More Right to Control flexibility for ILF users
19 January 2012
The Independent Living Fund (ILF) Trust Deed has been updated to ensure greater flexibility within the Right to Control Trailblazers.
The changes mean that service users in Trailblazer areas can spend their ILF payments to assist them to live independently, within an agreed support plan. Previously, ILF payments could be used to purchase certain personal and domestic care tasks only.
James Sanderson, ILF Chief Executive said,
"We have been working closely with the trailblazer areas and the Department for Work and Pensions to determine how we can effectively improve the overall customer experience.
"We are pleased to announce that the Trust Deed has been amended to allow greater flexibility around the use of ILF funding."
This new flexibility to support the development of the Right to Control is available to all ILF service users who live within a Right to Control trailblazer local authority area, and will be offered to them at their next review.
The ILF Trust Deed had similar amendments in December 2010, which allowed service users the same flexibility when using funding from their Trailblazer local authority.
Notes to Editors
For more information contact David Smith, Head of Communications, on 0115 9450730 or 07779 083493. www.dwp.gov.uk/ilf
- The Independent Living Fund (ILF) is an Executive Non-Departmental Public Body of the Department for Work and Pensions. It awards payments to severely disabled people to support the cost of their personal assistance, enabling them to live fully inclusive independent lives in their communities. To get payments from the ILF you have to meet certain conditions.
- The ILF provides financial assistance under the terms of a single publicly financed discretionary Trust Deed – The Independent Living Fund (2006), governed by a Board of eight Trustees.
- The amendments to the Deed made on 17 January 2012 remove the requirement that ILF funding is spent on Qualifying Support and Services (QSS) and instead allow ILF payments to be spent on “the sort of liability that might properly be incurred to assist that Candidate to Live Independently” and are in accordance with an agreed support plan.
- Right to Control is a new legal right intended to improve the choice and control disabled people have in deciding who provides their support and how it is provided. The ILF is a funding stream within the Right to Control, which is testing new ways of working together to better combine support arrangements for disabled people, through seven Trailblazer sites across England. For more information go to http://odi.dwp.gov.uk/odi-projects/right-to-control-trailblazers.php
- The ILF currently provides financial support to 20,000 disabled people in the UK, and has supported over 46,500 disabled people during the last 23 years.