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RSN Greater London August Notes

Updates from the Disability Unit

  • RSN Chairs and DU Monthly meeting took place 29 July 1.30-3pm. Zara Todd met with the Chairs to update on the work of the independent Disability Advisory Panel. She welcomed any issues the RSNs may wish to raise to the panel so we could enlist their leverage along with ours.
  • RSN Chairs to send DU their top 3 RSN priority themes by region by 1 September. I created a page RSN London Themes to gather our thoughts, but the ones we had discussed to date included:
    • Social care for disabled adults
    • Mental healthcare act
    • Unpaid carers and their rights as workers
    • SMI alongside disabilities
    • Lifelong lack of independence making language and the push.to economic value oppressive
    • Others to come
  • The next theme is Access to Work (July to October). Initial thoughts were discussed at the DU-RSN Chair meeting on 23 September, ahead of a high level 4 minute verbal summary per region at the Minister Timms-RSN Chair meeting in October (date TBC). Detailed written feedback to be collated and sent to DU by 25 September. The RSN can cover what they would like on the theme, however DWP have listed what it would be useful for the RSN to consider providing feedback on (see the document of minutes from the meeting for details).
  • The following theme is afterwards is the Plan for Disability, which we expect to run in autumn 2026 (exact timings on this are to be confirmed).

Updates from RSN Greater London

We have two new members - Lora Noncheva and Ian Fenn. They both bring loads of lived experience and knowledge to our membership. I'll ask them if they'd like to intro themselves in our call.

I am testing digital tools as mentioned last month.

We'll have another go with Etherpad, a collaborative web page to gather views on Access to Work, our current theme for the Minister. We used this for the PIP Review a while back. This can be accessed at any time of your convenience at this link:

https://rsn-pad.pikapod.net/p/RSN_Greater_London_Access_To_Work_Pad

In terms of keeping notes and documents, I'm trying out a few wikis, which are collaborative websites that guests can edit or leave comments on.

https://ddl-bookstack.pikapod.net/shelves/rsn-greater-london 

Another is a discussion forum, which is a way to keep messages or posts in structured channels for multiple discussions and feedback to issues at the same time, but without the need for real time chat as in WhatsApp.