Citizenship

ARK Housing Association recently helped to plan and organise this conference in partnership with ENABLE Scotland, Clackmannanshire Council and Stirling Council. 60 delegates attended the conference, 22 of whom were local authority staff. Delegates included representatives from community planning, community learning/development, police and legal services, independent voluntary agencies and also local area coordinators. Some people travelled a long way to attend, from as far as the Borders, Aberdeenshire and the Western Isles.

ARK wanted to use the conference to promote examples of good practice around community engagement with people who have learning disabilities. The key message on the day was that if we can ‘get it right' for people with learning disabilities, we are likely to get it right for everyone. A key theme was community planning, the main process in Scotland through which local people get to ‘have their say' about the services they use. People with learning disabilities co-presented workshops and were employed as support staff. The conference also benefited from contributions by Heartfelt (a Falkirk-based training and development organisation), BBC reporter Alan McKay and also Adam Ingram MSP.

For more information you can link in to the formal report about the conference here, or the easy read version of the report here