Source · Select Committees · Women and Equalities Committee
Recommendation 5
5
Not Addressed
Ministers paused the national shielding programme in August and in September asserted that “we need...
Recommendation
Ministers paused the national shielding programme in August and in September asserted that “we need to get away from the food parcel model”, without offering any evidence of the Government’s assessment of the level of disabled people’s needs for help accessing food, including free food deliveries. Since then, there have been local lockdowns and a return to national measures, with clinically extremely vulnerable people once again advised by the Government to avoid leaving their homes, including to shop for food. People must now rely on friends, family, carers, volunteers and local authorities, which have been provided with additional funding but whose resources are over-stretched. In circumstances in which the Government is asking people to shield, we believe it has a duty to ensure that the local support arrangements that have replaced the national shielding programme, and the funding in place to support them, are adequate to meet the level of need. The Government must immediately publish its assessment of disabled people’s needs for support accessing food, including provision of free food box deliveries. It must also publish a plan to review the adequacy of local arrangements and central government funding to support disabled people who need help getting food while coronavirus restrictions remain in place. We expect such a plan to be published within two months of publication of this Report, and be both updated and re-published regularly during the remainder of the pandemic. (Paragraph 36) Health and social care
Government response summary AI-generated
The government's response did not address the recommendation to publish an assessment of disabled people's food access needs or a plan for reviewing local support arrangements; instead, it discussed NHS health checks and mask wearing.
Summary of the government's response below — read the verbatim text to verify.
Government Response
Not Addressed
HM Government · verbatim extract
Not Addressed
Defra has been assessing the support needed by disabled people for accessing food during the pandemic, through Equalities Impact Assessments (EIAs). These EIAs have been carried out for each scheme, including the Food Box scheme. In line with the practice of successive administrations, the Government does not routinely publish EIAs. 3 Scope, Leonard Cheshire, Disability Rights UK, National Autistic Society, Mind, Mencap, Sense, Royal National Institute of Blind people (RNIB), Royal National Institute for Deaf people (RNID), and Business Disability Forum (BDF) 6 Fourth Special Report of Session 2019–21 When setting up the NSV Referral scheme, potential barriers to communicating the scheme with disabled individuals were highlighted. It was noted that those with visual or learning difficulties may be unable to access promotional materials. Consequently, Defra identified ways in which charities could actively engage and promote the programme to disabled people, by: • partnering with local organisations that support people with sight loss or blindness and utilising staff across 75 eye hospitals to engage directly with patients experiencing sight loss to promote the scheme; • using a variety of different communication channels to promote the scheme to disabled people. This includes engaging with disability support organisations and making promotional materials/leaflets available in Braille or audio format; • making Text, Easy Read and BSL options available for promotional materials, to ensure that deaf individuals and those who are hard of hearing can access key information about the scheme; and by • ensuring that their websites have a range of accessibility options, including Browsealoud for individuals that are deaf or hard of hearing. In addition to the EIA for the NSV scheme, Defra conducted an EIA for the Food Box scheme. Through the EIA potential issues in accessing the food were identified, such as a person’s mobility impacting their ability to pick up food boxes. Mitigations were provided for each potential issue. For example, for those with mobility issues MHCLG were working with the food providers (Brakes and Bidfood) to ensure councils had access to data about who required help carrying their box into their house. Defra will continue to monitor and evaluate the schemes which are still in place and should the need for such schemes arise again, lessons learned and findings from the evaluations of these schemes will be applied. Defra recognises that it is important to keep under review the adequacy of local arrangements and central government funding with the continuation of challenges posed by the pandemic. In line with the national roadmap, Defra are looking at both the CEV and NSV offer and are engaging with supermarkets, local authorities and charities to come up with options for the futures of both services. This is being looked at in conjunction with the ending of Shielding, the need for the services going forward and taking into account a scenario where shielding may be re-introduced in local lockdowns. Statutory Code of Practice on the Public Sector Equality Duty
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