From disability to ability

Posted on 18th March 2008 at 3.55pm by Julian Dobson

Carol Williams works with people with severe disabilities. Most of them have never had a job, and most people could never imagine them getting a job.

Carol has other ideas, because she knows what a difference it can make. She's launched a consultancy, Inside Out, which gives disabled people the chance to become consultants, assessing buildings for their compliance with access legislation.

'Our consultants are adults who have been totally excluded from the jobs market,' she explains. Anita, for example, is 42 years old. She went straight from special school to a day centre and never had a job in her life. Recently Anita started working as an administrator for three hours a week.

'She's blossomed and grown,' Carol says. 'She's making life choices she would not have made a year ago. She's always lived with mum and dad, and now she wants her own place.'

Nicky has advised the Greater Manchester Fire Authority on accessibility. 'Nicky uses a moulded wheelchair and can only move a finger to say yes or no,' says Carol. But explaining access issues to a group of fire officers through his personal assistant, Nicky grew in confidence.

Carol works for IAS services, which provides support and help with employment for people with disabilities. The idea of Inside Out, an independent company working alongside IAS, came out of last year's Wigan Extreme event.

'Everybody has some gift or talent,' she says. 'People assume that because you're in a wheelchair and can't communicate you don't have skills. I want everybody I work with to have the power to control their lives.'

Since last year, Inside Out has completed its business plan, opened a bank account and has been commissioned to advise on access at Leigh Sports Village. It has worked closely with Greater Manchester Police as well as the fire authority, and is now looking to increase its profile nationally.

One early impact of its work was the decision by IAS to cancel its annual conference because the venue was not sufficiently inclusive: Inside Out is now looking for a fully accessible venue with overnight facilities for 500 people.

As well as working with Inside Out, Carol is vice-chair of Pulse, the social enterprise network for Wigan and Leigh. Through Pulse she has developed contacts with the local authority and met people who can help Inside Out realise its vision.

'I feel I am getting my own cheerleading group willing me on,' she says. 'I am meeting people I would never have me before.'

Cities of dreams

Posted on 18th March 2008 at 2.58pm by Julian Dobson

There's a song by Talking Heads called City of Dreams. It describes how a town in the United States is built on the legends of Native Americans - and how even though those original inhabitants have been displaced, their dreams live on.

We've been talking today about the dreams that make up the places we live in. What are the dreams that made Wigan what it is - the dreams of a secure future through mining and industry, or the energy of music and dance that created Northern Soul?

One of the groups working here is called World in Wigan. There's a preacher from Ghana, there are Iranian Kurds, there are Russian exiles. Their ideas and dreams will help to shape the Wigan of the future.

But we've also been looking at some of the barriers that prevent the dreams coming true. What are the walls that block progress, and the bridges that enable us to cross them?

There's a long list of walls facing community organisations. We heard from members of the over-50s forum, from Rebecca, who runs a community centre, and from Marie and Callie, workers at a parenting project. The walls blocking their progress include short-term funding, bureaucracy, a lack of information, obstructive or unhelpful employers, and cut-throat competition for resources.

Some of the bridges that overcome those obstacles include networks and relationships, passion and determination to succeed, and the greatest unused resource in communities: the time and energy of ordinary people.

Interestingly, relatively few of those walls are the result of national or local government policies or priorities. Funding rules and the short-term thinking behind them are issues that national government can tackle, but relationships and information are all about local action.

There's a temptation to think you can't do anything unless you can influence the priorities of local strategic partnerships, get your head around the government's third sector review and understand the ins and outs of multi-area agreements. There's some truth in that, but not much.

Effective change is about making the structures work for you. The bureaucrats and senior councillors know that, and use the power that gives them. The structures can then be used to manipulate and disempower community groups. But community groups can also manipulate the structures, and use them to shift power towards those who want to get things done where they live.

Wigan Extreme is about local economic development and social enterprise - but it's also about shifting power. That's what enables social enterprises to succeed.

A sporting chance

Posted on 17th March 2008 at 6.47pm by Julian Dobson

Last week a grant of nearly 50,000 pounds from Sport England to promote sports activities in black and minority ethnic communities was in danger of being lost, because Wigan and Leigh Council for Voluntary Services had been unable to build links with the people who were supposed to benefit.

For Khaled Amini, the threat was an opportunity - a chance for the local black and minority ethnic network to help the CVS reach people who weren't in touch with local services. The network, which took off after the first Wigan Extreme event last August, will now work with the CVS to engage local youngsters in sport and provide the activities that have been funded.

The BME network will get the money - a big shift from a scenario where volunteers from minority communities would do the work, but would have no influence over the funding.

It's a sign that some of the seeds sown at the first Wigan Extreme event last August are beginning to germinate. In August Khaled and some of his colleagues came up with the idea of World in Wigan - a celebration of the new cultures arriving in the borough, but also an opportunity to develop ideas for social enterprises.

'We're still working on our project ideas,' Khaled says. 'The major issue is premises: we decided to develop a community centre for BME groups so we could develop our project ideas from there.

'We have a constitution now and we're working to write the centre into our business plan. Most of the business plan is done and we're trying to develop it this week.

'Because our work is all voluntary it's difficult and challenging. But we're not giving up.

'We need more support from the local authority and funders to recognise our strengths and our vision, so they can see how it makes a difference.'

Khaled isn't just waiting for the BME network's value to be recognised, though: he has already become the black and minority ethnic representative on Wigan's local strategic partnership. 'I am still learning,' he says. 'I have found it very interesting and a very positive role, to bring new ideas to change the community for the better.'

Nuts and bolts

Posted on 17th March 2008 at 12.29pm by Julian Dobson

Monday morning, and we’re down to the nuts and bolts of finance.

More than 30 people are deep in workshops about funding and legal structures. We have representatives from Royal Bank of Scotland and Charity Bank here today to help emerging social enterprises consider what they need to do to impress the bank manager. Ian Hunter, from Wigan and Leigh College, will take people through the challenges of e-commerce.

The Community Innovation UK team, with Stephen and Julia from RE:generate, are continuing to advise on project and business planning.

As on Friday, the day kicks off with something from left-field: an exercise encouraging participants to use photographs as a way of introducing themselves and their ideas to each other. ‘It doesn’t take a genius to realise that if you take a little bit of time out to be creative you can provide a firmer foundation for community enterprise,’ Stephen says. ‘One hundred people in Wigan and Leigh are creating community enterprises as a result of this work. What we ended up with after our work on Friday was another 15 people saying they wanted to join Pulse.’

Forum with a future

Posted on 17th March 2008 at 11.51am by Julian Dobson

Three days ago Clare Brennan thought she was getting nowhere. Last year she became chair of the Wigan Borough Over-50s Forum, and realised radical action was needed to give the forum a future - but nobody else seemed to appreciate the urgency.

Now she's much more optimistic. She's been working on her business plan with help from a team from Community Innovation UK at the Wigan Extreme event most of the weekend, and expects it to be complete before the week is out.

'I saw flyers for the Wigan Extreme event last year and wasn't able to attend,' she says. 'This year I was determined it was the right thing for us.'

The forum had been struggling to find grants to fund its activities. 'When I took over as chair I had been a senior manager in a school,' Clare recalls. 'I was stunned at what I found - my chin hit the floor, because there were no policies or procedures, there was no forward budgeting, there was no action planning.'

There had been support for the forum from Age Concern and the local authority's adult services department. 'Grants are great, but if you hold your begging bowl out all the time it's a high risk environment,' Clare says. Even if we got 50,000 pounds or 100,000 pounds tomorrow it's still a high risk environment, because it runs out.'

She says she approached the local council for voluntary services and the local authority for help with business planning, but didn't hear back.

'To write a business plan is very time consuming,' she says. 'But it's very expensive to keep chasing people up for funding and writing bids which then fail. It hits morale big style.'

But to think in terms of generating income demands a change in mindset. Recently the forum sold tickets for a tea dance for the first time, and covered its costs - 'suddenly people are starting to see that we can achieve our charitable aims and at the same time earn money'.

The aim now is to develop the forum into a much more influential network representing 5,000 older people, backed by sustainable income. 'My aim is that we should ultimately be self-financing,' Clare says.