202412 - Scotland Advisory Group Minutes - December 2024 (Easy Read)

This is an Easy Read set of Minutes to say what happened at a meeting.

In this document the Independent Living Fund Scotland is ILF Scotland for short.

This meeting was at the West Beer Brewery from 11 in the morning to 3 in the afternoon on 5 December.

Catherine Symington
Chloe McKee
Gordon Mckee
Linda Scott
Nic Reid
Stuart McCabe
Andy Higgins

Jim welcomed everyone to the meeting.

Lee will record the minutes.

The minutes were checked and agreed.

The Communications Team will put them on the ILF website.

Harvey said ILF Scotland had 4 online events to make the 2025 to 2028 strategy in partnership with disabled people

There will be 1 in-person event in early 2025.

Harvey said about half of the planned attendees were there but they gave very good feedback.

The main things talked about were:

• unpaid care
• the threshold sum of the re-opened fund, which people think is a bit high.

A threshold sum is the amount of money a person must get from their Council to be able to get ILF.

• flexibility of funding – this means it can change to meet people’s changing needs
• how ILF Scotland can be more flexible

• recruitment of PAs - personal assistants
• difficulties faced by people living in rural areas – far from cities and towns

• the cost of living crisis – this means the cost of everyday things we need like food, clothes and heating is going up a lot

Terms of reference explain the work of our organisation and how it will be done.

Harvey talked about the terms of reference and how they give information about what is needed for a meeting and how to employ someone.

Lee will send the Terms of Reference to group members so they can vote for a Chairperson and Vice Chairperson.

Harvey said that there are 3 hundred and 67 applications to the re-opened fund.

Some councils have not put in any applications but Edinburgh and East Renfrewshire have the most applications.

Harvey said ILF Scotland assessors have spent a lot of time supporting councils with training and telling more people about the re-opened fund.

It has been difficult for councils to have staff available to:

• find people who should put in an application to the ILF
• support them to put in an application

The co-production working group would like voluntary organisations to support people with applications.

Harvey said having an unpaid care part in the threshold sum is being considered.

This would reduce the amount of Self Directed Support money that people need to have to get ILF money.

The average award is 2 hundred and 90 pounds a week.

The threshold sum review paper will be talked about at the next co-production meeting in early 2025.

The group asked if Citizen Advice Bureau or ILF Scotland staff could give support with applications.

Harvey said review visits are up to date.

Difficult things have been:

• availability of social workers for review meetings
• getting the right people at the meetings
• how people are paid and how awards are managed

Peter said there had been a reply to the letter sent to the Government about available income removal.

Available income is money that a recipient pays towards their ILF amount.

The letter said the Government want to remove available income charges but there is no agreed time for this to be done.

We will talk about this at the next meeting.

There was nothing else we needed to talk about.

The next meeting will be on 12 March 2025.

1. Lee will to send out the terms of reference so group members can vote to decide on Chairperson and Vice-Chairperson.
2. ILF Scotland will draft a letter for Jim to send to ministers about when Available Income charges will be stopped.

This is the end of these Minutes.