Independent living for Disabled people
much more than an advice service... @ComDevDASL
www.disabilitylambeth.org.uk
Welcome
David Strong, Director
Welcome to another issue of the Mole newsletter. Like us, you’re probably glad to see the back of this winter and we look ahead to 2018 with some optimism. Fittingly, after a few weeks when we disappeared under scaffolding, ‘We are 336’ centre has had a facelift and looks a lot brighter thanks to Adrian Harris, the Lambeth Accord manager, and his team for seeing this through.
2018 and 2019. Not everything we need is in place. One of our main challenges in the coming year will be to find funding for our Advice Service which we have supported from our reserves for some time. This is one of DASL’s most valued services and is more needed than ever with many Disabled people facing particular difficulties with changes in welfare benefits, falling incomes and debt. We are also still actively fundraising for our London Stroke Choir and welcome all donations to help keep this friendly and popular group for stroke survivors going.
We have had very good news recently about the funding for some of our main services. Lambeth Council has extended the contract for the Independent Living and Carers’ Partnership (ILCP) for two more years so, with our partners Age UK Lambeth and Carers’ Hub Lambeth, we will be supporting Disabled and older people and carers with a range of services until at least March 2020. This will include taking on additional work with adults with learning disabilities through our Community Development Service. See page 11 for more information on what the ILCP offers.
Elsewhere in this issue there are features on some of the key developments which will affect Disabled people in Lambeth including the Council’s Disability Review, the local elections which take place in May, and DASL’s own new Strategic Plan which will map out what we plan to do over the next three years.
We have also been successful in winning funding for another year for the Lambeth Disability Hate Crime Partnership and, in particular, for the work which Cheryl Lewis does to support Disabled people who experience hate crime (see page 5). Although our four year Sport England project came to an end in March we have now been able to secure enough funding, in particular through Lambeth’s Get Out Get Active programme, for our very successful IntoSport Lambeth project, run by Abs Tripp, to continue for
Front page photo: DASL’s AGM December 2017. We had a great turnout and everyone wanted to say hello!
Contents
7. Campaign action
2. Welcome
8. DASL’s Advice Service
3. What happened at DASL’s AGM
9. Disabled children & young people
4. DASL hits the airways!
10. Local elections 2018
5. Hate Crime Project success
11. Independent Living & Carers’ Partnership services
6. Lambeth Council Disability Review
12. How to contact us @ComDevDASL
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What happened at the DASL AGM
L - R: Trevor & Ebenezer, DASL Trustees, with David Strong
The DASL AGM was held on Friday December 1st at “We are 336” in Brixton. As usual you gave us great support with over 50 people joining us. Members and guests heard reports on the charity‘s work over the past year and some of the challenges facing us and the Disabled people we support. Seven trustees were elected to the Management Committee; warm thanks were given to Ameena Berkowitz , one of DASL’s founding trustees and our first chair, who stood down after 16 years service. You can find more pictures of the AGM at www.disabilitylambeth.org.uk/dasl/about/c-daslagm/
Working together to make plans for DASL During the AGM, we opened the floor to members to find out what you think of DASL, the services we provide and what you would like us to do more of, or differently, in the future. This information, alongside thinking from the staff team and the Management Committee, will form DASL’s new Strategic Plan 2018-2021; a document to identify our strengths, the challenges we face and our priorities for the coming three years. It will help shape the services we provide to the local community in Lambeth, and beyond. We have had some great help from Alex Hendra, Inclusion London’s Business Development Manager, to shape our plan and we’re now writing the first draft. Several members have Louise Holden introduces the session agreed to review and comment on the plan, which will be invaluable to us in ensuring that the work we do meets the needs of Disabled people. We would love to hear from you if you would like to be involved – if this is you, please contact Louise, details on back page. @ComDevDASL
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DASL News DASL ‘Clear Spot’ Radio Show a smash hit! What a great evening in the studio at Resonance FM. For the first time on Tuesday March 6th DASL had its very own hour long radio show hosted by Abs Tripp, DASL’s Intosport Project Worker. People shared their experiences of how sport has changed t h e i r lives. “I heard t h e broadcast Getting us all into the studio, plus Kevin t h i s whose calm influence helped with premorning. I show nerves thought that it was lively and professional, with an interesting mixture of topics, people, and music. Thanks for including my point about the classical music. I thought the songs written by Simon, were good, especially 'Superhuman'.” Francesca, DASL member. Listen to the show via www .mixcloud.com/ Resonance/clear-spotdasl-6th-march-2018/ Special guests included DASL member and swimmer Loveth, Frank, Lecturer at Orchard Hill College, Hassan and Ricky from South East London Vision (SELVis), Tariq Shabeer, Transport For All volunteer and Louise, DASL’s Community Development Worker.
L-R: Ricky, Abs, Frank, Loveth, Tariq, Hassan, Louise plus Acorn, Ricky’s assistance dog
visually impaired people as they skated around the ice rink at Streatham plus staff talking about wheelchairs on ice; students and staff taking part in the iSPA Club at Streatham Ice and Leisure Centre, playing cricket, boccia and table tennis and swimmers in the changing rooms after lessons with the Supported Swimming Group at Clapham Leisure Centre.
Tariq performing live!
Abs says, “It was fantastic! After the show we were all buzzing and desperate to do it all over again! Thanks to Resonance FM and those who joined me ‘live’ on air and the many DASL members who phoned in with ideas, sent emails and were interviewed for the show. Plus special thanks to my husband Kevin who helped me edit the interviews.” Abs hopes to do another show in the summer and maybe even a regular slot so do get in touch if you would like to be part of it or have some ideas.
Hassan has already booked his slot, “Definitely, would love to. Really, really well done and I really look forward to working with you on the radio stuff! Apparently we bounced off each other quite well.”
Post-show - We did it!
All shared their personal experiences of how sport and getting more active has changed their lives and how being involved in DASL’s Intosport project has been so beneficial for their mental as well as physical wellbeing. The discussions were really powerful and entertaining at times, with Abs just managing to keep us on schedule! Abs pre-recorded interviews on location with 4 @ComDevDASL
“Just listened. Really Great! Well done! You marshalled the programme really well. Loved the blind boxing on ice with techno for the over 60's bit!” Frank. Interested? Got ideas? Contact Abs Tripp, contact details on back page.
www.disabilitylambeth.org.uk
Have you been a victim of hate crime? As a Disabled person, if you experience a hate crime you can access our Disability Hate Crime Advocacy Service. Hate Crime comes in many forms and can include:
Bullying or name calling
Punching, pushing, kicking or biting
Threats, promising to hurt you
Or anything deliberately designed to cause harm or distress.
Cheryl Lewis, Hate Crime Advocate
If you are not sure if what you have experienced is a hate crime, you can contact Cheryl Lewis for advice, support and information on 020 7642 2054 or email hatecrime@disabilitylambeth.org.uk The Lambeth Disability Hate Crime Partnership is led by DASL and is pleased to announce that the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) has agreed to fund our Advocacy Service for 2018 - 2019. This means Cheryl can continue her vital work to help individuals and to work with other organisations, to raise awareness of hate crime against Disabled People.
SAVE THE DATE! Lambeth Disability Hate Crime Partnership invites you to the
“BIG BUS DAY” on Tuesday JULY 10th 12noon until 1.30pm Find out how to keep safe when using buses in Lambeth The Big Bus Day is a very popular and fun session, run by Transport for London, the Met. Police Safer Transport Team and Lambeth Council. The photo above was taken at last year’s session. The bus takes a route around Streatham. “Actors” join the journey at different stops to role play various scenarios. It is a very interactive session with lots of opportunities to ask questions and find out more about how to keep safe when travelling. There is a meeting point in Streatham. We can support you to get there. Contact Louise at DASL on 020 7501 8976 to book and arrange where to meet on the day. @ComDevDASL
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Lambeth Council’s Disability Review
by Louise Holden
Following publication of the Lambeth Equality Commission’s report in July 2017, the Council decided that it would start by looking at how it can improve its own services for Disabled people through a Disability Review. The Commission found that Disabled residents:
WHAT IMPROVEMENTS DO WE WANT?
want to see a better understanding of disability and for it not to be ok to have negative attitudes to disability
The Council to help set up and fund a peer-led steering/working group, representative of all impairment groups. This would advise the Council on implementing its Disability Review and help to see that these changes take place.
want Disabled children and young people to have the best start in life through good support in school and in the transition to adulthood have difficulties in finding and keeping jobs and need better support to give them a more equal chance
To get things moving in the right direction, DASL is pushing for All Council staff to be trained in the Social Model of Disability and for this model to be the basis for planning services .
Both these actions would keep Disabled people involved at every stage of developing and updating Council services, and help to make services for Disabled people more personcentred and higher quality.
rarely have access to good quality and accessible housing, adapted for independent living
Workplace – recruitment and training Frontline customer services
want to know what information, advice and support is available and to be able to access it
Everyday spaces we move through e.g. streets, parks
The Equality Commission is interlinking with two other Council-led Commissions –
Having a say in Council decisions Council Housing.
Accessibility Commission – improving access to the Council’s online services
Key principles to get things right when thinking about disability were agreed to be:
Jobs for All Commission – to understand how the Council can help those, including Disabled people, who find it difficult to get jobs
Awareness raising (Equality of) access
The aim of the Disability Review is
(Availability of) appropriate services
to look critically at how Lambeth Council thinks about disability and how well it supports disabled residents
Equal treatment Independence and dignity
to see what the Council can get better at
Participation and representation
to agree what needs to be done to help with these improvements
Equality of opportunity I attended the Disability Review reference group meeting on January 31st. It was pleasing that a DASL member had also been able to attend and input directly to the discussion. They bought with them views from other DASL members who were not able to attend on the day. Continued...
There was a meeting on January 8th to discuss the Disability Review. One of the outcomes was to invite Disabled representatives to input into future meetings. The focus for the meeting was on five main areas: @ComDevDASL
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Campaign action In the run up to the local elections in May, the Direct Payments Peer Support Group has been discussing how to influence major changes in how Adult Social Care is delivered in the borough.
how many people of working age receive care packages
They invited Tara Flood from Alliance for Inclusive Education (ALLFIE), who lives in Hammersmith & Fulham borough. Tara was part of a team of Disabled people who campaigned for many years to abolish care charges in their borough, which was eventually successful.
The number of self funders
The cost of care packages
Louise Holden The group also invited a representative from Unite Community to hear about the union’s plans for the May local elections.
Members of the Peer Support Group have signed up to the Lambeth Pan-Disability Forum and DASL is supporting the Forum to set itself up independently so that it can campaign effectively on key issues for its members..
The argument for abolishing care package charges is that a Royal Commission in 1999 recommended that these charges should be stopped, but it was never implemented. It is worth noting that care packages for children up to the age of 18 years old are free and earnings for Disabled people in work are not taken into account in financial assessment of whether an adult should contribute to their care charges.
The Lambeth Pan-Disability Forum will be holding a Local Election Hustings on Monday 16th April, from 2pm to 4.30pm at “We are 336”, 336 Brixton Road SW9 7AA. This is your opportunity as a Disabled person interested in voting to find out from the local candidates from the main political parties what they are offering if they are elected at the local elections on 3rd May.
There are not many self funders in Lambeth, so the argument that those that can afford to pay should not get free care is not a strong one for Lambeth Council to make.
If you are interested in getting involved:
Following on from this, the group decided to put in a Freedom of Information request to the Council to find out:
- Join the Lambeth Pan-Disability Forum
the cost to the Council of carrying out financial assessments
For more information, you can contact the Forum via Louise Holden. Details are on back page.
the administration costs of care charges
See page 10 for more on the local elections.
- Come to the Hustings on 16th April.
Continued from page 6... We had an opportunity to hear what the Disability Review had found so far in relation to the above, in the context of improving internal council service provision and to help shape recommendations to be included in the Disability Review Report. The final report and recommendations were then presented on March 19th to the Lambeth Cabinet meeting and the recommendations were all adopted. David Strong, DASL Director, was able to speak at the Cabinet meeting, where he welcomed the recommendations of the Disability Review and emphasised the importance of the Council working with DASL and other local Disabled People’s Organisations which could offer services and expertise and help it to engage more directly with Disabled residents. He also stressed that, although it was encouraging to see the Council looking at its own workforce and approach to Disabled customers, there were many important issues for Disabled people that the Equality Commission did not cover in-depth including welfare reform and cuts in health, social care and local voluntary sector services. @ComDevDASL
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Do you need advice? For those of you who have lived in the borough for a while and have known about DASL, you would have most likely heard about our specialist advice service.
We offer support with mandatory reconsiderations and appeals, although we are not able to attend tribunals, at this time.
Since 2001, DASL has provided an advice service for Disabled people with a particular focus on clients with mental health issues. We recognise that mainstream services may be challenging or too rigid to engage with, so DASL has developed a tailored service that is flexible and holistic.
We have a wealth of local knowledge of services to which we can refer people, so if we are unable to provide direct support we can make sure a client is referred to the right service and they get the help they need. This is called a supported referral, which means that we follow up on any referral we make to ensure the client’s needs have been met. For enquiries from We work to the nationally recognised Disabled people we don’t have capacity to Advice Quality Standard, so when you help with, we work particularly closely with access our service you can be assured of our ILCP partner, Age UK Lambeth, which professional expert advice and guidance. has its own team of advisers. We have a dedicated team consisting of DASL’s Advice Service is independent and our Senior Advisor, Emma Davila and two impartial and offers: highly skilled and long-term volunteers, Welfare Benefit Checks / Challenging Carole Dennie and Jean Mullen. Decisions / Preparing for Our Community Development Worker, Appeals / Form filling / Louise Holden also supports the Advice Individual Charitable Grant Service. If you are having problems finding applications / Signposting / out about services that can support you, or Supported Referrals have had issues accessing services, you can contact Louise directly so she can Recently, Emma and Louise have been looking into how support you to get the help you need. Universal Credit will affect Since losing our funding for the DASL clients. It is quite a complex Enquiry Line some time ago, we have area of Welfare Reform in reconfigured our referral pathway so relation to Disability Benefits, clients and professionals can refer via our so we would advise anyone general email, which is monitored Monday who has been sanctioned, to Friday 9am to 5pm. The DASL Enquiry been awarded 0 points for Line is staffed Monday, Tuesday and ESA, or changed address and Thursday 10am to 1pm, with an been told to claim UC, to get answerphone at other times. expert advice before going Subject to demand, we can offer Friday ahead with the claim. appointments for form filling, usually Contact details are on the Personal Independent Payment (PIP), back page. Employment & Support Allowance (ESA), Blue Badge, Freedom Passes and Our Advice Team (Top to Taxicard. bottom) : Emma, Carole, Jean, Louise @ComDevDASL
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Disabled children and young people
After a period of consultation, Lambeth Council has just published its three year strategy to meet the needs of Lambeth’s children and young people with Special Education Needs and / or Disabilities (SEND) from birth to 25 years of age. You can download a copy at www.lambeth.gov.uk/sites/default/files/cypsend-strategy.pdf
Royal Society for Blind Children On the 1st January 2017 the Royal Society for Blind Children (RSBC) and Royal London Society for Blind People (RLSB) are joined together to create a leading charity in England & Wales, dedicated to making sure that no child will grow up to be poor or lonely just because they are blind. There are an estimated 22,000 blind and partially sighted children and young people in England and Wales, and every day four more children will be diagnosed with sight loss. By 2020 RSBC wants to have helped 11,000 children. To find out more about its services in London call 020 3198 0225 or email connections@rsbc.org.uk or visit the website http://www.rsbc.org.uk/ @ComDevDASL
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What’s happening in Lambeth Disability Cricket Day at the Kia Oval Tuesday 1st May 10am-2pm A great free day out for Disabled children, young people and adults and their families. Enjoy a tour of the Oval and take part in a variety of cricket activities. Contact Gavin Reynolds at Surrey Cricket for more information and to book a place. Tel: 07725 203962 Email: disability@surreycricket.com
If you’d like to go with a group from DASL’s IntoSport Lambeth project contact Abs Tripp (details on back page)
Use your vote in the Council elections Local Government Elections will take place on Thursday 3 May 2018. This is an important opportunity for Deaf and Disabled people to get our voices heard in the areas where we live, all the more so given today’s economic and political climate where political decisions are having a direct and dramatic impact on the day to day lives of Deaf and Disabled people. Inclusion London has produced a really useful information briefing about the local elections including suggested questions to put to the candidates of local parties covering issues such as affordable housing, benefits changes, social care cuts, hate crime, education, transport planning and how the Council engages with Deaf and Disabled people about its services. You can find the briefing on Inclusion London’s website at www.inclusionlondon.org.uk/ campaigns-and-policy/act-now/ 10 www.disabilitylambeth.org.uk @ComDevDASL
DASL is proud to be part of the ILCP The Independent Living & Carers’ Partnership, in which DASL is a key partner, provides a range of free services to support Disabled and older people and carers, including young carers, in Lambeth. It is funded by Lambeth Council until March 2020 and includes information, advice, advocacy, support with Direct Payments and community development.
SAIL, Enquiry Line and Advice Surgeries
Carers’ Advice, Support & Development
Carers’ Advice
Support for Mental Health and Learning Disability Carers
Volunteer Befriending Community Development with Older People
Professional Advocacy
Older Carers’ Peer Support
MySocial
Young Carer’s Project
Direct Payments Support
Community Development with Disabled People including Adults with Learning Disabilities
How to contact the ILCP Advice and support for Deaf People 0791 263 0786 advice@royaldeaf.org.uk
General Enquiries about ILCP Services and Information and Advice Tel: 020 7346 6800 Email: info@ageuklambeth.org.uk Professional Advocacy Tel: 020 7501 8966 Email: advocacy@disabilitylambeth.org.uk Direct Payments Support Service Tel: 020 7501 8960 Email direct.payments@disabilitylambeth.org.uk Carers’ Hub Lambeth Tel: 020 7346 6800 Email: connect@carershub.org.uk Website: www.carershub.org.uk
@ComDevDASL
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Contact Us Write to us at: “We are 336” 336 Brixton Road London SW9 7AA
much more than an advice service...
General Enquiries call 020 7738 5656 or email enquiry.line@disabilitylambeth.org.uk Direct Payments Support: 020 7501 8960 or email direct.payments@disabilitylambeth.org.uk Professional Advocacy: 020 7501 8966 or email advocacy@disabilitylambeth.org.uk Specialist Advice Service: 020 7738 5656 (leave a message) or email enquiry.line@disabilitylambeth.org.uk Into Sport Project: 07512 566 875 or 020 7738 56556 or email abs.tripp@disabilitylambeth.org.uk Community Development, Membership, Volunteering, Newsletter and Social Media enquiries: Louise Holden on 020 7501 8976 or email lholden@disabilitylambeth.org.uk London Stroke Choir: 07773 810264 or email manuela.gouveia@disabilitylambeth.org.uk Disability Hate Crime Advocacy: 020 7642 2054 or email hatecrime@disabilitylambeth.org.uk Contact with DASL via our social media facebook.com/DisabilityAdviceServiceLambeth twitter.com/ComDevDASL DASL’s main funders are Lambeth Council, Trust for London, the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime, Spirit of 2012 and Skills for Care Charity No. 1087399 A company limited by guarantee registered in England & Wales No. 04214688 DASL is proud to be part of the Independent Living & Carers’ Partnership
@ComDevDASL
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