Volunteers and a Disability Action Plan

I joined a Volunteer and Community Action Group Forum meeting this morning to get a better overview of what was being provided locally - it is extraordinary how many different groups exist and operate. Once upon a time many of these activities would have been done by health or social services - times have changed and for many services are more flexible and often more led by the needs of the individuals - but the downside is the funding - so many projects operate for 2 or 3 years then lose funds or have to spend too much of their time either seeking further funds or promoting what they do to justify the funds...

The afternoon was a couple of hours devoted to Stroud District Councils' Disability Action Plan - some good stuff - the challenge is always how to engage with groups to get what is really wanted or needed. The other two key points - both of which I made at the meeting are re funding for the proposed activities and monitoring to see how the goals are achieved. I look forward to hearing more as the Plan progresses to the next stage.

Phil and Pam Hughes from the Stroud Access Group were also in attendence to give their views on access.

It was good to see things have moved on from my days as a Social Worker - then when I did my dissertation in the early 1980s I looked at what was then the pioneering "Social model of disability". We can still learn much from that. In this model the notion of discrimination is key, in other words, disabled people do not face disadvantage because of their impairments but experience discrimination in the way we organise society. This includes failing to make education, work, leisure and public services accessible, failing to remove barriers of assumption, stereotype and prejudice and failing to outlaw unfair treatment in our daily lives.

To read more I came across this website - not sure how useful but it gets the idea across in a rather simplistic way!