Darlington Association on Disability

Darlington Association on Disability is an organisation led by disabled people, which exists to promote independence and choice. DAD supports disabled people and carers through the provision of services, support and information and by tackling issues affecting disabled people both locally and nationally.

CHAIRMAN'S REPORT FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2023

The chairman presents his statement for the year.

The Disability Discrimination Act came into force in1995. This was superseded by the Equality Act 2010. We are now 28 years on and still disability discrimination is a day-to-day occurrence for many disabled people. This is because many employers, service providers including public transport, public bodies etc still look to do the minimum they can get away with or look for loopholes to tick a box or do nothing. It is shameful that in this day-and-age the majority of disabled people in the UK are not treated as equal citizens. Darlington Association on Disability an organisation led by disabled people always has. and will continue to, challenge negative attitudes that prevent disabled people live as true equals in society.

The cost-of-living crisis continues to create extremely difficult and worrying times for disabled people, with disability related expenditure adding an extra burden to already stretched household budgets. With many disabled people experiencing life changing negative impacts DAD has been proactive by introducing more support.

These are also worrying times for disability organisations like DAD with demands on services increasing as funding to deliver these services decreases. The constant struggle to secure core funding is ever present and it is this funding which is vital if DAD is to continue to take a leading role in changing negative attitudes that prevent disabled people participating fully as equal citizens, Funding sources are becoming more and more competitive and harder to come by with fewer funders in a position to meet the demand. I am extremely grateful to all our financial supporters and offer them our warmest thanks.

I am proud with the way staff and volunteers have continued to not only deliver DAD's services to a high standard through these demanding times but with their commitment and hard work, they have continued to support disabled people by going above and beyond as the demand on our services have grown. For this I am immensely grateful and offer them all my heartfelt thanks.

The Trustees and Management of DAD are committed to continue to support disabled people in as many ways as we can. I acknowledge the roles played by Chief Executive, Lauren Robinson, Deputy Chief Executive, Tracy Roberts and Senior Managers, Rosemary Berks, Stacey Allan and David Thomas who have all done an outstanding job by continuing to make DAD an organisation that is envied by other towns. I thank them for their loyalty, dedication and excellent leadership in these uncertain times.

I am indebted to my fellow trustees for their support to me and their continued hard work and commitment to DAD I also thank them for their many hours of hands-on work within the organisation that often goes unseen by others.

Gordon Pybus, Chairperson

 

OBJECTIVES AND ACTIVITIES

Objectives and aims

a)      to relieve the needs of disabled people and carers, for the public benefit, resident but not limited to, Darlington and the surrounding areas. In particular, but not exclusively by the promotion of equality, diversity and independence through the provision of services, support, information and training; and

b)      to direct, promote and support the efficient working of charitable organisations, voluntary bodies, and statutory bodies in their work to relieve disability ("the Objects").

Significant activities

Darlington Association on Disability (DAD) was established in 1986 as a voluntary and charitable organisation led by disabled people. It exists to promote independence and choice of disabled people and supports disabled people and carers through the provision of services, support and information and by tackling issues affecting disabled people locally and nationally. DAD promotes the Social Model of Disability and as part of that ethos is actively involved in promoting disability equality and awareness raising. As an organisation, DAD endeavours to ensure that its services are responsive and not prescriptive.

DAD has five strategic aims that it works to achieve;

• ·        Promote the Social Model of Disability.
• ·        Ensure disabled people and carers are involved in all its work.
• ·        Provide high quality services to promote independence and choice.
• ·        Improve access to services, consultation and involvement for sensory impaired people, younger people and people from minority ethnic group.
• ·        Ensure that DAD has a secure, sustainable and independent future.

These aims are met in two ways:

Firstly, DAD acts with disability groups, individual disabled people and carers to jointly tackle issues affecting them in Darlington and the surrounding area and to enable involvement and consultation with service providers, voluntary, public and private sector. Secondly, DAD develops and delivers services with direct involvement of disabled people and carers.

All of the organisation's work relies on volunteers who receive ongoing support. Many disabled people act as role models and mentors for other disabled people to volunteer. Many young people volunteer to support the children and young people's service enabling them to demonstrate skills and experience to future employers.

Members play a vital role in the organisation ensuring that DAD remains user led and anyone who is new to the organisation is encouraged to become a member in order to be able to influence the organisation, 180 people are registered and 62% are disabled people.     

Public benefit

The Charity's aims and achievements are set out within this report. The activities set out in this report have been undertaken to further the Charity's charitable purposes for the public benefit. The Trustees have complied with the duty under Section 4 of the Charities Act 2011 to have due regard to public benefit guidance published by the Charity Commission and the Trustees have paid due regard to this guidance in deciding what activities the Charity should undertake.

DAD continued to monitor, evaluate and develop all of DAD's projects to ensure that each is providing the best possible service and is supporting disabled people and carers to increase opportunities and choice.

ACHIEVEMENTS AND PERFORMANCE

Key Achievements 2022-2023

To cope with increasing demand and pressures the Trustees have confirmed a re-structure of Management functions to provide more capacity, reducing the hours of the Chief Executive and increasing the Senior Management team to include the Deputy Chief Executive and three Senior Managers along with increased HR support within our Business Support Officers role. These changes will be implemented in the coming months.

The pandemic continued to have major impact on our work as the Cost-of-Living Crisis also began to impact on disabled people and carers. As a local organisation we continued to respond on several fronts. Disabled people continued to be massively impacted on all fronts and demand for support continued to increase and affect the capacity of the organisation.

All of the evidence in relation to the Cost-of-Living Crisis and in particular energy costs demonstrated that disabled people were amongst those hardest hit by rising costs. In addition to the long lasting impacts of the pandemic where research now provides hard evidence that disabled people were some of those most affected, and continue to be, by the effects of Covid 19.

As a frontline organisation DAD actively worked with other organisations in Darlington to quickly put support in place for the local community. In September over 30 organisations met to agree a range of support and identify what could collectively be provided. Darlington Connect was developed as a network of voluntary sector organisations to respond to the Cost-of-Living Crisis particularly with a focus on supporting peoples mental health and well-being. Darlington Council agreed to deliver the Household Support Fund via this network of grass-roots organisations to reach those most in need of support. DAD focused on support for those unable to access the Town Centre shop and delivered support and information to over 350 Disabled people and carers including energy saving equipment, fuel vouchers, food vouchers and a practical support.

Existing DAD services responded in a range of ways;

 

Advocacy

Demand for all areas of Advocacy has increased throughout the pandemic, particularly as the impact on people's mental health is realised. The service dealt with 1952 requests for support, an increase of 10% on the previous year.

DAD has developed its work across all strands in Tees Valley including; general statutory Advocacy, Independent Mental Capacity Advocacy (IMCA), Independent Mental Health Advocacy (IMHA), Relevant Persons Representatives (RPR) and Care Act advocacy for local Councils and Clinical Commissioning Groups.

All advocates hold, or are working towards, the National Advocacy Qualification to ensure that the team have the up-to-date knowledge and skills necessary to support people to access the services they need and to ensure that their rights are upheld.

Self-Advocacy has received support from The Henry Smith Trust Fund to pilot general advocacy for people with a learning impairment. On average groups to develop self-advocacy skills have had regular attendances of 20 people per week and 40 people have been supported with issues ranging from housing to employment.

Carers Support

Support for carers is delivered across the organisation through information and advice, Direct Payment Support and Advocacy Carers breaks have continued to be available at The Hub and DASH thanks to Better Care funding. Carers and parent carers have been a focus for the support we have provided for Cost of Living. Information on the support available was regularly sent out via social media to all parents registered to use play and leisure services and through calls to parents that we knew would be struggling.

Children and Young Peoples Service (ChYPS)

We were able to deliver DASH play schemes as we were back to full capacity from summer 2022 despite ongoing Covid measures being required, Over 130 children and young people were registered to attend summer activities over five weeks of the holidays across four different age-related schemes catering for 3 to 25 years of age. A group of trained and qualified staff alongside volunteers delivered a wide range of accessible activities and outings including the beach, farm and local parks to enjoy all of the opportunities that are open to other children through the holidays. A range of funders support the play and leisure activities without whom they would be unable to offer the range of activities available'.

We were really pleased to be able to re-establish the Young Leader Group with a focus on climate change issues thanks to funding from VONNE and the Act Green Together initiative supporting the voluntary sector.

The Independent Living Hub

The service continued to offer a safe service for small groups. Many people who had previously attended regularly were facing isolation and raised anxiety and mental health issues and were in need of face-to-face support to prevent a crisis. The Hub was able to continue to support disabled people to develop new skills. have access to education, leisure and social activities.

The DAD accessible vehicle was able to provide transport and enable people to access the service. DAD was successful in securing funding from The Community Transport Association, CTA), as part of the Tackling Loneliness initiative, which enabled a range of outings and individual trips to be delivered to support people to access community activities having been isolated by the pandemic and facing increased loneliness and rising costs. Working with CTA and other local organisations we have been raising the issues of the impact of the lack of accessible transport following the pandemic. The lack of taxi's, reduction in bus services and lack of accessible vehicles means that disabled people are being severely impacted and are effectively trapped in their own homes.

Direct Payments Support Service

The service continued to cover Darlington, Redcar and Cleveland and included support for people to be employers (recruitment insurance, payroll and management of Direct finance). DAD was unfortunately not in a position to submit a bid to continue supporting people in Middlesbrough after June 2021.  Despite the pandemic we were able to develop a new online training offer for Employers with support from Skills for Care which also included Infection Control training for Employers and Personal Assistants.

Information Provision

Information provision had been critical throughout the pandemic to ensure disabled people and carers could access the right support and the Cost of Living crisis has now required the same level of response. DAD still aims to be the first point of contact for disabled people and carers despite no specific funding available for the service, we continue to deal with any request for information from disabled people and carers. The enquiries have continued across all areas including housing, benefits. transport, education and equipment.

Self Advocacy

Peoples Parliament, as the voice of people with a learning impairment in Darlington, were able to again meet face to face and successfully campaigned for the re-establishment of the Learning Impairment Network in Darlington to ensure that issues affecting people can be addressed. DAD will be supporting the group with the facilitation of the meetings. The meeting's goals are to work together to try to influence positive change for people with a learning impairment and Autistic people and to try to make peoples' lives better.

People with a learning impairment continue to experience worse health outcomes than the general population. Darlington People's Parliament group welcomed trainers from a Redcar and Cleveland self-advocacy group (Skills for People) who presented a 'Be Cancer Aware' session. The trainers were self-advocates who came with a supporter. This in itself presented excellent role models in paid work, to self-advocates to meet and learn from. Also, the difficult but vitally important subject was delivered in an accessible, friendly manner. Equipping people with accessible information about cancer and giving them the tools to open up this discussion, should they need to, is a small step in giving people choice and control in their own lives and around their health.

Access Interest Group

Continued to work with the Local Authority and businesses across Darlington as the Town reduced and removed various restrictions on access such as social distancing measures for access to shops, bus stops, road changes etc.

Active involvement in local developments, such as the refurbishment of the main Railway Station, commenting and advising on all planning applications and audits have all continued.

Involvement with Durham & Darlington Police and the Police and Crime and Victims Commissioners office (PCVC) has continued to raise the issues around recognition of Hate Crime and support for victims. This has led to continued investment in the provision of a Hate Crime Advocacy Service by the PCVC to support people, across all the equality strands, facing Hate Crime.

Regular meetings have been held with the local Member of Parliament to update on disability issues leading to DAD being mentioned in House of Commons debates on several occasions to influence national issues. Representations have also been made via the Regional Disability Network facilitated by the Cabinet Office.

Requests for Access Audits are also increasing once again from Housing Associations, local voluntary groups and businesses.

Impact and outcomes

The pandemic, followed by the Cost-of-Living crisis has brought into sharp focus the value of a local user led organisation. DAD was able to quickly mobilise support to those who were most in need, work with other local organisations to maximise capacity and share resources.

Most significantly demand for our services, in line with the picture across the voluntary and community sector, has continued to increase. This is all made possible by the brilliant staff and volunteer team that are committed to supporting people to have independence, choice, and control.

Over the 12 months we have;

Continued to support people across a wide geographical area including Tees Valley, Co Durham, North Yorkshire and the wider North east region.

Proactively developed support for disabled people and carers impacted by the Cost-of-Living crisis by referring 350 individuals for fuel vouchers, food vouchers, energy saving equipment, information and advice. Actively involved in developing Darlington Connect as the voluntary sector combined response to the crisis to support people in Darlington.

Supported over 300 people to use a Direct Payment or a Personal Health Budget to manage their own social and health care support. Mainly supporting people to employ their own staff to meet their needs through the provision of Recruitment and HR support, payroll support, accounts to manage the funding and ongoing information and advice. Additional funding from Skills for Care also enabled essential, accessible, training to be delivered to Employers and Personal Assistants.

Delivered playschemes during school holidays and after school sessions, thanks to funding from Children in Need, ensuring over 130 children and young people, impacted by the isolation of missing school and social activities were able to have fun and provide parents with a much needed break. Young Leaders group was also re established with a focus on climate change through support from VONNE.

Provided accessible transport to disabled people who had become isolated and experienced loneliness, supported by a national pilot from the Community Transport Association. The project identified the critical need for accessible transport to enable people to get out of their homes and attend essential services as well as participating in social activities.

The Independent Living Hub continued to support over 40 people to access a wide range of health and well¬being activities including healthy eating, cooking skills, support to access exercise sessions, and a range of independent living skills including travel training, moneys skills, basic IT, maths and English alongside social activities such as outings, disco's and celebrations.

We continued to support people of all ages from 3 to 103, regardless of impairment. A high percentage of those receiving advocacy support were older people who require support in care homes. Significant numbers of people experiencing mental ill health were also supported via the Advocacy project. A significant number of carers were supported through the Short Breaks contract and the Direct Payment Support Service. The ChYPS service had 135 children and young people registered to receive support through after school and holiday schemes.

High standards of governance were maintained and improved including the CHAS, an accreditation and safety scheme and the maintenance of the Investors in People award. The Advocacy Service is working towards the national quality scheme accreditation.

FINANCIAL REVIEW

Review of financial activities and affairs

The financial affairs of the Association were managed by a Trustee sub-committee which met throughout the year and reported to the Trustees.

The last financial year continued to see a significant rise in demand with insufficient time to attract the resources needed and capacity still being impacted by Covid. DAD Trustees agreed to allocated reserves to be able to respond effectively to the Cost-of-Living crisis. Many funders rose to the challenge of supporting the sector with the speed that was needed. We are immensely thankful to County Durham Community Foundation for their continued support, TEWV, Children in Need, Community Transport Association, Henry Smith, VONNE, The Co-Op and The 700 Club.

Contracts were in place with Darlington, Redcar and Cleveland Councils and the Clinical Commissioning Group. Grants were received from Police Crime and Victims Commissioner, Skills for Care, Henry Smith, The Co Operative, Children in Need, County Durham Community Foundation, and Learning Disability England. The support for core funding during the pandemic fortunately put the organisation on a secure footing to withstand the ongoing challenges and remain resilient in the face of steep rising costs. Support services delivering direct support including ChYps and The Independent Living Hub continued to face rising costs and still had to limit capacity due to covid measures to ensure safe delivery of services. DAD was fortunate to be awarded a grant from Social Enterprise Support Fund to undertake detailed work on costing and managing direct services which was extremely valuable in planning for sustainability.

The incoming resources for the 12-month period amounted to £1,270,548 of which £146,284 was for restricted projects and £1,124,264 was attributable to general funds before expenditure.

Reserves policy

The Trustees established a policy whereby the unrestricted funds not committed or invested in tangible fixed assets ('the free reserves') held by the charity should be between 3 and 6 months of the resources expended in general funds. This is the level assessed by Trustees that would enable the organisation to manage risks associated with a sudden loss of funding. Trustees agreed that a Designated Fund be established to support unmet need and essential development. The level of free reserves at the year-end is £427,158.

Future Plans

The increasing costs of living will disproportionately affect the people we support and inevitably raise challenges ahead for the organisation. DAD is focused on delivering as much support as possible for people hardest hit by the Cost of Living Crisis. DAD is a lead partner in Darlington Connect, supporting the establishment of the model, including the Town Centre premises, to mobilise support across the Town from a wide range of voluntary sector organisations to manage the Household Support Fund and promote health and wellbeing activities to support people's mental health.

We are fully committed to continuing our strategy of operating as a Centre for Independent Living across Tees Valley. The Advocacy service continues to grow, and we are working hard to ensure that we provide a high-quality service across the Tees Valley. The staff team has been expanded to ensure we have capacity, and we are working alongside partners across the Region to ensure that people have the support they need and demonstrate the difference that good advocacy support can make to someone's life. The provision of Advocacy across Tees Valley will be undergoing major changes as Commissioners move to a sub-contracting model. DAD are to be a key partner in a new model operated by People First, a major provider of Advocacy across the North East and Cumbria, securing an eight year contract with the Tees Local Authorities_ We are aiming to be at the forefront of these changes to ensure a smooth transition for the people we work with as Advocacy Partners and maintain and develop a high-quality standard of support from the start of the new arrangements in June 2023. Self-advocates will be preparing to deliver the national roll out of Oliver McGowan mandatory training to NHS and social care staff. The training aims to provide the workforce with the right skills and knowledge to provide safe, compassionate and informed care to autistic people and people with a learning impairment. The training was named after Oliver McGowan, whose death shone a light on the need for health and social care staff to have better training.

Our work is well established across the whole of Tees Valley and we will continue to support people across Darlington, Redcar and Cleveland to access Direct Payments with the wide range of support including payroll and Managed Accounts. Work to support people with Personal Health Budgets who wish to be Employers is also continuing. The renewal of contracts with Darlington Borough Council and Redcar and Cleveland Council to deliver the Direct Payments Support Service, both confirmed in June 2022, has enabled us to build on current provision in both of those areas.

The Access Interest Group has been advising on the major capital improvements to Darlington Railway Station which will be ongoing in 2023. Also extending its work to influence the ongoing roll out of Electric Charging points across Tees Valley to ensure that the major investment in new technology does not disenfranchise disabled people further due to the lack of accessibility to charging points. This work will be ongoing in the coming months as Local Authorities develop commissioning arrangements to meet national targets.

Increasing costs are also impacting on the organisation and being carefully managed. Following a review of premises requirements Trustees have agreed to relocate the main office. Negotiations to secure the lease are ongoing. A review and restructure of direct services is also being undertaken and plans are being developed to co-locate children and adults services, based at West Lodge in Darlington, once urgent works to the building are completed.

This is in addition to the ongoing impact still being experienced by many from the pandemic. We will be working closely with partners wherever possible to mitigate the negative impacts and support disabled people and carers wherever possible.

DAD wish to thank all funders and supporters of the organisation. In particular our amazing staff team and the many people who give hours of their time, expertise, skills and knowledge to ensure that DAD continues to be a successful organisation. Volunteers work at all levels of the organisation. As a User Led Organisation, disabled people and carers volunteer as Trustees and others work across all projects which DAD operates. Volunteers are the backbone of the organisation and our thanks and appreciation go to all of them.

DAD will continue to ensure that the organisation has a strong presence going forward, promoting the organisation as a Centre for Independent Living available to support all disabled people and carers.

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