Opinion: Editorial - Disabled services need more than goodwill

Commissioned by the Treasury to feed into next year's ComprehensiveSpending Review, the report was drawn up by Labour backbenchers, TomClarke and Joan Humble, after a series of "hearings" in the summer,where politicians, parents and professionals gave their views on thestate of services for disabled children from birth until adulthood (seeAnalysis, p10).

Not surprisingly, its recommendations are what charities and familieshave been calling for for years: significant additional funding forservices; a guarantee that children and their families will havemeaningful input into service planning and provision; and a statutoryentitlement to short break, respite services.

Many of these recommendations will have to be taken forward at centralgovernment level, but the challenges facing these families are not justdown to a lack of central government action; the report also flagged upthe lack of support at local government level. The hearings did not, forinstance, find one local authority that could state how many disabledchildren live within its boundaries, while Mencap's recent Off the Radarreport on children and young people's plans discovered that just fivecouncils out of the 20 examined had any analysis on the characteristicsand number of local disabled children.