3 Overarching Themes
Having set the context for this report, the next two sections present the recommendations emerging from the DWG's deliberations. Examples are provided to illustrate the nature of the barriers that disabled people experience, how they can be overcome, and the benefits that consequently ensue. The aim is to present recommendations clearly and accessibly, giving some background information about each and explaining the thinking behind them.
There are a number of themes that are relevant across the board, underpinning other recommendations, informing how they should be taken forward and providing strategic direction. These are addressed in this section.
There are also several themes that recur repeatedly, and these are discussed under topic headings. They include concerns around the need for research. There are gaps in the evidence-base needed to inform policy. If progress is to be measured, not least in the context of the Disability Equality Duty, starting points (baselines) are needed. To ensure progress is in the right direction, standards need to be set and audited.
When it comes to research, and to setting standards, disabled people need to be involved. They should not just be the objects of research, but equal participants in it. And standards which fail to reflect disabled people's experiences, needs and aspirations are no standards at all.
In January 1998, disabled people were invited to get involved in a project to develop an Accessible Transport Strategy for Glasgow, funded by Glasgow City Council. Invitations were mailed to over 250 disabled people's organisations or individual disabled people. As a result, 60 disabled people attended a workshop. The proceedings were published and widely distributed.
The Project did not find a lack of technical expertise amongst transport providers or planners, or a lack of support for the principle of making transport accessible. But disabled people have often been effectively excluded from contributing to accessible passenger transport strategy development by physical obstacles (e.g. the key meeting is held in an inaccessible room, or there is no budget for a BSL English Interpreter). Transport provision and planning was fragmented. Disabled people campaigning for accessible transport lacked technical expertise - often due to a lack of appropriate resources.
After the workshop, some delegates joined the Project's four transport working groups, covering buses, trains, taxis, and door-to-door services. This enabled them to become more fully acquainted with current technical and institutional barriers. This began to develop a pool of expertise.
The Project concluded that disabled people have much to contribute to monitoring, evaluation, quality of services, training of public transport staff and the design of services and facilities.
Glasgow Centre for Inclusive Living
3.1 Attitudes and actions
a) Raising awareness campaigns
If attitudes towards disabled people are based on inaccurate stereotypes and unquestioned assumptions, inappropriate actions will follow. To achieve the necessary cultural shift, the starting point has to be to shift attitudes, to raise awareness about disabled people's needs, aspirations - and their normality. It means raising awareness too about the barriers to equal opportunity and what practical actions can be undertaken to remove them or, better still, prevent them from occurring in the first place (consistent with the Disability Equality Duty).
A campaign should be undertaken by the Scottish Executive to challenge negative attitudes towards disabled people and promote equality of opportunity.
Group 3
Although there are some good examples of effective campaigns, including media campaigns - like 'see me…' or 'One Scotland, Many Cultures' - campaigns to 'raise awareness' run the risk of being woolly and unfocused. Measuring shifts in public attitudes can be done through surveys, but time scales tend to be lengthy and it can be hard to pin-point the effect of any one initiative. It would therefore be important to be clear about intended outcomes and consider different methods. Research is needed to inform any campaign work - to identify the issues, provide evidence to support the case to be made, develop key messages, identify appropriate channels to deliver those messages, and so on.
The DRC's 'Open4All Campaign' (October 2003-October 2004) promoted the new duties under the Disability Discrimination Act requiring service providers to make reasonable changes to premises to enable disabled people to use their buildings and services.
The campaign had overarching aims around increasing awareness of physical barriers and of the new duties, supporting rights and responsibilities so that the law is effectively implemented and positioning the DRC as a primary source of information and advice. Campaign objectives were developed relating to the two phases of the campaign. The objectives of phase 1 included targets like numbers of media hits, speaking engagements, micro-site hits and document downloads. There were targets for events, endorsements from key organisations and the publication and distribution of campaign publications. Phase 2 had objectives around reinforcing knowledge and understanding and achieving meaningful engagement with service providers, informing people about rights, and getting agencies to stock relevant materials for disabled people. Activities and broad audiences were identified against each.
The objectives for phase 2 were very different in character to those for phase 1. There were no numerical targets for activity and so they were harder to track. Setting objectives and having formal independent evaluation enabled lessons to be learnt for future campaigns.
DRC Open4All Fourth Evaluation Report, by ECOTEC Research & Consulting Limited
A generic Scottish Executive campaign might be accompanied by targeted campaigns aimed at key constituencies like employers, educators, health-care providers and other public sector bodies, perhaps in the context of the Disability Equality Duty. Campaigns might also focus on specific issues.
Work should be undertaken to encourage positive attitudes to disability through a Scottish wide advertising campaign, which includes addressing attitudes to disabled people in employment.
Group 1
Such a campaign might be aimed primarily at employers, but it could also tackle the negative attitude that fellow employees can sometimes display towards disabled colleagues. Intended outcomes could include making recruitment processes more accessible and encouraging disabled people to apply for vacancies. Another outcome would be an increase of disabled people getting and retaining employment and being provided career development opportunities.
b) Disability equality training
Disability equality training ( DET) grew out of the disabled people's movement in the late 1980s. If done well, it can be very effective in shifting attitudes, helping people to understand legislative requirements, identify their implications for working practices and achieve positive outcomes. It is likely to be invaluable in the context of the forthcoming Disability Equality Duty, and it seems probable that demand for it will increase.
Training for Lothian Buses is being delivered to new drivers, managers and shop staff giving them a greater understanding of the barriers that affect disabled people's use of buses and helping them to make sure they don't behave in ways that could be perceived as discriminatory. Lothian Buses is committed to the training as part of a longer-term strategy of providing high quality customer service.
Similarly, having undergone disability equality training, First ScotRail believes it has enabled staff to deal efficiently and effectively with disabled passengers, both in terms of increasing the accessibility of services and in raising their overall journey experience. This of course has major benefits for disabled passengers.
Capability Scotland
At the moment it is unclear how widely available DET is and what approaches to it are proving most (and least) effective. Anyone can set themselves up as a trainer and there is no clear benchmark of standards.
Research was commissioned by the Equal Opportunities Committee as part of its inquiry (see 2.4): 'Disability Equality Training in Scotland' (December 2005, McFarlane & Watson, Strathclyde Disability Research Centre). This aimed to consider the geographical spread of DET, determine the components off DET delivered and ascertain the extent and methods used to evaluate it. This was a useful exercise to establish what the picture is at the moment. The future development of DET needs to be led by disabled people.
The research on DET commissioned by the Equal Opportunities Committee needs to be assessed by disabled people, gaps and issues need to be identified and further research undertaken as necessary.
Core Group
To develop appropriate standards and consider how they might be reflected in an accreditation system will require careful consideration and planning. An advisory group could be established, led by disabled people, to oversee the project.
Standards and/or accreditation for disability equality training should be developed.
Group 3
The Scottish Executive should play a role both in supporting the development of standards and in promoting the take up of disability equality training. The latter might dovetail well with an awareness-raising campaign.
The Scottish Executive should develop quality standards for disability equality training and encourage wider take up amongst employers and employees of disability equality training.
Group 1
If training is to get messages across, it is particularly effective if the trainer is her/himself a disabled person. It is also an important principle that DET should be led by disabled people. An advisory group on standards and accreditation might also develop proposals for encouraging disabled people to become DET trainers.
Disabled people should be encouraged to become disability equality trainers.
Group 3
As would be consistent with the Disability Equality Duty, access to disability equality training should be widened by incorporating it into training and development for all public sector employees including nurses, town-planners, teachers, bus-drivers and so on. Although frontline staff may be expected to have more day-to-day contact with disabled people, it is vitally important that disability equality is embedded into strategy too, not forgetting that disabled people may not just be service users but colleagues. It should therefore be part of induction procedures for all staff.
Initial education and training and continuing professional development across the public sector should incorporate mandatory disability equality training, including on communication support needs.
Group 3
One way of increasing exposure to disability equality training would be to incorporate it into professional undergraduate and postgraduate course accreditation and registration requirements.
Accrediting bodies for the professions should include disability equality training.
Group 3
Architecture schools in Scotland have recently moved to include disability equality training in their training programmes. The 'Learning Inclusive Design' arose out of the DRC Scotland's Built Environment Reference Group. Although a lot of professional development work was being done through conferences targeting architects, planners, designers, local authorities and others, nothing was included from the outset in undergraduate and post-graduate courses. The first stage was to initiate a debate with the six Scottish Schools of Architecture and their over-arching Association ( ASSA). At that point the curriculum set by RIBA was being updated, providing a clear gateway for disability equality. There are now plans for learning to be passed to other college and university courses for professions which could make a positive impact on the physical environment for disabled people, such as surveying, planning, and product design.
DRC Scotland
c) Recognising diversity
Understandings of who disabled people are can sometimes be very limited. At worst, disabled people are equated with wheel chair users, and 'disability access' is taken to mean 'wheel chair accessible'. Even if different impairment groups are recognised, it is often not acknowledged that disabled people are members of other groups founded on characteristics such as ethnicity, gender, and so on - or that people who are members of other groups are also disabled people.
Although certain Acts will be specifically relevant to disabled people, this implies that legislation that affects anyone at all will affect disabled people. Organisations and initiatives concerned with any one group need also to take account of the implications for others.
The Scottish Executive's strategic group on ethnic minorities in the labour market should consider the needs of disabled people.
Group 1
The importance of recognising diversity obviously applies to the Disability Working Group's recommendations. In all cases, attempts were made to consider not just the implications for different impairment groups, but also wider diversity issues. No doubt much more needs to done to explore these fully. The arrival of the CEHR might facilitate this in due course. Certainly perspectives from the six equality strands - race, disability, gender, sexual orientation, religion or belief and age - all need to be taken into account in the policies and developments ensuing from the Disability Working Group's recommendations.
Consultation with minority ethnic disabled individuals, disability and minority-ethnic- focused organisations showed that information services do not appear to provide adequate rights-based information to black and minority ethnic disabled people. Respondents suggested that organisations working with minority ethnic communities need to take specific actions in order to address disability equality whilst disability organisations need to take specific actions in order to address race equality.
Consultation took place via a postal questionnaire survey and three events held in Autumn 2003. Details of the project, its findings and action points were reported in 'Our Rights, Our Choices: Meeting the information needs of black and minority ethnic disabled people' ( DRC and Centre for Education in Racial Equality in Scotland)
DRC Scotland
Sometimes having an impairment, or rather society's response to it, is not the main issue. The most significant barriers can be associated with other characteristics that the person also possesses.
X and her husband Y, who is disabled, fled to Scotland 4 years ago to start a new life with their daughter. It was a difficult start for the family, but with hard work and determination, and the help of locals they are now a successful part of the community. X says that although she knew English before arriving in Scotland, she admits that she couldn't understand the Glasgow language. "I found it difficult when we first arrived - everyone spoke English so different to what I had been taught!"
They had run their own business in Iran, but when it came to starting up in Scotland, they were at a loss. They were put in touch with Business Able, a Scottish Enterprise project to support disabled entrepreneurs. They helped them with every aspect of starting a business whilst ensuring they didn't miss out on benefits. Through word of mouth, business is thriving thanks to the quality of service offered. "I love having my own business here, and now hope to save the money to buy our first home in Scotland!"
Scottish Enterprise
3.2 Institutions and their operations
a) Scottish Executive principles
To steer the work of any organisation and promote consistency across the piece, it is important to have a long term vision and a set of principles or values which permeate all activities. The Scottish Executive is ideally placed to exercise a wider leadership role externally to promote of disability equality.
The Scottish Executive should lead by example and make a clear statement of commitment to equality of opportunity for disabled people.
Group 3
The Scottish Executive itself is a complex organisation, with many agencies, departments, divisions and units, all potentially relevant to disabled people. Their contact with disabled people and understandings of disability can reasonably be expected to vary significantly. However, if policy is to be 'joined up', consistency of approach is critical. The difference between the social and medical models of disability need to be understood, not least because they have very different implications for policy. The social model views disability as resulting from 'social barriers', such as negative public attitudes and inaccessible environments (so policy needs to empower by changing attitudes and environments). The medical model sees disability as resulting from impairment (so impairment is the 'problem' to which medical and other professionals hold the solution).
The Scottish Executive should agree and publish a set of principles, based on the social model of disability, that underpins the work of all departments. Such a set of principles will be developed in partnership with an advisory group of disabled people.
Group 4
b) Implementing the Disability Equality Duty ( DED)
The DED is a significant feature of the context in which the Disability Working Group's recommendations are made (see section 2). All involved - staff at all levels, disabled people and their organisations - may require support. Once again, the Scottish Executive is well-placed to provide leadership and support to others.
Research
DED requirements might provide the backbone of a comprehensive Scottish Executive disability research programme to establish baselines and standards, collect new information as it becomes available, monitor and report on progress.
Given that gathering evidence and the involvement of disabled people are both key features of DED Disability Equality Schemes, the Scottish Executive should also commission research to get information about the disability sector and how disabled people would wish to be involved. Although the charities register would be one source of information, not all disability organisations will be registered. If possible, diversity within the disability sector should be mapped. Issues around involvement should be clarified, barriers and gaps identified, along with examples of good practice. Such research could be used to raise the awareness of public bodies about the range of disability organisations and to promote the effective involvement of a diverse range of disabled people. It should help encourage public bodies to be proactive in making contact with disabled people.
Research should be undertaken, in the context of the disability equality duty, to map the disability sector and understand the capacity of disability organisations to engage with public authorities, including collating of existing materials and databases.
Group 2
The aim should be to avoid over-reliance on the 'usual suspects', such as the larger organisations or high profile individuals. Action needs to be taken to plug gaps in representation identified by research, and to take forward necessary capacity building if more disabled people, and a greater variety of disabled people, are to be involved in influencing decision making. This should include people who are hardest to reach and those with complex support needs. Particular measures may be needed to address multiple discrimination and multiple exclusion.
Disabled people will need to understand what a public authority does if they are to be able to make their involvement effective. Public authorities should take the lead in giving disabled people the necessary information, making sure it is fully accessible. They will also need to consider their own capacity and allocation of resources to secure the meaningful, equal and sustained involvement of disabled people.
Work should be undertaken to build the capacity of disabled people and support their involvement in the implementation of the disability equality duty.
Group 2
Groups of young disabled people got involved in an exercise supported by CoSLA's Young Scot/Dialogue Youth initiative, funded by the Scottish Executive. They met together in March 2005 and discussed the kinds of issues they'd like to see improved. Then they all went back to friends, flatmates and colleagues to discuss what they thought about these issues and to find out if they had any others. In June, the original group came back together at a meeting with Malcolm Chisholm and Ewan Aitken ( CoSLA spokesperson on young people's issues). Some made presentations about what they found out, others had individual discussions.
The group supported by Sense Scotland has met again since to consider the Minister's response to their issues and has agreed what they want to say about them. During discussions, the young people also offer each other suggestions on how to take issues forward locally.
Sense Scotland
Approach and resources
The DED should be an important mechanism for ending institutional discrimination against disabled people. It will require and promote a culture shift within organisations. To achieve this, everyone in the organisation will need to understand the DED and take responsibility for implementing it - and to achieve this will require high level commitment and leadership. The Chief Executive Officer will need to 'sign off' their organisation's Disability Equality Scheme and it must have 'weight' if it is to be taken seriously. The monitoring and reporting of progress needs to sit with a senior manager answerable directly to the Chief Executive Officer.
A public authority's disability equality scheme should be the responsibility of everyone in the organisation; and leadership from senior management teams will be essential.
Group 2
To implement the DED successfully and build staff confidence in it, guidance of various sorts will be published by the Disability Rights Commission. It will be necessary to ensure guidance covers the involvement of a diversity of disabled people, including those from minority ethnic communities, people with complex support needs, etc.
The DRC guidance will aim to provide an authoritative representation of the law, making clear to public bodies that this is a legal duty and setting out what is meant by involvement under the legal definition. Guidance by other bodies such as Scottish Executive could be broader than this, perhaps considering issues around consultation too, and identifying practical guidance on reasonable adjustments that might need to be made to ensure that involvement is possible.
There should be guidance for public authorities on consulting and engaging disabled people.
Group 2
An inclusive approach was taken to the Executive's Finding Practical Solutions to Complex Needs consultation. In order to reach young people with complex needs and communicate with them directly, the Executive commissioned the CALL centre (Communication Aids for Language and Learning) to produce a picture and symbol based version of the consultation paper. This, combined with individual interviews, ensured that the voice of young people with complex needs was heard in the wider consultation.
Scottish Executive
ETLLD: Student Inclusion and Access Team
In practical terms, particularly in the early stages, it may make sense for public authorities, perhaps in the same geographical area or sector, to work together to engage and involve disabled people. This would help strengthen interagency working, promote peer support and the sharing of good practice.
The Scottish Executive should promote shared or joint approaches by public authorities to local or regional engagement and involvement of disabled people.
Group 2
Standards
Although the DRC will have the key enforcement role, others too will have important roles to play in ensuring the DED is implemented to a high standard. Audit and inspection bodies in particular should build this into their usual procedures as one of the things they will look for. There therefore needs to be a clear framework within which to monitor and assess standards. Finance and Public Service Reform Minister, Tom McCabe, announced an independent review of scrutiny of public services on 7 June 2006. The review will look at how improvements could be made in inspection, regulation, audit and complaints handling for public services in Scotland. And in 2006-07, Audit Scotland will be auditing a range of public bodies (those with accountable officers) against the updated duty of Best Value as part of their work on mainstreaming equalities.
The Scottish Executive, audit and inspection bodies and the Disability Rights Commission should consider a framework for auditing of the disability equality duty.
Groups 2 and 3
It is not just a matter of external bodies ensuring high standards of implementation are met. Each public authority needs to take responsibility. Understanding and implementing disability equality could be treated as a core competence throughout public sector organisations (and others as well!); an integral part of staff appraisals and internal audits.
Demonstrable knowledge and implementation of the DED should be a key competence within staff performance management in the public sector in Scotland.
Group 3
At annual appraisals staff should be able to provide evidence of how they have applied the DED over the preceding year and what improvements they plan to make in the following year.
3.3 Disabled people's lives
All the recommendations have as their final objective to achieve improvements to disabled people's lives, so that they can participate fully in society as equal citizens. This does not just mean tackling issues in particular policy areas. There are some barriers which are strategically significant. They cut across all other initiatives or have scope to make a particularly positive difference in wide-ranging ways.
a) Independent living
As highlighted in 2.3 independent living is a key policy area. Most people have choice and control over how they live their lives. Inflexible services can result in disabled people not even have choice about when they get up, wash, eat or use the toilet, and no control over who assists them with such personal tasks. It is little wonder that the disability movement has long campaigned for 'independent living'. Without independent living, achieving full citizenship is but a distant dream.
Independent living does not mean doing everything for yourself. It means having choice over who does what on your behalf, and control over when and how. Ultimately it means having the same choice and control over your life as non-disabled people do.
The Scottish Executive should consult disabled people to ascertain the best way to support independent living nationwide.
Group 4
High quality advocacy services need to be available to disabled people who require support to represent their views and interests, e.g. to service providers in order to secure appropriate services. It needs to be independent of the service provider so that the disabled person can have confidence that the advocate is working in her/his interests, not the service provider's.
The Scottish Executive should support independent advocacy services for disabled people nationwide, including independent peer advocacy.
Group 4
Advocacy has made a huge difference to a family where both parents have a learning disability and their three children have additional learning support needs. The advocate found out about and explained the purpose of meetings with the school, who would be there and then supported the parents to prepare what they wanted to say and ask. The advocate also explained their rights under the new Education Act in a way that they could understand. This meant the parents felt more able to take an active role in the children's education and meetings were much more productive. The advocate accompanied them to meetings and just having someone there who was totally on their side made the whole meeting process easier.
Help from other agencies had not always been welcomed by the family who had been 'labelled' difficult to work with. The advocate was able to support them to meet with social worker, family support worker and income maximisation staff as well as securing funding for children to attend an out of school care club locally. The advocate has helped the family to understand that they can make choices and how to work with professionals in a constructive rather than a confrontational way.
Children in Scotland
b) Accessible and inclusive communication
It is estimated that at least a quarter of a million people in Scotland have some form of communication support need during their lifetime. However, according to the RNID, there are as many as 758,000 people in Scotland who are deaf or hard of hearing, the majority of whom would require communication support - and there are other groups who may have particular communication support needs, e.g. deafblind people and people with aphasia.
Having such needs can mean being ignored, actively avoided or insulted. It can mean being put under pressure by impatient and angry service providers, or being wrongly regarded and treated as a person who is 'incapable' in the full legal sense. It may mean being actively excluded from, or thrown out of services, or experiencing discrimination by employers at the stage of application, interview, recruitment, or promotion.
Communication is clearly essential to social inclusion and empowerment. It is an integral part of day-to-day interactions and relationships. It is necessary in order to acquire information about rights, to take advantage of educational and work opportunities, to make choices, and to influence policy. Failure to meet communication support needs can therefore have a devastating impact on life chances. Yet there is much that can be done to make communication accessible and inclusive.
The Scottish Executive should develop practical guidance on inclusive communication and consultation; establish a website of good practice on consultation; develop and promote inclusive communication environments; and provide a gateway to existing sources of expertise.
Group 3
A young man with communication support needs and a learning difficulty was presenting services with challenging behaviour as a means of communicating he didn't like or was disinterested in opportunities on offer. A simple symbol communication aid called a 'Talking Mat' was used to determine what he liked to do. He used this aid to plan, in a meaningful way, with those providing services and as a result services were challenged by him on far fewer occasions.
From Forth Valley Speech and Language Therapy Services
Once again, it is important to take all disabled people's characteristics into account, if communication is to be accessible and appropriate. Disabled people whose first language isn't English may face particular barriers. There may be cultural issues to factor in too. An effective style of communication with younger disabled people may not be appropriate for older disabled people, and there may be different ways to reach different groups. Information and advice needs might well vary, as might the availability of information and advice services. Disabled people living in rural or remote areas may face particular challenges. To ensure communication and information needs are met consistently and appropriately it will be important to work in partnership with disabled people and disability organisations.
The Scottish Accessible Information Forum ( SAIF) works to promote the rights of disabled people and carers to information that is accessible in the broadest sense. SAIF's work is guided by an advisory body of twenty-one people from disability-led organisations and information providers. SAIF's Standards for Disability Information and Advice Provision in Scotland (published 1999; revised edition 2004) were developed as a practical tool to help agencies in the voluntary, public and private sectors adopt good practices that ensure disabled people can access effective information and advice services.
The Scottish Executive should implement and promote the Scottish Accessible Information Forum standards.
Group 3
Access to information may require a rethink of the structure and location of advice services, to avoid disabled people being passed from pillar to post. 'One-Stop Shops', where fully accessible information about a range of rights and services can be obtained, may be one approach.
Research should be undertaken to find out more about information and advice for disabled people, building on the findings of the Scottish Office report Enabling Information published in 1995. This highlighted the importance of involving disabled people in the provision and management of information services, improving dissemination of information at a local level, improving both the accessibility of generalist services and the provision of disability-specific information, and developing and enforcing national standards. For further details see SAIF's web-site: http://www.saifscotland.org.uk and click on 'Publications'.
The Scottish Executive should undertake research to examine the information and advice needs of disabled people, the range of existing information provided and how access to information and advice might be improved.
Group 4
It is not just specialist information targeted specifically at disabled people that needs to be available, accessible and inclusive, but all advice and information. Access to public information, particularly in the context of emergency planning, is clearly of vital importance. For example, advance consideration needs to be given to ensuring the accessibility of information about terrorist attack or an emergency incident - perhaps a health emergency like an outbreak of E. coli or developments regarding bird flu. At a less dramatic level, information about flu-jabs, publicly funded awareness raising campaigns, and so on should also be accessibly and inclusively communicated.
Scottish Executive and public authority public information work should be fully accessible including to those with communication support needs.
Group 3
Most people who have a print disability are not visually impaired - e.g. those with dyslexia - and would benefit from extending copyright exemption. Current copyright law permits exemption for adaptation and distribution of texts without prior permission from the publisher, but only if it is for visually impaired users. For the purposes of the Act, 'visually impaired person' includes those who are unable, through physical disability, to hold or manipulate a book or move his or her eyes to the extent that would normally be acceptable for reading. People with other forms of impairment which result in print disability are not exempt from copyright law.
In order to adapt materials for people who have difficulties with books or print, but do not come under the Copyright (Visually Impaired Persons) Act 2002, it is necessary to obtain permission from the publisher, and it is illegal to share books and materials. This anomaly discriminates against many of those who have a print disability.
Recent Scottish Executive statistics indicate that of those children with impairments which may lead to a difficulty in learning, only 1.5% can benefit from copyright exemption because of visual impairment. In contrast, 20.8%, who have specific learning difficulties including dyslexia, do not benefit even though they cannot access print without modification
Sense Scotland
Copyright exemption should be extended to cover all those with a print disability.
Core Group
c) Promoting full citizenship
Negative public attitudes towards disabled people play a major role in denying disabled people's rights and capacity for full citizenship. To be continuously on the receiving end of such attitudes erodes confidence and self-esteem. This needs to be addressed early on.
The Scottish Executive should review and promote the use of materials used in schools on disability and citizenship; including reviewing the availability of, and access to, advice and guidance for young disabled people on what to do if they experience discrimination.
Group 3
Capability Scotland research in 2003 found that many disabled children have few friends outside of school and as teenagers they spend disproportionate amounts of their time in adult company:
"My wee sister has her friends staying and I get to play with them, but it's not the same. She's got friends and I haven't." 14-year-old disabled girl
"I'd just like to go round to a friend's house without my mum." 14-year-old disabled girl
"My daughter gets really upset when her sister goes to art class and she can't join in. She's capable of taking part, but there is no provision for a child with special needs." Mother of a disabled child
Capability Scotland
Consistent with the Disability Equality Duty, disabled people should have access to public life - and not just in minor roles or those that are just specific to disability. 'Public life' encompasses many sorts of groupings, including residents' associations, Local Community Planning partnerships, parent teacher associations, Scottish Executive public appointments, and so on. To make these accessible commitments to proper resourcing are required. A proactive approach needs to be taken to raise expectations and to draw disabled people's attention to opportunities.
The participation by disabled people at all levels of public life should be promoted and resourced.
Group 4
Tom, aged 14, lives in the Lothian area. He is paraplegic and uses a wheelchair to get around.
Six years ago he wanted to move up from beavers to cubs. However, the pack leader of the local cubs group said that he could not join as they thought he would need extra help. He did not feel able to meet Tom's needs, particularly regarding participation in outdoor and water activities. They also said the building would be inappropriate. Several other local groups refused him entry on similar grounds. Tom's mum says other families also found that cub packs wouldn't take children even with minor impairments, including one boy with high-functioning autism, another with cerebral palsy.
This contrasts sharply with Tom's experience of attending his local judo club. This has very much benefited him. The group is inclusive and the coach very supportive. Children kneel when practicing kicks against Tom. When he can't attempt a move, his instructors give him exercises to do instead. His mum says: "Attitude is far more important than physical changes."
DRC Scotland
Vote2003 was a nationwide project co-ordinated by Capability Scotland and supported by the Community Fund. It aimed to increase the number of disabled people who participated in the electoral process for the 2003 Scottish elections by empowering people to vote and improving their awareness of their rights. It is estimated that the campaign reached over 200,000 disabled people all over Scotland, of all ages and from a range of backgrounds. Various methods - website, information guides, workshops, postcards - were used to inform people of their democratic rights and how to use them. Training was delivered to Returning Officers, election planners and election day staff to improve accessibility and awareness of disability equality issues. To ensure lessons learned were carried forward, an accessibility template was developed and the Vote website is updated for each election in Scotland.
Capability Scotland
Currently only 2.4% (March 2006) of Scottish Executive public appointments are occupied by disabled people - just 18 out of 749 posts. The Public Appointments Commissioner has responsibility for developing a diversity strategy. Action needs to be taken in that context to set targets.
Targets for disabled people in public appointments should be reviewed and the Scottish Executive should lead by example in promoting the public appointment of disabled people.
Group 3