§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Lord Warner)My honourable friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Community (Dr Stephen Ladyman) has made the following Written Ministerial Statement today.
I am today publishing Valuing People.. Moving Forward Together, the Government's second annual report on learning disability services. The report describes progress made in implementing the programme of action set out in the White Paper Valuing People: A New Strategy for Learning Disability fin- the 21st Century (Cm 5086) and responds to Rights, Independence, Choice and Inclusion, the second annual report of the Learning Disability Task Force, which was published in February this year.
Valuing People is a cross-government strategy. In last year's annual report, Making Change Happen (HC 5114), we acknowledged the Learning Disability Task Force's concern that government as a whole were not giving enough priority to people with learning disabilities and undertook to talk to government departments about learning disability and the impact of their work on people with learning disabilities. Valuing People: Moving Forward Together reports on that work and describes areas where departments have worked with, or will be working with, learning disabled people to ensure that they can be more fully included in society. It records a wide range of activity covering many aspects of daily life:
- The Department of Trade and Industry plans to work with people with learning disabilities to make sure that Consumer Direct provides information in a way that they can understand;
- The Department of Health and the Department for Education and Skills are jointly supporting a conference later this year on parenting and people with learning disabilities;
WS 30 - Under the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister's Supporting People initiative, more than £400 million has been allocated to services for people with learning disabilities;
- The Department of Health has awarded the Home Farm Trust £194,000 over three years to set up a self sustaining national network of organisations supporting family carers who have adult relatives with learning disabilities;
- The Department for Transport has funded a project with Transport for London and a self advocacy group to make buses and tubes in London easier for people with learning disabilities to use;
- The Department for Constitutional Affairs has been consulting people with learning disabilities over the Mental Incapacity Bill.
Today's report, like last year's, is written in an accessible form, using pictures and straightforward, jargon-free language. We commissioned people with learning disabilities from the London consultative group to advise us on making the report accessible and I should like to acknowledge the help we received from them. It is important that people with learning disabilities can see for themselves what is being done to improve the services they use and to increase the opportunities available to them to lead the type of life the rest of us take for granted.
Valuing People said that it would take a minimum of five years for its programme to be implemented. We are now over half way through that period and continue to make good progress.
Copies of Valuing People: Moving Forward Together have been placed in the Library.