The Co-operative Party

The Co-operative Party fully supports the principle that users and carers should be given as much control as they want over the services that they require. We welcome the movement towards direct payments and individual budgets, which have been extremely successful in changing the quality of care and quality of life of the people receiving them.

Through coming together collectively, direct payment and individual budget recipients can improve the quantity and quality of the services that they receive, and ensure a decent working environment for the carers which they rely on. The Co-operative Party welcomes the Department of Health’s pilot programme of direct payments mutuals. These have brought together service44users, informal carers and personal care assistants to ensure that both users and employees can benefit from a more formalised system of care and economies of scale. This means that recipients are able to remain in control of the day to day provision of how their care is provided, while personal care assistants of the co-operative are able to ensure that they are receive appropriate employment conditions. Service users in receipt of individual budgets and their employees could receive the similar benefits from joining a similar or existing mutual organisation.

The Government should ensure that in its fourth term, all service users and carers will have access to a direct-payments mutual within their local community. In order to bring universal coverage, it should:

• Encourage local authorities to use their organisational capacity to help develop direct payments mutuals
• Develop a technical assistance fund for direct payments mutuals to cover start up capital costs
• Ensure that local authorities do not use direct payments and individual budgets as a means of reducing overall budgets, and pay a rate that reflects the cost of being a responsible employer to high quality staff.