Strategic Responsibilties
Local authorities currently have duties with regard to the planning of services for disabled people. In accordance with the ‘Disability Equality Duty’ (2006), this should be seen to extend to the provision of accessible information and advice. The key areas of responsibility are as follows:
- undertaking demographic profiling to establish the number of disabled people in the locality and the nature of their impairments,
- using this information to assess the need for information and advice and the ways in which such information and advice can be made accessible to disabled people,
- preparing a plan to ensure that in the locality there is a suitable range of services that are sufficiently well co-ordinated to meet these needs,
- contributing to and encouraging others to contribute to the funding of such services,
- ensuring that groups that are funded to provide information and advice comply with these Standards – the self-assessment checklist may be adapted as a monitoring tool,
keeping these plans under review in order to meet changing and emerging needs,
collating this information in a way which could inform social policy development on a Scotland-wide basis.
Go to the next page: Local Strategies
(c) Scottish Accessible Information Forum, 2007
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