Funding Green Light for Disability LIB

Scope and six leading disabled people's organisations, including Preston DISC, (DPOs) have secured a £4.2 million funding grant to develop a unique new alliance aimed at averting the crisis facing DPOs and increasing their effectiveness for the future.

National disability organisation Scope will join forces with six DPOs to form the alliance called Disability LIB (Listen Include Build). It will be the UK's first capacity-building alliance led by disabled people.

Disability LIB has been granted £4.2 million from the Big Lottery Fund to fund the project for the next three years. It is the second largest single grant received from the Big Lottery Fund's capacity building programme BASIS (Building and Sustaining Infrastructure Services).

Disability LIB is aimed at helping 200 DPOs in England to boost their performance by improving their management and organisational systems.

Many DPOs—which are run and led by disabled people—are being forced to close down, or are barely surviving because of the substantial barriers they face and because their specific capacity building needs are not being addressed, or in some cases even identified, by the mainstream voluntary and community sector.

Common barriers include severe financial constraints, difficulties accessing funding because of inaccessible application processes and timescales (which do not take the needs of disabled staff into account) and isolation from main¬stream sector activity.

Disability LIB will help DPOs access the support and services they need to function effectively. Apart from Scope, the alliance's members are all DPOs: Disability Awareness in Action, People First, the United Kingdom Disabled People's Council (UKDPC), Equalities National Council, Alliance for Inclusive Education and Preston DISC.

Disability LIB will also work with two mainstream capacity-building organisa-tions—Emason Training and Pilotlight.

The alliance will match the skills of its seven members on areas where support is required such as human resources, finance and public relations. It will also provide advice and information through a dedicated website, 'how to' guides and toolkits.

It is estimated there are around 1,000 DPOs in the UK. Disability LIB will focus on 200 DPOs but many more are expected to benefit from its support.

Published: 30 March 2008