The Cumbria Learning Disabilities Partnership Board AGM was held in the Methodist Hall in Penrith on April 20th. Andrew Matthews, co – Chair and Chief Executive of People First started the day by welcoming all present. The other co – Chair, Councilor Graham Roberts, gave a brief introduction before passing over to Dave Spencer from Valuing People Now.
Dave talked about how the Partnership Board is putting into effect what Valuing People Now says and how different Partnership Boards in the North West are supporting each other.
Muriel Nixon, the Strategy Development manager who manages the plans for Learning Disabilities, spoke next. She talked about the Annual Report for 2009 – 10. Annual Report Easy Read
Jon Parnaby from Children’s Services then told us about plans for ‘transition’ or growing up. He showed an interesting video that the children from Mayfield school had made about things that they wanted to do.
After tea and biscuits Sue Maguire from Mencap along with some people from People First talked about their experience of the Hate Crime conference held last Friday. Cumbria Police in partnership with Mencap and People First Cumbria held a Disability Hate Crime conference in which drama was used to show how hate crime can be and how to deal with it.
Muriel Nixon then talked about the Commissioning Intentions or ‘What We Want to Happen’ for the next 3 years before we stopped for lunch.
In the afternoon we took part in 4 different workshops about Employment, Health, Housing and Person Centered Approach. After the workshops someone from each group talked about 2 important things from their group. All the ideas from the workshops will be looked at by sub groups of the Partnership Board.
Andrew and Graham thanked everyone and the meeting was closed.
