Your Voice, Your Connec- tions www.shropshire-disability.net

Registered Charity No.1148256

Minutes of SDN Quarterly Meeting on 13 December 2012 held at Meeting Point House, Telford Town Centre

1. Present 33 members of SDN and management committee

2. Apologies 9 Apologies were received

3. Chairwoman’s remarks Sonia Roberts (chair) gave a brief resume of SDN’s current work and recent projects. She also stressed the need for more volunteers to help with a range of tasks and emphasised the importance of member involvement in the management of their organisation.

4. Minutes of last meeting Read and accepted (proposed Alan Townsend, seconded Glynn Jenkins)

5. Matters arising Item 4: Blue Badges - deferred for discussion later in the meeting

Item 12: PIP and other welfare changes, due to begin being implemented from April 2013, will mean major changes for many disabled people. Many disability organisations, national and local, are opposing the draconian nature of the changes, which have been characterised as a means of cutting benefits rather than reforming them. Members were urged to look online for details of the protest movement, particularly including SDN’s own website and newsletter.

6. Welfare reform event SDN, in conjunction with the Community Legal Advice Service Partnership, the Pan Disability Forum and the VCS Assembly, plan to bring together four experts to explain and answer questions on key aspects of the new welfare system. This event will be held at the Greenhouse Football Stadium on Thursday 17 January, 2013. 7. Treasurer’s Report SDN has £9687.40 in the bank as at 3 December 2012 with free reserves of £898.75. We can transfer money from the Geoff Forgie Memorial Fund if there is a need to do so.

Since the SDN meeting in September 2012, the main source of Income has been the Geoff Forgie Disability Challenge. Regretfully, we still cannot give a total of how much this event made as we are still waiting for one return to come in and there is possibly a small amount of expenditure to pay. But we do know the Challenge has made more than £1797.57 and we owe our thanks to Dave and his small team for planning this event and seeing it to fruition.

SDN has taken part in two table top sales recently, making just a few pounds at one but having greater success at an event on 1 December put on by AllCare Shropshire Ltd for their chosen charity for 2012 (Hope House). We expect to have made over £60 once expenses have been paid.

Obviously we need to fund-raise to keep SDN working effectively. All this is to your benefit, so can we please ask that you do your best to support us. Today we have our usual raffle which will help pay for this meeting but we also have for sale some items that would make nice gifts for Christmas - all £1 or less - so please dig deep and help your organisation to keep signposting so many people to information that is important for those with a disability, their families & carers.

8. Publicity Report Since my last report SDN has continued to increase its publicity in all areas. We featured well in all publications with regard to the Geoff Forgie Memorial Disability Challenge, and have also had coverage in the local daily and weekly press, in village newsletters and on Radio Shropshire (phone-ins and telephone interviews) regarding disability hate crime, disability access, welfare reforms and much more.

Unfortunately with the radio you may get a call at 8.30 in the morning asking can you speak about a hot topic at 9.20 am. This is not always possible because sometimes people are not available or we need to look into the subject further, research, and ask members’ opinions as we are the “collective voice” of people with a disability and not a single or personal voice. However we do our best and oblige as much as possible. I have been asked and accepted on behalf of SDN to join the Shropshire Radio annual forum which gives us a say in what they put on air and an opportunity to make suggestions. By the year end I hope SDN will have sent its 1000th tweet and as I am tweeting from this meeting today I hope to reach that target. We now have over 250 followers and we are following a similar number but for those who are unfamiliar with social media, unlike Face Book, it is very hard to establish how many people we are reaching through Twitter. But it is thousands and thousands, and across the world. I mention SDN reaching far flung places as we have our first member from Trinidad and Tobago - now wouldn’t it be wonderful one day to welcome this person into one of our meetings and, who knows, with social media moving swiftly it may happen sooner than we think.

In July 2012 we had 7000 followers on Face Book - we now have more than 17,500! I could stand here and give you wonderful statistics of age groups and areas we have followers from but time does not allow.

Of course we now use social media to publicise our fund-raising events and while this is a publicity report I feel justified in asking you to support not just our fund- raising events but also to ask for “doers” to come on the F/Raising Sub Group. If you can help please see me afterwards and I will be pleased to discuss possibilities with you. The group that I lead needs more people on board to spread the work around. We can’t and we won’t carry people on it in name only, we want motivated people who want SDN to move forward. To do that we need funds.

You can all help us with publicity by completing the easy form under the events tab on our website so that events you are involved in that relate to disability/caring can be publicised and all our members know about them. I note after today we only have one event publicised to the end of the year and none for next year. Our calendar will go up shortly but we need your help please. Once you complete one form it is so easy to do it again, so please have a go, help us help others.

Lastly as I have said previously I am delighted when people tell me they have heard mention of SDN on the radio, in a publication, at a meeting, etc, as we keep a cuttings book as a record. One to look out for in the New Year is Shropshire Life magazine, which should be publishing an article about us with some photographs. As we look to 2013 I hope we will get articles into other publications. If you hear or know of any publication which may do a feature on us I am happy to hear about them.

9. Speakers The first speaker, Grania Miller of Shropshire Council, spoke about the use of the Blue Badge by disabled drivers and council enforcement policies. A lengthy discussion and question time followed. Margaret Williams, a member of Rotary’s Inner Wheel Club, then spoke about Limb India, an organisation that provides prosthetic limbs for the poor of that country either free or any very low cost.

The final speaker was Sgt David Braid of West Mercia Police who talked about hate crime as it is experienced by people with disabilities. Again, extensive discussion followed. 10. Raffle

The raffle raised £35 towards the costs of the meeting and SDN funds. 11. Date of Next Meeting

The next meeting will be held on Wednesday 13 March 2013 from 10.30 – 13.00, venue yet to be decided

Signed Date

Chairperson