Minutes

Name of Subgroup:Day Opportunities; Employment, Education & TrainingDate & Time:9th June 2015 10.30 am till 12.30 pmVenue:Farley Hill Community CentreWho came:Tracey Brennan- LBC, Val Sheridan- LBC, Kerry Rees- LBC, Julie Woodhouse- YAWNLIFE, Janine Macey- LBC, Lorna De Freitas -Service User, Angela Gatward- Service User, Cindy Brown– Service User, Alan Fletcher- Healthwatch, Polly Parrish- LBC, Emma Hare- POhWER.Who let us know they couldn’t make it:Diane Walsh (LBC), Marilyn Orridge(DWP), Chris Brandom – LBC, Harminder Patel- LBC, Linda Ambrose- LBC, Debbie Poole-Hunt- LAL, Wendy Cooke- Central Beds.

Everyone introduced themselves to the group.

Previous minutes: The group went through the minutes of the last meeting, held on the 12th February 2015.

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Minutes*Kerry Rees asked for an amendment to be made to page 5 – this should read that “bus training (travel training) is still under discussion and is not in place as yet”. The rest of these minutes were agreed by all present and signed off as correct.

Agenda items from today and actions from previous minutes:

Update on transformation of in-house provision; New Build, Community Bases and action point from previous minutes.

Emma Hare (POhWER) will be restarting the Voice groups at Bramingham, to keep people informed and supported with the changes that are happening and to hear their views, questions and concerns. Janine confirmed that the project board is meeting on a regular basis, with the new build at Stopsley due to break ground later this month.

Q – People are used to a large outside space at Bramingham; will there be enough outside space at Stopsley?

Outside space will be more limited than at Bramingham but there will be garden space as well as access to a local park area through an adjoining footpath.

Q – What is happening with the other areas? Some people have started to make visits to Hockwell Community

Centre and that move will go ahead as soon as the work on the washing/toileting facilities has been completed.

The Farley day care group is now part of Bramingham and this has been a seamless move as there has not been a change of building.

Q – Has a decision been made about where the Autism group will be based?

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Minutes We are still waiting for confirmation about where a specialist

Autism group will be based.It is thought that a small challenging behaviour group could be based in a bungalow currently available to LBC.

Q. How many respite beds will there be? There will be 9 in total. Initially they may not all be used on a

regular basis but this unit needs to be future proof and we do have a good idea of future numbers.

Action Pad:

The group went through the action pad; the updated version from today is available here.

Feedback from Community Group:Lorna, Angela and Cindy; from the community group at Hightown, spoke today about the positive changes and said they have noticed that people feel they can speak up more and make more personal choices about what they do, knowing they will be heard. They showed the group pictures of what they do and talked about the new areas they have been able to get to. There main restriction at Hightown is access to a suitable kitchen.It was said that as the first group to move to another area they were very happy but that it had brought up a few issues and these were being looked into.

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MinutesTracey asked them if they would like to go back to the Bramingham building, they said they wouldn’t want to. It was suggested that they could speak to the next group and tell them what ‘moving on’ is like. They could also do a piece of work with POhWER around letting people know what it is like to move on.

What are other services doing?

YAWNLIFE - Carers Network: Carer’s feedback is that they feel interaction with transitions has greatly improved, but those leaving college as opposed to leaving school feel that the information is not so clear or available. Kerry said she will try to support the links to Barnfield College. It was also said that groups who are in school/ college have different issues than people who are slightly older. This would affect the time needed to look at work opportunities.YAWNLIFE Carers Support Service signposts people to all the opportunities available, so that the services are put in place that meets the needs of the person.. DP’s can give people the chance to try a range of activities but ‘pooled budgets’ (being able to share support) still need to be looked into as this would also help many people to get more for their money.

YAWNLIFE – Day Opportunity Service reported that they have access to many activities within their week and users can find it difficult to decide what they want to do, as well as what they don’t want to do. This also means that users will very often choose one of these opportunities over attending an LD Partnership or Subgroup meeting, such as today.Home skills activities are important to most of their users and cookery is very popular but numbers are restricted by the space available.

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MinutesThe expectation is that people do have to pay for many activities and some feel it can make 5 days at day-care quite expensive and some people have to choose how to spend their money.School holidays do make some different activities available but they also stop other things happening, such as tennis on a Tuesday and Thursday. YAWNLIFE also reported that currently they are full and so are taking no new referrals. They may look at expanding but there are other restrictions around employing more staff etc that need to be taken into consideration. They may look at starting a waiting list for users.

Kerry Rees confirmed to the group that Cordova (Elite care) are now based in Futures House, along with Heywood House.Val will check that their contact details are included on the list for this group, as well as Partnership Meetings.

Transport

Polly Parish spoke to the group about how transport is always an issue, especially for the community groups, as well as the ongoing concerns around access for those with a disability/wheelchairs.Polly has also been working with the bus companies around this and disability awareness, as well as looking into travel options in Luton and how these will/could work for people.

The group today were asked to consider what the issues were with transport and how they thought we could bring about change.The feedback from today’s group is recorded here;

Tracey told the group that between now and the next LD Partnership Meeting she will put the groups’ proposals in a letter to

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Minutesthe Lead and the Co-chair of the Partnership Meeting to ask how we can move forward with this.

New Horizons: Update on changes to services.The change of service from LBC to Advance/Plus is still to be signed off.New Horizons have looked at ways to profile peoples skills instead of just having an assessments. Staff are finding this more successful. The whole team has also just completed 4 days of intensive supported employment training.

Supported Employment: Update on performanceNew Horizons report a rise in their figures of those in some type of employment again this year, to 18%; this is well above the national average.There are currently 9 people on this years Apprentice Steps course, and work is taking place to look at who will be able to start the next course. they are also working with the Police to find some new placements for people.

Changes to Subgroups – Agenda for the next meetingEmma Hare from POhWER talked to the group about the changes that will be taking place to the LD Partnership subgroups, these will now be Service User groups run by POhWER. Learning Disability Partnership Board, Subgroups and Forums 6

MinutesThey will follow on in the same way as the existing groups; One for Day Opportunities; Employment, Education & Training; One for Housing and Short Stay and one for Health. There will also be a fourth group covering things like Personal Safety, Fire Safety, Hate Crime etc (Being Safe). There will be one meeting per week in turn, so each subgroup will meet monthly then feedback to the professionals subgroup meetings before then feeding into the main LD Partnership Meeting. Each subgroup may need a new Terms of Reference; these will be drafted by the service users and POhWER together.

Delivery Plan:Due to time restrictions the group were unable to go through the delivery plan today.

Any Other Business:The terms of reference for this group will be put together by POhWER, as mentioned in ‘Changes to Subgroups’.

The group spoke about Learning Disability Week 2015, which takes place this month, and some of the events that would be happening for people in Luton. All of this information has been sent out to as many people as possible in time for Learning Disability Week.

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MinutesThe timetable of events is included here.

Polly told the group about some creative learning opportunities through the Milton Keynes Theatre that include some musical theatre and drama workshops. There will also be a user friendly performance of Aladdin on 6th January 2016. The information for both of these is included here.

Val will also be sending this out to a list of people interested to know what activities are on offer.

The date of the next meeting has been arranged as:

Date: Friday 25th September 2015Time: 10.30 am till 12.30 pmVenue: Farley Community Centre

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