AGM Agenda
Martin Stevens OBE DRUK Chair will open the AGM, then:
Recording of members present and apologies received
Minutes of meeting 06/11/18
Treasurer’s submission of audited Financial Statements and questions from the floor – Michael Bromwich
Appointment of auditors for following year
Election of Trustees
Approval of Board’s recommendation of the Chair to serve 2019/2020
Annual Report and questions from the floor – Kamran Mallick DRUK CEO
Thanks to members
Close
Key points from this year’s work, delivered by Kamran Mallick
DRUK's agenda will not drastically change. The lack of inclusion we experience as disabled people remains. We want to continue to look at independent living and what that means.
We believe that we should be living fulfilling lives, breaking the link between poverty and disability, rooting people into employment and starting that with education. Good quality education needs to be a genuine option for disabled people.
It’s always hard to demonstrate and measure the narrative around us – it’s often polarised and negative, and we need to change the narrative and work with other partners to do that. And how we demonstrate our impact in all the areas of work we are doing.
Good quality evaluation and impact measurement is important. We are working with external organisations to work out what it should look like.
Last year we restructured. We are working on plans for our new strategy. Other DPOs have the same financial challenges we do where funding is squeezed. We are discussing how we can support DPOs to work jointly, and help DPOs be robust and resilient.
We are looking at diversifying our income streams. Sometimes we need to invest to develop these. We are looking at social investment.
This past year, we have received grants for the DRILL programme to look into young people’s approach to disability. http://www.drilluk.org.uk/
We’ve been working with Birmingham Uni to develop evidence-based tools to help promote physical activity and social worker guidelines to physical activity, including case studies. We co-produced physical activity guidelines with the Chief Medical Officer.
When it comes to activity, people worry that if they are active they will be seen as needing less support. That cannot be right. The work of this project has produced guidelines around this.
Our Get Yourself Active programme has consisted of four years of work, had £1m from Sport England, and we have invested in Cheshire CIL and Leicestershire CIL to coproduce a solution to inactivity.
We’ve delivered activity programmes in 12 local areas. 891 people with personal budgets took part and 2200 disabled people became active in these partnerships. Over 2000 social care and health practitioners engaged with the programme.
We want to bring about a landscape that works for disabled people. Our engagement with members and our projects all feed into our policy work so we are the voice of disabled people, as disabled people tell us what works for them.
This year, we’ve worked on persuading the government to implement UN guidance from 2017 under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
Brexit has been taking over everything. Important debates on other issues have been limited. We have lobbied because disabled people’s lives are touched by all government legislation, not just DWP legislation. Buildings, transport, industry.
We want to see a cross-government approach. A new Disability Unit within the Cabinet Office was launched this summer to hold departments across government to account. We are speaking to and working with this department.
We maintain the Secretariat for the APPG on Disability. We have held meetings on Changing Places, the Social Care green paper, and roundtables on accessible housing. We listen to members and contribute to many consultations.
Righttoparticipate.org and the Disability Rights Handbook are two key information resources we have produced this year. We also run several helplines, the only ones of their kind in the UK, answered by people with lived experience. We also run a student helpline.
85% of personal budget and independent living factsheet guidance was deemed fit for purpose by users.
Our disability skills unit has provided training events for job coaches, education specialists and government advisors in a range of venues across the UK.
We have worked with the NHS to promote disability as an asset for employers.
Our Leadership Academy Programme saw 16 individuals mentored last year in house, and we took it out to other businesses as part of a new model of delivery.
We want to influence public attitudes. This year, we bid for, won and launched the EnABle fund, which supports disabled people who wish to stand for public office. We had 60 enquiries and supported 31 applicants, of whom 19 were elected in local elections.
Lucy Aliband, Jacqueline Winstanley, Mostafa Attia, Jo Becker and Shani Dhanda were voted onto DRUK's Board, Goldwins were appointed auditors and Martin Stevens was voted in for another term as Chair.
Key notes from today's Conference can be found here: https://www.disabilityrightsuk.org/news/2019/november/key-notes-druks-annual-conference
Supporting documents from the AGM and Conference
Speaker biographies can be found here.