Despite Disabled People’s Organisation (DPOs) achievements in creating social change and providing empowering peer support services to disabled people, many DPOs across England have closed or lost funding and many are reporting increasing marginalisation from funders and decision makers.At the same time demand and need for DPOs is increasing amongst disabled people hit by a combination of inequality, rising poverty and Covid-19.
We are pleased to announce the launch of the National Lottery Community Fund (NLCF) funded research report on the state of the DPO sector in England. This research has been carried out by 8 Regional DPOs ( including Disability Sheffield for South Yorkshire and Humberside )under the co-ordination of Inclusion London and Reclaiming Our Futures Alliance (ROFA), – a grassroots network of DPOs in England.
The report ‘Understanding the needs of DPOs in England’ details findings from extensive research with over a 100 DPOs across England to understand the current challenges and needs of our sector .
The report provides a detailed snapshot of the issues and challenges our sector is experiencing. It puts forward a set of recommendations to strengthen our capacity building, movement building and policy and voice work that if implemented would transform DPOs ability to tackle the deepening inequalities faced by disabled people in a post covid world.
The report is available on Inclusion London’s website.
