Welcoming Disabled People – Disability Awareness

Introduction:

The programme will help you to raise disability awareness and give staff the confidence to welcome and understand the needs of disabled patients and work colleagues. It looks at why disabled people are important and what the law says we must do to respond to their needs. It will help you to understand how to offer practical help to people across a range of disabilities and how to respond to their individual needs.

What the new Disability Equality Duty means to your Organisation

In April 2005 the Disability Discrimination Act 2005 became law and in December 2006, most of its provisions came into effect. One of the Act's most important features is a new general duty for public sector organisations - the Disability Equality Duty. This duty is very similar in its scope to the duty contained in the Race Relations Amendment Act (2000) and is explained in more detail below. It requires public sector organisations to take disabled people into account in every aspect of its activity - from car parking and telephones to ward practices, information provision and appointments.

Training staff to appreciate the needs of disabled patients and colleagues is critical to their understanding of what will need to be monitored or modified. Failure to provide appropriate services or facilities could lead to an organisation being subject to judicial review and enforcement action.

The Disability Equality Duty

From December 2006 all public bodies and voluntary and private sector organisations that provide goods or services for public sector organisations, have a legal duty to promote equality of opportunity for disabled people in all aspects of their work. In addition, most of them also have specific duties that require them to:

  • Publish a Disability Equality Scheme (including within it an Action Plan)
  • Involve disabled people in producing the Scheme and Action Plan
  • Demonstrate they have taken actions in the Scheme and achieved appropriate outcomes
  • Report on progress
  • Review and revise the Scheme.

Target Audience:

All members of staff

Course content and learning outcomes:

Introduction:

A welcome and introduction by Phil Friend, a wheelchair user and Chair of Radar

Section 1: Why disabled people are important

  • The Social Model

Section 2: Disability and the Law

  • Current UK law on disabled peoples’ rights and discrimination, including DDA 2005 and the new public sector Disability Equality Duty

Section 3: Welcoming Disabled People

  • How best to welcome and work with people with a range of disabilities, including those who are blind or partially sighted, deaf or hard of hearing, mobility impaired, learning disabled, have a mental health condition or have other disabilities.
  • Practical guidelines for interviews and face to face meetings, visiting people in their homes, talking over the phone, working with interpreters, equipment and assistance dogs and using the latest technology

Section 4: Take the interactive test

  • Learners receive an automatically generated certificate of achievement for those getting at least 9 of the 12 questions correct

Section 5: Useful disability contacts

Benefits to learners:

The programme will help learners to:

  • Understand more about disabled people’s feelings and preferences
  • Understand the Disability Discrimination Acts of 1995 and 2005 (DDA)
  • Understand proposed legislation which will amend and strengthen the DDA in relation to disabled people.
  • Avoid language and behaviour which may give offence.

Expected duration of the programme:

The time required to complete the whole programme will vary from learner to learner but will typically take around 2 hours

Content mapping:

The programme has been mapped to KSF, NHSLA Risk Assessment standards, CNST (General Standards) and Standards for Better Health

Click here to take you to the mapping documents which outline this in further detail

Welcoming Disabled People is a Grass Roots product. Grass Roots also provide a workbook version of the programme which is purchasable from the Core Learning Unit

To find out more about this or any of our programmes please contact the unit on:

T: 0845 330 6507
E: clpu@skillsforhealth.org.uk