Notes of the ILiS Steering Group meeting

When: Wednesday 26 th January 2011

Where: Equality Human Rights Commission

Who was there?Jane Daley – in place of Liz from SDEF

Tressa Burke – GDA

Stella McDonald – PHAD Fife

Jeff Adamson – LCIL

Chris Oswald – EHRC

Heather Fisken – ILiS

Jim Elder Woodward – ILiS

Pam Duncan – ILiS

Mahmud Al-Gailani – VOX

Etienne d’Aboville – GCIL

Who was not there?

Florence Garabedian – SDSS

Steve Robertson – People First

Drena O’Malley – Deaf Blind Scotland

Bill Scott – Inclusion Scotland

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Action Points from this meeting

1 Change minutes from 20 th December 2010. Project

team

2 Heather will write a report for 2008 – 2011. Heather

3 Jane will work with the project team to

develop the evaluation.

Jane

SDEF

4 Think about the structure for the funding

application.

Project

team

5 Organise a meeting for SDEF and Inclusion

Scotland to help develop the business plan

and funding application.

Project

team

6 Add planning for the future to the ILiS

business plan.

Chris

7 Think of how the project team can support

the sub groups. We are developing the

policy plan and will discuss this in the sub

group with the Steering Group .

Pam

8 Write a short paper on the CRG for the

Steering Group.

Pam

9 Talk to the Festival organisers about the

invitations.

Heather

10 Send out a short update about the Festival. Heather

11 Send out a short update about Missing in Pam

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Action.

12 Invite Margaret Allison to one of the

Steering Group meetings next year.

Heather

13 Talk to Jemma from the S E HRC about

setting up a meeting with members of the

Group who are interested in the UNCRPD

Shadow report.

Heather

14 Talk to Laura from E S HRC about setting up

a meeting with members of the Group who

are interested in the EHRC legal powers.

Heather

Difficult words and abbreviations used in these notes

options = ideas and suggestions

sensitive = careful

hub = centre or central point for something

ILM = Independent Living Movement

DPOs = Disabled People’s Organisations. These are

organisations controlled by disabled people.

connection = link

brand = logo, what an organisation does or stands for

duplication = doing the same thing as someone else

business plan = what an organisation plans to do

portability = able to move from one area to another

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1. WelcomeJim welcomed everyone to the meeting.

2. Apologies (who was not at the meeting)The names of the people who were not at the

meeting are written on page one.

3. Notes from the last meetingWe looked at what we agreed at our meeting

in December. We checked that we did the

things we said we would do

Changes to notes of the last meeting

Action point 1: We need to change these

things in the notes from the last meeting:

The meeting happened on a Thursday.

Heather was at the meeting.

There was a report about the Festival.

4. Looking ahead Heather discussed a letter from the Equality

Unit. The letter tells us:

when to apply for money to continue the

work of ILiS next year.

Easy Read by MAZE. Pictures from Inspired Services 5

how to tell the Equality Unit what we have

done so far.

how to tell them what we spent the money

on.

Report for 2008 – 2011Heather will write a three year report and

send this to the steering group for comment.

Action point 2.

Chris wants to put the views of other people

involved with ILiS in the report. We also

need to write a clear report about what we

have achieved. We agreed Jane will help do

this. She has experience in this type of work.

Action point 3.

Planning for 2011 – 2012We spoke about what we will do next year.

Chris sent out a paper about this in

December but he did not get a lot of

comments from the group about it. His paper

gives 4 different options (ideas). We spoke

about what will happen to ILiS after March

2012.

Easy Read by MAZE. Pictures from Inspired Services

20112012

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Hilary Third from the Equality Unit said that

they may give ILiS more money. Chris said

we should think about what happens to ILiS

after March 2012. We can do this during next

year. We should use some of our time and

money to do this properly.

Tressa said that Inclusion Scotland is also

funded by the Equality Unit. They had their

money cut for next year. Some people may

not like the fact that ILiS got more money and

other projects will get less money. We need

to be sensitive (careful) about this.

One of the ideas is for ILiS to become a

policy hub (centre). We discussed:

who’s policy is ILiS writing?

how do we link to ordinary people who are

involved in organisations?

how do we make sure that we do not do the

same work as other ILM organisations?

Chris said that ILiS could do work to link

together all work on ILM policy. Tressa said

that at the development day we thought ILiS

would work with large DPOs. Easy Read by MAZE. Pictures from Inspired Services 7

Then big DPOs could work with smaller

organisations to make them stronger.

One idea would be for ILiS to pay a DPO to

do some work. Tressa said that this is not a

good idea. She said we should tell the

Equality Unit about our concerns about the

funding they have suggested.

Etienne said the strength of ILiS is they way

it can connect the ILM with Government and

other decision makers. He said ILiS funding

could be used as a way to keep doing this.

This is called a coordinating function.

ILiS is needed to make the Core Reference

Group (CRG) work. The Steering Group and

ILM needs to work and needs to be funded if

ILiS is to be successful.

Heather said that ILiS only hears from some

of the ILM, like Glasgow where DPOs are

stronger. If we want ILiS to be the main

connection (link) for the ILM then we need to

be able to work with other DPOs all over

Scotland and not just in the main cities. Easy Read by MAZE. Pictures from Inspired Services 8

ILiS cannot build the skills of individual

disabled people. But ILiS can build the skills

and confidence of the ILM. This is a two way

process. This means ILiS gives information to

the ILM and gets more information back from

them. This helps ILiS continue to be strong

and connect organisations together.

Heather said we have been quite good at

making a strong brand that brings the ILM

together. This means people know the ILiS

logo and understand what ILiS does. If ILiS

does not continue as project the ILM may like

to keep the brand.

Action point 4: project team to consider this

structure (??) for the funding application.

Jane said organisations may not be doing

lots of the same type of work (duplication). Tressa said that some organisations have not

completed their business plans. Action point 5: ILiS should organise a meeting with

SDEF and Inclusion Scotland.

Easy Read by MAZE. Pictures from Inspired Services 9

Tressa asked if the Steering Group should

give suggestions about the future of ILiS for

the funding application. Chris said that we

can plan this next year. The future business

plan should look at the possibility of ILiS

being an independent organisation or joining

with another organisation. Action point 6: add planning for the future of ILiS to our next

business plan.

Heather said that a small number of the

Steering Group are having to do some work

for ILiS as well as doing their own jobs. We

need to discuss this and agree if this is fair.

5. Core Reference Group We talked about the Core Reference Group.

We looked at how it is working. We discussed

if anything needs to change and how it

should change.

The sub groups do not seem to be able to

make change happen. Their responsibilities

have grown. The ILM and policy makers need

support and training to understand the issues

better. Easy Read by MAZE. Pictures from Inspired Services

2012 Plan

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We need to ask if the CRG and the sub

groups make any difference to disabled

people’s lives. The relationship between ILiS

and the CRG and its sub groups must be very

clear if we want ILiS to be successful in

future. Some people feel that sometimes we

want to do more than is possible.

Communication Forum Scotland (CFS) have

told us they think the CRG Inclusive

Communication sub group has done some

work on communication standards that CFS

has already been doing. This is an example

of duplication. The Housing subgroup is now

part of a larger Scottish Government group.

The Portability Sub Group has been affected

limited in its success due to by local

issues localism .

All the CRG sub groups need more support

from the project team. This needs to include

making IL relevant to the sub groups and

supporting their learning about IL. Pam felt

that the project team needs to have a

stronger role in being involved in IL policy

Easy Read by MAZE. Pictures from Inspired Services

IL Policy

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making supporting the ILiS members on the

sub groups .

Etienne said we may need to change the way

we work. We may need to change the

organisation of the CRG if we want better

results for disabled people. We must discuss

the problems of the sub groups at the CRG.

This will give them something to deal with.

Chris said a lot of pressure is being put onto

the ILM to make this plan work. We need to

show leadership in all our work with the CRG.

Action point 7: project team will look at

ways they can support the sub groups.

Action point 8: Pam will write a short paper

for the Steering Group for the CRG day.

6. The Festival Heather gave a report about the Festival on

17 th February:

4 people will speak at the day event.

4 people will speak at the evening event.

A press release has been sent out.

Easy Read by MAZE. Pictures from Inspired Services 12

Invitations have been sent to everyone on

the organisers own email list.

ILiS have given the organisers lists of other

people to send invitations to.

Some of the Steering Group did not get an

invitation. Heather will speak to the

organisers about this. Action point 9.

Tressa said she felt there may be too many

speakers. She said people may not have

enough time to go to workshops, meet each

other and look at all the information.

Jeff asked if there will be stalls for DPOs.

Heather explained that there will be a Library

and information point. DPOs will be asked to

send items for this area.

We are not able to get the Government

Minister we wanted to speak in the evening.

We will invite Margaret Curran MSP or Michal

McMahon MSP to speak instead. Action point 11: send an update about the Festival.

7. Project update Easy Read by MAZE. Pictures from Inspired Services 13

ILiS and some Steering Group organisations

have been invited to join 2 3 welfare reform

groups. One is led by the shadow secretary

of state for Scotland.

The other is led by the shadow Minister for

Disabled People. We have also been invited

to a CoSLA (Councils) and Scottish

Government Welfare group.

The Missing in Action research project is

being looked at to see how helpful it is. When

this is done the project team will tell the

Steering Group. We are not able to use all of

the information from it at the moment.

8. Our next meeting Margaret Allison from the Scottish

Government wants to meet with us. Action point 12: we will invite Margaret to one of the

Steering Group meetings next year.

Staff from the Scottish Human Rights

Commission (SHRC) want to meet the

Steering Group to talk about the shadow report to the UNCRPD. We discussed that

we could write a shadow report for the ILM. Easy Read by MAZE. Pictures from Inspired Services

SHRC

EHRC

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Other organisations on the Steering Group

may write/coordinate a shadow report.

The Equality Human Rights Commission

(EHRC) want to talk about their powers and

legal work. We feel there is not enough time

for these people to join a whole Steering

Group meeting.

We agreed Jemma (SHRC) could meet with

group members who are interested in the

UNCRPD Shadow Report. Action point 13.

We agreed Laura (EHRC) could meet with

group members who are interested in EHRC

legal powers. Action point 14.

9. Meeting dates for this year Heather asked if we can meet four times a

year as a Steering Group to keep guiding the

project. We will then have more meetings to

discuss policy or other issues.

We agreed to send only one e-mail each

week with lots of information in it instead of

Easy Read by MAZE. Pictures from Inspired Services

2011 Meetings

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sending lots of small e-mails. E-mails will be

sent to people who can deal with the issue.

10. Anything else?ILiS has been asked if someone can speak at

the SCLD conference on 8 th February. ILiS is

running a workshop at this event.

The date of the next meeting is 23 rd March at EHRC office in Glasgow, 11am to 3pm.

Easy Read by MAZE. Pictures from Inspired Services

March 2011

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