Disability championsThe innovative, EU supported partnership between Amicus, TUC Education, East Riding College and Scope continues to train reps and safety reps to enable them to improve services to members through providing support in discipline and grievance matters on disability issues and to audit their workplace, setting an agenda for continuous improvement.TUC Education held tutor training to support the project and courses are available across the country. There are 17 TUC Trade Union Studies Units with briefed disability champions tutors. To date, 99 people have completed the training, another 137 are on a waiting list and there is a total of 302 Disability Champions from 20 unions: 47 per cent consider themselves disabled, 42 per cent are women, 34 per cent are aged 50 or over and 11 per cent categorise their ethnic origin as something other than white British. The next phase will concentrate on work in partnership with private and public sector organisations to build the capacity of employers to employ and support disabled people in the workplace, bringing signifi cant benefi ts for individuals and for businesses. This will involve trade union members and representatives (disabled or otherwise) becoming disability champions within their own workplaces. These 134 unionlearn individuals will be trained in disability awareness issues as they relate to the workplace, and how to negotiate change around this agenda in the workplace, including providing policies and good practice. They will also audit the impact of this with before and after attitudinal surveys. The Department of Trade and Industry is supporting this phase of the project, and Scope are full partners. Additional funding from the Equal project covers Public Sector Disability Equality Duty, the online version of the course and the development of the toolkit. Targets for 2007 are:
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