Macclesfield Disability Information Bureau

A team from the Macclesfield Disability Information Bureau visited the Warrington Disability Partnership to get information and advice about delivering access audits to outside organisations.

Who are Macclesfield Disability Information Bureau?
They visited Warrington Disability Partnership
The visit
What was learnt?
How will Macclesfield Disability Information Bureau implement these ideas?
Six month follow up

Who are Macclesfield Disability Information Bureau?

The Macclesfield Disability Information Bureau is staffed by volunteers with first hand experience of disability and provides a free and confidential service on all aspects of disability to disabled people, carers, friends and professionals. It is currently funded by the Big Lottery Fund and offers support for disabled people to claim benefits, undertake learning and increase access to services and provision.

They offer a range of services including:

An IT learning centre equipped with a large range of adaptive technology.
Access appraisals.
Disability awareness training
Dyslexia software and support
Support with disability benefit enquires including a form filling service

They visited Warrington Disability Partnership

Warrington Disability Partnership is an independent, user led organisation committed to valuing everyone's life skills, experience and individuality to enable positive change. They actively promote independent living by providing information on peer counselling, housing, equipment, personal assistance, transport, access, employment, education, training and other services.

Warrington Disability Partnership has been providing a similar service to Macclesfield Disability Information Bureau very successfully for some years and over this time the organisation has expanded its services and developed the infrastructure towards a sustainable future.

The visit

Macclesfield Disability Information Bureau wanted to visit Warrington Disability Partnership to look into setting up a charging structure to deliver a quality and professional access audit service for which there would be a charge covering cost of the audit and generating income for the organisations. The main aims of the visit were:

To learn from the experience of an existing organisation that has been involved in this area of work for some time.
To gather information about a similar service identifying the scope of access audits/staffing & resource issues.
To discuss how the organisation has addressed issues of sustainability.

What was learnt?

The visit was helpful in a number of ways:

Firstly, the visit was inspirational as it provided Macclesfield Disability Information Bureau with a vision of how successful a group can be in growing a range of services for and with disabled people - not only those relating to their specific interest of access audits.
Visiting another group running a similar successful service reassured us that their ideas were on the right track and validated the good work that they were already doing. It also built up their confidence to go ahead with their development plan for the new and extended access and audit project.
Warrington Disability Partnership was very generous with their time and resources such as project outlines, job descriptions and information on potential funders. Having this information enabled Macclesfield Disability Information Bureau to move forward more quickly with a clearer project outline and has been invaluable for recent funding bids.
Macclesfield Disability Information Bureau also know that they came away from the visit having developed an on-going supportive, mentoring relationship with Warrington Disability Partnership and know that they are welcome to call at any time to talk about specific concerns around the access audit idea. Warrington Disability Partnership may well play a role in their new project's steering group, once established.

How does Macclesfield Disability Information Bureau plan on implementing these ideas?

They already have clarified, agreed and written their project outline.
They are writing their draft funding proposals.
The two groups in this new collaborative project are currently undertaking a 'due diligence' process.
Discussions are taking place with other interest disability access group in the area to seek support for the project and to identify potential steering group members for the new project.

Six month follow-up

The visit gave Macclesfield Disability Information Bureau the opportunity to share their vision for collaborative working on an access appraisal/audits project with an organisation which had demonstrated success in this area of work. The following key learning points came from that visit:

Illustrated the potential and success of partnership working and clarified the nature of the relationships which came from such partnerships to the benefit of each of the organisations involved.
To clarify ideas on the nature of the role of the person who would be appointed to run this project and learn from the experience of someone who already occupies a similar role within another organisation.
To gain valuable information concerning the way in which Warrington Disability Partnerships service had been marketed to relevant and interested organisations, particularly those within the statutory sector, where this potential for support for a future sustainability strategy.
To find out more about an organisation which is located within the wider area of Cheshire and Warrington with whom Macclesfield Disability Information Bureau might be able to develop future partnership working on a variety of project.
To compare and contrast the service offered with that offered at present by both organisations and find the points of similarities which existed. This gave Macclesfield Disability Information Bureau the confidence that their service is one of quality which is important for all to recognise in taking this work forward. At a subsequent meeting held by the host organisation this initial confidence was reinforced by the host's presentation to various groups of the work they had been carrying out in the area of access appraisals/audits.

The visit reinforced Macclesfield Disability Information Bureau's determination to pursue their initial ideas of working on this collaborative project and they have continued to meet to take this work forward. They are now in the process of setting up a joint meeting between practitioners and management committee members of both organisations. This will both discuss the whole process and implications for collaboration as well as explore the potential for setting up a social enterprise for future sustainability. To this end representatives of the Crewe organisation attended a Disability Information Bureau team meeting where there was a presentation on social enterprise given by a representative of the Cheshire Social Enterprise Group. Those attending felt sufficiently confident in the potential for this development to make the decision to explore further collaboration on the setting up of a social enterprise venture for this area of work.

Macclesfield Disability Information Bureau have also been exploring potential funding sources and collaborating to complete and submit applications for funding to various bodies which may be interested in supporting the partnership to provide more staff resources to devote to and lead on this area of work.

Discussions have also been held with other interested parties including various Access Groups in the Macclesfield Borough with a view to extending the invitation for representatives to be members of the project steering group.

Future aims for Macclesfield Disability Information Bureau are:

To have sought and gained agreement at a management level that the way forward for this work lies in collaboration between the two organisations involved.
To have explored further the potential for the setting up of a social enterprise and clarified the way forward should they choose this course of action.
To have submitted application forms for funding to develop this work where the focus of the bid will be on developing training for volunteers to take on access appraisal work alongside paid staff who will have the responsibility of moving forward on this agenda and joining with others to explore future sustainability options.

For more information about Only Connect or for an application pack, please contact Only Connect

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