User Involvement Service

Disabled people have strong views on topics such as transport, housing, access and disability discrimination but often find it hard to get someone to listen to them or take responsibility for addressing the questions to which they need answers. The role of the User Involvement Service is to strengthen the voices of disabled people in Lambeth and to ensure that service providers hear them.

This is a combined user involvement service for disabled and older people, which is jointly managed by DASL and Age Concern Lambeth. We are working with Age Concern Lambeth to deliver user involvement in a wide range of important strategies and service developments. You can visit the website of our partner organisation here Age Concern Lambeth website. Lambeth Adults’ and Community Services and NHS Lambeth fund the project until 2010.

How we involve people

This is done through a variety of approaches including:

. The User Involvement Worker visiting Support and User Groups

· One-off consultation events

· Letters to DASL’s newsletter The Mole

· Reponses on our ‘Have your say’ discussion forum.

· Surveys

· Lay Assessing (where trained disabled volunteers interview other disabled people about the services they use)

· Formal user representation on the Physical and Sensory Impairment partnership Board (formerly the Lambeth Disability Partnership Board)

What we’re doing in 2009

Some of the key tasks for our user involvement service during 2009 include:

· Supporting users to be involved in the Lambeth Physical and Sensory Impairment Partnership Board and the Older Persons Action Board

· Involving users in the consultation on the Lambeth Older Persons’ Strategy between January and March 2009

· Involving users in the development of the Joint Strategy for Younger Adults with Physical and Sensory Impairments from June 2009

· Coordinating a new Volunteer Lay Assessor Scheme to work with NHS Lambeth on its Intermediate Care Strategy from December 2008

· Working with a group of disabled people to support the development of the user-led Lambeth Pan-Disability Forum which was launched in April 2009