A new report highlights good practice in disability work
Disability Pride Month brings people together every July to celebrate the diversity of those with a disability or long-term health condition and promote understanding of their experiences and challenges.
It is a prompt for local government to progress action on reducing disparities in outcomes for the 24 per cent of the UK population who are disabled, as well as an opportunity to celebrate the contributions that disabled officers and councillors make in local government.
In December 2023, the LGA convened the Local Government Disability Champions Network (LGDCN), which is open to officers and councillors in local government who have a formal or informal role as a disability champion, are disabled, or consider themselves an ally.
Chaired by LGA Vice-President Baroness Brinton, the LGDCN aims to support a more inclusive local government sector by raising awareness of how barriers might be addressed, promoting the voices of disabled people, identifying and sharing good practice, and supporting efforts to address poor practice.
The LGDCN recently commissioned a report involving case studies collated from nine councils, across England and Wales, where disabled officers and councillors used co-produced approaches to successfully deliver projects within their areas of work.
The report shows that, although different approaches were taken in the case studies, the barriers and enablers to success were similar, with change being most impactful when it was led by an officer or member with lived experience of disability.
This resulted in political, community, and employment benefits for each local authority involved, with notable changes in policy, organisational culture, and a shift to inclusive employment practices.
The main barriers faced were:
- time constraints, especially around managing any additional workload on top of the day job
- budgetary limitations, with there often being a lack of specific budget assigned to disability work
- lack of understanding by staff and leadership of the importance of disability work
- the difficulty of making the topic of disability ‘fit’ into a political or corporate environment.
The main enablers of success were:
- the drive and determination of those with lived experience in making change
- the ability to build relationships with allies across the council community
- political or managerial leaders being understanding of disability issues
- organisational leaders promoting a culture that gave those with lived experience of disability the platform and space to drive change.
When asked what lessons could be learned from their projects, contributors highlighted relationship building as a key area of focus, particularly learning different mechanisms for influencing.
Making sure you have the right data to make a case, and building allies to advocate by fostering relationships with disability charities and community groups in the local area, were also vital.
The full report – which details the challenge faced in each case study, steps taken to overcome barriers, enablers, and lessons learned – will be published on the LGDCN pages of the LGA’s website.
The next step for the LGDCN is to use the insights from this research to promote good practice throughout the sector, working in a co-produced way to do this, so that we are ‘walking the walk’ as well as ‘talking the talk’.
- If you would like to be involved in this next phase of work, the LGDCN is still open to members – please contact Tamsin Hewett on [email protected] for more information.