By Mark Shrimpton, DRC Assistant Director Legal and Operations
As we lead up to the live web chat with the Minister for the Third Sector, Phil Hope, it is worth reminding ourselves that there are, perhaps, three key issues that relate to disabled people and the not for profit sector:
- The role and sustainability of disabled people’s organisations
- Involvement of disabled people as trustees, management committee members, employees and volunteers
- The potential of public/voluntary sector partnerships
The Role
In more recent times, as the voluntary sector shed its sometimes mythical Victorian reputation, the Disability Movement has become part of the Third Sector landscape. Over the last few decades many not for profit organisations have been initiated and nurtured by disabled people, largely to serve political lobbying interests or direct, peer to peer service delivery.
Take, for example, the National Council for Independent Living (NCIL), established in 1996. NCIL exists to pursue the aim of independent living for all disabled people, has worked on promoting and implementing direct payments, and has supported the work of its member centres for independent living.
Many areas of the country feature an independent living centre, designed to provide, amongst other things, direct payments support services, payroll schemes for personal assistants and so on. These CIL’s are delivering core and vital services to disabled people. In fact so valued are CIL’s that the Prime Minister’s recent “Life Chances” report called for the development of a CIL in every region of the country.
So why, CIL’s ask, is their core funding threatened and, in an unfortunate numbers of cases, withdrawn? Disabled people are beginning to lose count of the number of CIL’s and other user led organisations that have closed through lack of funding.
Involvement
We’ve seen how disabled people’s organisations have grown, prospered and are now beginning to suffer under new funding regimes. But what of the voluntary and community groups that are providing services not specific to disability?
Being part of the community and participating in a real and not tokenistic sense is as important for disabled people as it is for others. But, there exists a tension between disabled groups and mainstream society. The latter tends to exclude disabled people by either erecting, or failing to remove, barriers – some intangible - that prevent access for disabled people. This tends to be caused by a lack of understanding of the access requirements and a lack of knowledge about how to properly involve disabled people. This could be resolved in part by building stronger relationships between disability groups and the wider voluntary sector.
Partnerships
The current political flavour suggests an imminent march towards the provision of statutory services by, amongst others, the Third Sector.
In its short life, the DRC has worked with many groups from the voluntary sector. Some of these organisations have a history of service provision not limited to disabled people – for example, the Law Centres Federation. In developing such partnerships, it is helpful to see disability and disabled people embedded within partner groups, the latter of whom are consequently richer.
If the Third Sector is to play an even greater part in the delivery of public services, then disability needs to be properly mainstreamed and the public sector should use its purchasing power to ensure adherence to the Disability Equality Duty – and, indeed, the similar duties on race and gender.