Why I fear for my daughter

To listen to many disability pressure groups, adult social care for people with learning disabilities is being slashed by a heartless government. What few of them want to tell you, however, is that the government is spending far more than it needs to on looking after adults with learning difficulties, as well as exposing many to cruelty and exploitation, thanks to an ideological obsession with placing them in ordinary housing rather than the communities in which many have lived for decades.

I have an interest to declare: I have a daughter with learning difficulties who in two years’ time will qualify for adult social care. It is a transition, I have been warned by other parents, to be dreaded: children who were active and sociable at school find themselves as adults living lonely existences in social housing, with perhaps a work or college placement once or twice a week.

This, too often, is the reality of ‘Supported Living’, the now-favoured model of looking after people with learning disabilities.