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Jim Glover: Partnership is the way local groups who want to will work along side Mencap.
And that's why 20:20 is really so important. It's vital to have as many people as possible joining together and sticking up for the rights of people with learning disabilities.
20:20 and the partnership mean something very different for each different group. We spoke to a handful of Mencap local groups in Essex, Suffolk and Liverpool
to hear about what they've been up to and how big and small groups are working together to build strong partnerships. To become a partnership group,
each group will have a partnership agreement. In this DVD pack you should find more information about the partnership including this partnership agreement.
Because each group is different, you can pick and mix from a partnership menu, but there are some things that will be in every partnership agreement.
Campaigning is something we want all our local groups to be involved in.
Sarah Jones: We are one of the oldest local Mencap groups.
We've done a lot of work with National Mencap, especially around the campaigns work. When we heard the big cuts events were happening across the country,
we approached National Mencap and said that we'd really like an event in Liverpool, "can we do one together", and their response was really positive,
so we worked with the community development team to bring one of the big cuts events to Liverpool. We worked really closely with Steven John, who's our regional campaigns officer.
Stephen John: My job really is to campaign with local groups and with local people
on issues that they feel most pertinent. It is also to link up with the national campaigns and link the local perspective to the regional, and to the national perspectives.
For Learning Disability Week in June of 2011 'Stand By Me' was the campaign.
Mencap Liverpool and Mencap worked really well together to get Merseyside Police Force to be one of the first to sign up in the UK.
Sarah Jones: I think campaigns is the - is the best way of local groups working with national Mencap. Because local groups have all the local knowledge,
they have the relationships with their members, they know what's happening to individuals, and yet National have the national perspective, they're linked in to Parliament
and they can draw big national campaigns that each local group can then be part of, and they can develop Campaigns packs which we can then download so even groups
that don't really have much kind of staffing resources or volunteers, the pack is all provided there for you online and it tells you what you've got to do and it does make it really easy.
Jim Glover: As part of the partnership, groups and Mencap will share information about what's happening in the local area
and what we can do by working more closely together and sharing resources. That's what Orwell Mencap have been doing.
Nino Serritiello: We started as a furniture making project.
Our biggest main delivery is for Day and Domiciliary services. There is always a buzz at the place, with music, therapies and arts and crafts.
20:20 is really important because it re-structures the relationships between the local societies and National Mencap. By having local Mencaps in partnership with national Mencap,
what we are essentially doing is allowing for much more formal relationships that can share resources and plan services locally.
That's quite different from what other local societies need, which is to be part of the movement, to be able to move in the same direction, to be able to support each other
in campaigning, and what I believe 20:20 does is allow both types of local societies to concentrate on the things that they need to concentrate on, so both benefit.
Jim Glover: In Braintree, the local mencap group have been working with Ali Pike from Mencap national support unit.
Ali has been helping to develop leisure services as part of this local group's partnership agreement.
Alison Pike: The Braintree pilot was one of the main pilots
in trying to establish the way that we were going to work with groups in Partnership in the future, and what Partnership might look like.
For the leisure team it was really about finding out what was going on at a local level, finding out what some of the issues were and finding out what kind of support people needed.
And for Braintree, their specific aim was that they were really interested in setting up a youth group and trying to attract younger members.
Janet Brown: All the meetings we've had with Alison,
our Partnership Officer has been there, and she has helped us tremendously. I have just found her so easy to work with and it's been really a pleasure.
Jim Glover: The partnership menu also includes support and advice for your volunteers. What's more, as a partnership we can support each other, with fundraising and training.
Mencap's communications team will help you with things like easy read, and telling people about your work.
We can all help each other on how best to use the logo and Mencap brand. If we all share the same Mencap brand we can show people who we are, as we work together.
Sarah Jones: One of the big advantages of being a local Mencap group is the name and the branding to us.
And so if there is a stronger feeling of what we are about as a federation, then I think that can only benefit everyone really.
Mark Golding: Exploring a partnership is an attempt to shape this new relationship.
It will be different for every group. We want it to be based on what you want, your vision, how you think you can best contribute. And you and Mencap need to sit together and say,
"This is what we want to achieve". We recognise that we won't get it all right in one go and we don't need to, we can start with something that is small, that's practical,
that builds trust and builds a sense of shared understanding. It is not an agenda that is meant to exclude people, it's an agenda which attempts to have us do more, together.
We hope that you will explore a Partnership and you think its worth developing. If you don't, that is also fine, because there is room in the Movement
for all groups that share the same vision and want to collaborate, perhaps on campaigning or on sharing information without such a close relationship.
Whichever way you choose, I think we can make a better difference to people with a learning disability and their family carers than we are currently doing.