Project Enters its Third Phase

A State of the Union Address from Dave Parr

The Disability Champions@Work project is now entering its third phase. The project has received funding from the Department of Trade and Industry to continue our work for a further 15 months until 31st March 2007. The key targets for this phase are:-

  • 80 employers engaged in the project
  • 100 TU reps working within these companies/organisations on the project
  • 25% reduction in disability issues taken to Amicus officials
  • 500 people to attend events/road shows
  • 20,000 copies of disability reference materials distributed
  • 100 new Disability Champions trained

Scope, who have played an important part in the project roadshows, are now full partners in the project. The DTI funding has allowed us to recruit an additional project worker to work with Dave Parr. This person is Margie Woodward from Scope.

The Champions so far

There are currently 180 Disability Champions from 17 different trade unions. 58% of these are Amicus members. This is a very significant statistic showing that the project is reaching other trade unions in line with TUC policy. Here are some statistics relating to the make up of the 180 Champions:-

  • 40% consider themselves disabled
  • 37% are women
  • 29% are aged 50 or over

These are very pleasing statistics. One area that does need to addressed is that at present less than 11% have categorised their ethnic origin as something other than White British.

“High Road” – the TUC’s Equal project

Disability Champions@Work is now a partner in the TUC’s Equal project called “High Road”. This link gives us the potential to access funding to do things over and above the things we identified in the DTI funding bid. This is also providing us with a number of opportunities to promote the project on both domestic and transnational platforms.

The training course

At present less than 30% of the Disability Champions have completed their training. The main issues preventing people from getting trained are obtaining paid release from work and colleges being able to recruit viable numbers to run courses.

21 TUC tutors have been trained to deliver the course and a number of colleges have dates in place for courses. Details of these can be found on the project website in the training area. There are developments in place to make the courses more accessible in terms of the requirement for paid release including both online and blended learning options.

What now?

It’s kind of inevitable that updates like this start off with how wonderful things are and end up with a “we all need to do more” statement. This project has always been developed with a close eye on the union learning reps programme. ULR’s were a new trade union role, developed from a funded project and promoted across the TUC unions. ULR’s started around 7 years ago; there are currently 12,000 of them trained and last year they helped 67,000 people back into learning. After 3 years we have only 50 trained Disability Champions. We need a real focus and concerted effort if we are to deliver anything like the potential that this project has.

By the time Disability Champions have been around for 7 years there will be 22,000 union learning reps helping a quarter of a million members into learning; how many disability champions will there be?

I guess that’s up to all of us.

Dave