“Making disability information accessible to individuals from Black & Minority Ethnic groups”

June 2009

A one year project funded by the EHRC (Equality & Human Rights Commission).

Executive Summary

SID (Social Information on Disability) is a Surrey based charity which aims to ensure that disabled people have access to the information they need in order to make choices about the way in which they lead their lives.

An EHRC Funded Project:

This report forms the second of two phases of research and proactive work undertaken as part of an EHRC (Equalities & Human Rights Commission) funded project looking at the dual disadvantage in accessing disability information often experienced by disabled people from black and ethnic minority (BME) backgrounds.

The first phase of the project has been published on our website, and is a literature review which brings together national research and the views of statutory and primary information providers on eleven specific BME groups and disabilities plus their carers.

The Second Project Phase - This Report:

We chose to focus on four out of the eleven first phase groups for the purpose of exploring the barriers to accessing services and disability information, ways of overcoming these barriers, development of appropriate information resources and the best ways of disseminating resources.

The four groups are People with a Visual Impairment, Refugees and Asylum Seekers, Benefit take up by Muslim and Chinese elders, Travellers and Gypsies.

Project Findings:

During our exploratory meetings with both public and voluntary sector service providers working in partnership with these groups and individuals, we discovered ways of working that, whilst operating in sometimes small localised situations, currently constitute best practice. This report provides a comprehensive overview of these meetings and ways of working, many of which have not been published before. We have subsequently merged them with our workshop findings on barriers to accessing information and ways of overcoming those barriers into a Best Practice Guide which is available on the BME section of our website.

Our meetings have established that some organisations are now starting to incorporate BME work into their core strategies as opposed to short term projects that may not be able to be sustained. Others are just starting to discover the potential to working in this area and we hope that our findings will go some way to forming a supportive foundation to more successful communication methods and effective results. Ultimately we are optimistic that over time more BME individuals will start to find services that support and inform people with disabilities and their carers more accessible and resonant to their cultures and needs.

This has been a very enlightening and fulfilling project and we hope that the networks we have started to form will continue to thrive and develop.

BME Database & Surrey Network:

We have sought permission from all of the BME groups and services we have spoken to over the course of the last year to place their details on to a BME database. This can be found on SID’s website within the BME pages. At the end of this report we have also produced a network list of all the organisations and BME workers in Surrey who support the four focus groups mentioned above.

<< Previous Page Contents Page Next Page >>

The full document is available to download as a PDF