Welfare to Work for Disabled Strategy 2005/15
The report will be sent to follow.
Minutes:
The Board considered a report on the Welfare to Work for Disabled People Strategy.
The Strategy was launched in October 2005 with the aim of providing a clear focus point to all those working in the field of employment and disabilities. Partnership working was key to the Strategy, which encouraged collaboration across a range of agencies. The Strategy was strongly linked to one of the Boards key priorities around improving access to employment and mainstream provision for people with physical and mental health disabilities.
It was noted that as part of the Strategy a community interest company had been established that was staffed by disabled people who provided training on disability awareness to mainstream employers.
The Governments agenda for tackling Worklessness provided an emphasis on reducing the number of long term Incapacity Benefit claimants. It was noted that although there was a degree of cross over between this and the Strategy, there were different issues affecting these groups and therefore different approaches were required.
It was noted that the progress against the Strategy had not been reported to the Well Being Board during 2006/07 and there was agreement that a report should be submitted for 2007/08.
Concern was expressed that the Strategy did not set out in enough detail how BME groups would be assisted. It was noted that there were specific issues in certain parts of the Borough affecting BME groups and it was suggested that stringent targets were required to ensure that these groups were reached. It was also suggested that specific measures to improve skills levels amongst BME groups were required.
It was suggested that it may be useful for Services to meet in order to discuss how Social Enterprises could be supported by the Partnership and HAVCO stated that it would be happy to support this.
The Chair noted that the recommendations set out in the report were wide ranging and considered that, given the level of information available at present, the Board was not able to respond to all of these at this meeting. There was agreement that officers should be tasked with looking at the recommendations set out in the report in more detail and that a report should be brought back to the Board in July setting out detailed options.
RESOLVED: