London Development
The aim of our London work is to create links and develop activities that use our knowledge of the law to support disabled people to manage and sustain their quality of life, improve their well being and realise their potential. In order to realise this aim we seek to conduct activities and projects which work at three levels:
- ensuring the most marginalised disabled people obtain sufficient support to maintain their dignity and financial security (e.g. adequate community care support and welfare benefits);
- realising the aspiration and commitments made in existing laws (e.g. helping individuals to realise their rights under the Disability Discrimination Act and ensuring public authorities meet their duties to actively promote the best interests of disabled people);
- future focussed work with aims that go beyond present legislation and/or practice (e.g. cross equalities work recognising the multiple identities of disabled people).
We are very open to suggestions for work that we could do with other organisations in order to support these aims. Some examples of our work over the past year include running workshops covering the legal entitlements of disabled asylum seekers and refugees; work with people with learning difficulties and disabilities to help them to understand discrimination law; helping to ‘unpack’ and contextualise the proposals made in government proposals for the reform of the social care system to help disabled people and organisations respond to consultation and actively participating in the cross equalities network for London, HEAR, with whom we recently chaired their event ‘Personalisation – a cross equalities perspective’.
Where possible we respond to requests for our support at events and meetings. This work is done both by the London Development Officer, Nick Clarke, and theLegal team. We speak at various events, a few examples include:
- explaining the Disability Discrimination Act to disabled transport users
- encouraging employers to employ and retain people with mental health issues;
- explaining personalisation to a local advice network AGM
- discussing disability and housing issues in relation to the DDA at a public meeting
- speaking about the Equality Bill to a meeting of disabled peoples organisations
- talking to local impairment specific and general support groups for disabled people and carers
A focus for our London Development work is public legal education. We are keen to experiment with imaginative tools and formats for helping disabled people to understand, not just the law, but the skills and support that they need in order to make use of their legal entitlements.
For us public legal education intends to help disabled people to deal with problems that they experience and to have the confidence to try new situations. We very much hope to roll out a range of new public legal education activities over the coming year.
Finally we also organise biannual training courses in disability law as well as bespoke training. Our courses happen every Spring and Autumn and cover topics as diverse as Human Rights and disability, Community Care, Disability Living and Attendance Allowance and Employment issues relevant to disabled people employing their own staff.
For further information about our courses, or if you would like to be added to our database of organisations that we contact with information about these and other London development activities please contact Nick Clarke (020 7791 9819)