Council to introduce reasonable adjustments policy for disabled residents
I’m pleased that the Council will be implementing a policy – and training for staff – to enable disabled residents to access services in appropriate formats. I am however surprised and disappointed that we didn’t have such a policy before now, and that it took a case being decided by the Local Government Ombudsman to prompt us to do so.
More information
You can read more information from page 105 here: https://democracy.towerhamlets.gov.uk/documents/g15377/Public%20reports%20pack%2010th-Sep-2024%2018.30%20Overview%20Scrutiny%20Committee.pdf?T=10
I participated in the Overview & Scrutiny Committee meeting at which we discussed this. You can watch the webcast here – this discussion is from 1:40:00: https://towerhamlets.public-i.tv/core/portal/webcast_interactive/873452
We asked questions of the officers who have prepared this policy and got the following assurances:
- A technological solution will be found to ensure that reasonable adjustment information about individuals is accessible by all front-line teams.
- This policy is to apply to every form of contact that residents might have with the council.
- That the Customer Services team is conducting a benchmarking exercise to learn best practices from other councils.
- That the team is preparing comprehensive training and on-boarding for front line staff including trackers to make sure that all staff are up to date with their training on this important issue.
We will continue to monitor how the policy is implemented. If you have feedback about how the council is facilitating reasonable adjustments, please do contact me.
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