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The National Independent Living Awards are awards that are awarded from Breakthrough UK to organisations, individuals or communities that have
gone that extra mile that remove the barriers that disable people.
The Awards represent the fact that an organisation of disabled people -- that is an organisation staffed predominately by disabled people, that is managed
by disabled people -- are awarding those organisations that have shown that their practice isn't just good but excellent: that their practice might be
good in areas of employment; it might be good in terms of a project that they have organised to remove hate crime or reduce hate crime; it might be about
housing services and we as an organisation of disabled people recognise the best practice out there. And we are particularly interested in it representing
the Social Model of Disabled People, 'cause the Social Model says that it is the way that we do things that disables people and that presents barriers to
disabled people living independently. So as disabled people and as disabled people's organisations, we are able to recognise quickly those who are showing
the best practice or doing things differently that remove barriers that disable people and allow them to live independently.
By nominating individuals or organisations, people will receive... if they are successful they will receive an award that says 'you are one of the best' in doing
what you do. You are one of the best in removing barriers that disable people. It provides an opportunity to be recognised by other disabled people's
organisations and individual disabled people who may then be encouraged then to use their services or come to their organisations, because they'll
understand that they are an organisation who do remove the barriers, who do do things differently and that recognise disabled people as contributors to
society and that recognise that disabled people should be involved.
We've benefitted immensely from winning that Award. It was an absolutely fantastic experience and we've done so much work to make our organisation NCODP
into a best practice employer of disabled people, so to get recognition for that was fantastic. We've used it in a number of ways: first we've used it as a
recruitment tool. We also use it to showcase to other organisations that may not understand how great it is to employ disabled people, so we can... we can say
'we're award-winning employers of disabled people'. For example, we've got a really low turnover of staff, our sickness absence levels are quite low, we've had
hardly any staff grievances and over half of our staff are disabled people, so that is really good... of a showcase to other organisations to let them know
how good it is to recruit disabled people.
Well, I mean I've put on all of adverts that I'm an award-winning business now, and I'm quite sure that gets me some business. I mean, I would say that's a
primary benefit... I mean the secondary benefit is psychological in that, you know, when you get given an award you think 'Right, I really do have something
that's been recognised, so that gives me more power in believing in yourselves to then go forward in actually give things to other people', so it's like a
positive circle.
Well, the organisation has benefitted in different ways: On short term, imminently it was very good for staff morale, and it was an excuse to celebrate. But
of course it was also a great opportunity to raise our profile and it give us a very good excuse to get in touch with a number of key stakeholders and to do
that we had a good positive story about who we were and what we were able to achieve, so that was very good. On the longer term interestingly, at the moment
we are revisiting a part of the service for which we got the award, because it was partially in relation to our online information service and we are reviewing the
service. We are changing things. We are updating it to make it adaptive to new technologies and social media as well. And you know, with an award it gives
us extra confidence to be... to think big and to think bold. Obviously, we remain very conscious that not all people we work with will use the new communication
tools, the social media to communicate with us, but having had the award give us a bit more confidence to do that. I think that it's been very, very beneficial.
It's been great.
Captions provided by Mark Watts at Breakthrough UK.