Report to the

National Forum of People with Learning Disabilities

Region:
Date:

SOUTH WEST
10TH FEBRUARY 2016

What do you want us to tell the Learning

Disability Programme Board about?
What is going well?
Self advocacy groups across the south west continue to do creative and
relevant work in their local areas. They offer the most important support for
people with learning disability to grow in confidence in speaking up.
They continue to manage the pressure of ongoing reductions in funding from
local authorities and we are seeing further cuts to the hours of support
available leading to the loss of experienced and valued personal.
We have shared a lot of information from national and other sources out to
groups and supported them in responses.
We have held meetings in Honiton, Devon and Bath and have another meeting
planned in April.
We are planning a conference for Self advocacy groups and families and other
organisations to meet and show their work and learn from each other.
We have developed our network to include a wider range of groups and
individuals.

What are your 3 big issues?

The 3 top issues for the Regional network are:
The challenge of top down, complex requests at short notice for local groups to
respond to leading to a blocking of the arteries of the belief of possible.
The increasing pressure on local groups to work locally and with less support
resources.
An increasing sense of fracture and disconnect with a lack of a clear plan for
what the Forum takes to Govt.. national and local, *this is not a criticism of
Reps or Chairs but I think a function of the reduced capacity and expectations
by the Government of what the Forums are for. Of course I could be wrong.
There is no clear Regional professional structures that are pulling together..
ADASS used to do this in the SW in partnership with Health.

Other news:

It has stopped raining!..

Hope it has with you too!

Please email this report to: lucyvirgo@inclusionnorth.org