

I think its a pretty unrealistic goal .

Peter is honest but a bit niave in expecting ' user involvment ' to ever amount to anything more than the few most able service users being accepted by service providers as having a right to speak on behalf of all other service users. There again, Peter is someone who functions very well in the ' mainstream ' , which is not a fault, but of course it is natural for him to want , desire and possibly even expect everyone else to be capable of his'mainstream' capability and stability as well.

One 'mainstream' loaf for all makes a great political slogan unfortunately its also a pretty unrealistic one for some people whose disabilities dont make them as marketable , stable or independent as Peter is.