Have your say on Lambeth’s Physical and Sensory Impairment Strategy
The Strategy will cover the period 2010 - 2015 and will be mainly about the needs of adults aged 18 – 64. It is the responsibility of the Lambeth Physical and Sensory Impairment Partnership Board. DASL is one of the key partners of Lambeth Council and NHS Lambeth on the Board and in developing the strategy. We have been working hard to make sure that disabled people are fully involved in deciding the priorities for the Strategy.
How can you have your say on the strategy?
There are various ways to get involved between November and February :
Lambeth Council’s website has a special page giving information on the consultation. Visit it at Lambeth Council website Here you can download a copy of the draft strategy and the consultation response form.
You can also download the strategy here Lambeth_PSI_strategy_formal_consultation_draft_13.11_.09_.pdf [please note this is 76 pages, 416KB in size]
There is a major public consultation event at Lambeth Town Hall on Tuesday 1st December 2009 from 11am – 3pm. You can find out more about how to attend the event by reading this flier PSI_Strategy_Town_Hall_consultation_event_01.12_.09_.pdf
DASL’s User Involvement Worker, Richard Farnos, will also be working closely with Council colleagues to visit community organisations to find out the views of their disabled members and users.
You can continue to use DASL’s discussion forum here DASL discussion forum as a space to exchange views and ideas about what should be in the strategy with other disabled people.
What happened during the first stage of consultation between June and August?
A lot of preparatory work was done in the nine months before June 2009 to research needs, map current services and gaps in what is available, examine issues in specific services and think about what might be done in future.
From June to early August we worked with the Adults and Community Services Consultation Officer and other Council and NHS Lambeth colleagues on the ‘deliberative’ stage of public consultation on the strategy. We wanted to involve people with physical and sensory impairments who use services and those who don’t in the work by finding out from them what they think of current services and what they would like to see provided for the future.
We produced a special issue of our newsletter, The Mole, in June to explain more about the strategy and how you can have your say. You can still download it here
Mole_Special_Strategy_issue_June09.pdf
We prepared a short questionnaire particularly aimed at disabled people and carers to find out what they thought Lambeth can do to improve some of the key services which disabled people need to use. We were very pleased to receive 32 responses containing some valuable ideas, comments and constructive criticism. We have written a summary of the responses we received which will be fed into the next version of the Strategy. You can see the summary here
DASL_PSI_Survey_reponses_July09.pdf
A special public consultation event on the strategy held at Lambeth Town Hall on Monday 6th July from 11am – 3pm was attended by 75 people.
55 users of Lambeth Resource Centre, the Council’s main day service for this client group, gave their views at a special event on 7th August.
Our User Involvement Worker, Richard Farnos and DASL colleagues were also involved in some special discussion groups with local disability organisations – Headway, Latin American Disabled People’s Project, Lambeth Pan-Disability Forum and the DASL Direct Payments User Group - to find out what is important to them.
A consultation workshop for voluntary and community organisations organised by DASL and Lambeth Voluntary Action Council was attended by representatives of 10 groups working with people with physical and sensory impairments. Read the notes from that meeting here PSI_strategy_-_voluntary_groups_workshop_notes_31.07_.09_.pdf
Lambeth First also prepared a summary consultation form and people sent comments in using this.
You can read all the comments which were received on the draft strategy at the deliberative stage here PSI_strategy_consultation_register_of_comments_Sept09.pdf .
You can also read the draft Evidence Report which provides additional data and information supporting the Strategy here Lambeth_PSI_Strategy_-_Evidence_report.pdf (this is 141 pages, 931KB in size)