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1. Introduction
In North Lanarkshire Council we published our first Disability Equality Scheme in December 2006 complying with the terms of the Disability Equality Duty. Within our Disability Equality Scheme we set out how we would work to promote equality of opportunity, remove inequality and tackle the discrimination of disabled people in all that we do as a service provider (including education), regulator and employer.
This Annual Report details the progress we have made in this first year.
2. Equalities within the Council - Structure
Since the publication of our Disability Equality Scheme and Action Plan in December 2006 North Lanarkshire Council has undergone a major restructure, which has involved the merger of seven former departments to form five new services: finance and customer services; corporate services; environmental services; housing and social work services and learning and leisure services. This is part of the Service and People First agenda that is a five year change management programme designed to deliver more efficiency savings that can be used to better resource priority frontline services like housing, care and education.
Over the last 3 years separate but overlapping corporate structures have evolved to progress the different equalities strands where there has been a requirement to develop specific equality schemes namely race, disability and gender. Now with the establishment of the new Equality and Human Rights Commission, which replaces the Commission for Race Equality, the Disability Rights Commission and the Equal Opportunities Commission, the Council has recognised the need to draw its own equalities work together within a single corporate structure.
A Corporate Equalities Working Group has now been formally established which will sit within the corporate theme of "Developing the Organisation". Learning and Leisure Services has corporate lead for equalities within the Council under the convenership of the Head of Community Information and Learning. Each council service is represented on the Equalities Working Group and in addition to this the group will include representation from the Employee Disability Forum the Black and Minority Ethnic Employee Forum, and a Trade Union representative.
To ensure that the focus on disability is maintained we have established a Disability Equality Scheme Monitoring and Review Group that has evolved from the stakeholder steering group which oversaw the production of our scheme. This group has a key role in reviewing the progress in the implementation of our scheme.
3. Involvement of Disabled People - DES Review and Monitoring Group
Through the development of our Disability Equality Scheme and Action Plan and our endorsement of the National Standards for Community Engagement we have set a clear policy commitment to involve disabled people, not only in monitoring the development and implementation of our scheme, as in the Monitoring and Review Group mentioned above, but also to be able to influence the way services are designed and delivered.
To achieve this we have adopted a multi-dimensional approach which covers existing opportunities for involvement at both a corporate and service level and identifies the type of support and resources which we will provide to support that activity. This approach is outlined in the document entitled "North Lanarkshire Council Disability equality Scheme - How we intend to mainstream Involvement" is available on the Council web site.
There is no doubt that the opportunities for involvement and participation are there. The challenge for us in the years ahead is to ensure that they work effectively and that our Action Plan includes appropriate actions that address the challenges outlined within this document .
4. Progress to meet the general duty
Detailed are the steps that the council has taken within the first year to meet the terms of the general duty.
We set out within our action plan to address and meet the needs of disabled people through 6 key themes: Involvement and consultation; promoting positive attitudes; service delivery and customer care; employment and training, access and communication and information. We have continued to use these themes within our day to day work to chart progress.
However for the purposes of the annual report the progress is detailed in direct correlation to the 6 points of the general duty.
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