dROP

disABLEd RESPONSIVE ORGANISED PEOPLE

Dear Councillor Dallimore, Thank you for engaging with @drop2ripple, regarding our concerns for Gloucestershires young disabled people. dROP is a new and expanding association aimed at bringing together disAbled Responsive Organised People so that they may take part in local civil society. We aim to ensure that people with impairments are heard and their experiences are taken into account when authorities are preparing public policy and delivering services. We have recently been considering and responding to the recent Health and Wellbeing strategy consultation (http://www.gloucestershire.gov.uk/ healthandwellbeing), which unfortunately has little to say about people living with impairments until reaching sixty-ve years of age. Having taken part in the consultation at various levels, we are concerned that such an important strategy, claiming to be setting the framework underpinning individuals ourishing has little to say about the real lives of children and young people living with a variety of innate and acquired long-term health conditions. We are hoping that our views will be taken into account during the strategys nal draft. From our experience, we are concerned that there exists an underlying lack of awareness about the reality of the lives of people with impairment living in the county. Our response to the Health and Wellbeing consultation can be found at http://www.scribd.com/doc/116448149/A-response-toGloucestershire-s-Health-and-Wellbeing-strategy-consultation-2012. Our concerns are further underscored, as we are aware of research into the Equality Impact Assessments undertaken by varying levels of public bodies in the county over the last ve years. Our view is that there is a distinct absence of nuanced understanding about the needs of our young people in

communities, as well as a lack of an attached mechanism to ensure that gaps in services to people with impairments do not grow wider. Associates of dROP recently responded to a further consultation based in one of Gloucestershires districts on the access to funding opportunities for young people with impairments. Unfortunately, the policy and process of this consultation had an underlying ethos that sought to treat communities, young disabled people and children as a homogenous grouping. There was a failure to recognise the individual nature of a persons impairments, thus providing these young people with a range of opportunities to enable them to be condent about themselves, to have knowledge about their impairments and to be proud of their choices. There was a marked absence of strategy aimed towards outcomes which focus towards these young people acquiring strong emotional literacy as they grow into adults. As a group, most of our members are adults who have lived-experience of being children and young people with impairment; from this position we are keen to work with others in exploring a broader and more complex understanding of lived-disability amongst those people designing and delivering services. We would welcome the opportunity to meet with you in February 2013 to discuss these matters further as we will have had the nal draft of the countys Health and Wellbeing Strategy, as well as having got a sense of the direction of both the Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy (which in its current form is also showing little appreciation of the emotional and mental health needs of young people with impairments) together with the Children and Young Peoples Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy. We will be more than happy to provide you with a report of our observations in advance of a meeting, so that best use can be made of the time to move forward in nding opportunities to improve policy and services.

Yours sincerely,

dROP Associates