New independent research now released

During late 2011 Merseyside Disability Federation commissioned, on behalf of the North West Disability Infrastructure Partnership (NWDIP), a series of facilitated focus groups covering each NWDIP member’s geographical area.

The sessions ran in November and December and were designed to:

• develop a narrative of the experience of DPO’s, ULO’s and disabled people from across the North West
• identify opportunities for individuals and organisations to influence local and national implementation and activity
• produce findings to go forward as evidence to the White Paper engagement exercise.

In parallel with the focus groups, information was also gathered more widely through an online questionnaire.

The results of the study are available here:

North West Infrastructure Disability Partnership Personalisation Report 2012

North West Disability Infrastructure Partnership Personalisation Report 2012 - Annexe A

North West Disability Infrastructure Partnership Personalisation Report 2012 - Annexe B

Please click on links below for further information: -

Adult Substance Misuse Training

Further dates to be confirmed

CADAS Carlisle Big Lottery - Community Ambassador Training – Carlisle

Further date to be confirmed

CADAS Carlisle Big Lottery - Community Awareness Drug and Alcohol Courses – Carlisle

1 Day Alcohol Course 10am - 4.30pm (Timetable for the day)

Wednesday 25th April 2012

Thursday 14th June 2012

Tuesday 24th July 2012

1 Day Drug Course 10 am - 4.30 pm (Timetable for the day)

Thursday 26th April 2012

Thursday 21st June 2012

Tuesday 31st July 2012

CADAS Carlisle Big Lottery - Stage II Understanding and Working With Addictive Behaviour Course

To register your details for the 2013 Course please contact Kirsty on o1228 544140 or email kirstyp@cadas.co.uk

Community Awareness Drug and Alcohol Course – Workington

Further dates to be confirmed

NALS - Nutrition & Lifestyle Training - Barrow in Furness

UNITED Training 3 day Course 2012

University of Cumbria - Understanding and Working With Addictive Behaviour

Please click on this link to go to the training section of the CADAS website

For further information

Please ring Carlisle (H.Q.): Tel 01228 544140 (answerphone)

Or email: info@cadas.co.uk

and Cumbria LINk

Let’s Talk About Prevention! Event

Tuesday 24 April 2012

9.30am – 3.30pm

The Conference Centre, Newton Rigg College, Penrith

This event has now been held

A FREE event designed to bring people together to talk about prevention services to improve health and wellbeing in Cumbria, open to people working in the voluntary and public sectors, to volunteers and anyone else who wants to:

• Share ideas
• Network
• Find out about projects already happening in Cumbria that help to tackle health inequalities, seek to prevent poor health and endeavour to improve the health and wellbeing of people living in Cumbria.

Keynote speaker: Jane Foot

(Author of ‘A glass half-full: how an asset approach can improve community health and well-being’ and ‘What makes us healthy? The asset approach in practice: evidence, action, evaluation’. Visit her website http://www.janefoot.com/)

To find out more or to book contact Monique on 01768 800350

or email moniquer@cumbriacvs.org.uk

1000 Voices Survey

We are writing our Quality Strategy for 2012-14. Through the Quality Strategy we will identify ways of improving the services we provide for our patients. We all want to help make our services better. The 1000 Voices campaign is about allowing you, our service users, members, governors, staff to share your ideas about what you think we should be doing. If you have used our health services and think you could give suggestions of how we could improve them please fill in our 1000 Voices survey and get your voice heard.

Please click on the link to go to the survey

Sit Down Comedy Show

Kirkgate Centre, Cockermouth, Friday 13 April, 8pm

This event has now been held

Laurence Clark, who has just featured in a BBC1 documentary "We Won’t Drop the Baby”, is a wheelchair user comedian, and he’s bringing his one-man comedy show "Health Hazard” to Cockermouth’s Kirkgate Centre on Friday 13 April at 8pm.

An evening of sit-down stand-up comedy from Laurence Clark, who has suffered from cerebral palsy since being oxygen-starved at birth, and therefore has a love-hate relationship with the NHS. His "Health Hazard” show includes a hilarious account of his one-man mission to help Obama sell the benefits of free healthcare to the American people and wowed packed audiences at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this year, garnering 5 star reviews. "A laugh a minute… Clark manages to pull off the neat trick of tackling a serious subject and still managing to be funny. Seriously funny.” *****Culture Vulture

"Clark has got some great material here - it's intelligent and incredibly mischievous. 'I would rather make people laugh than raise awareness,' admits this likeable prankster, and he certainly does that with aplomb." The Metro

Tickets cost £10 and are available from the Kirkgate Box Office tel 01900 826448 or Billy Bowman Music on Lowther Went, Cockermouth.

Website www.laurenceclark.co.uk

Contact via Susanna Jeffery

[beyondcomperetours@gmail.com] 07867505537

Bob Pritchard

The Kirkgate , Cockermouth

01900 829966

bob@thekirkgate.com

Please also find an interview with Laurence and his wife in a recent Sunday Observer article:

Laurence Clark: the 'sit-down' comic fighting for the right to the good life

The Observer, Sunday 25 March 2012

The comedian and his wife Adele both have cerebral palsy, but that doesn't stop them raising two children while campaigning for disability rights

When Laurence Clark tells people he is a comedian, he gets one of two reactions. "Either they assume my act is going to be a worthy story of triumph over tragedy," he says. "Or they'll use the word 'inspiring'. I get 'inspiring' a lot."

Clark is not your average standup. In fact, he has been described as "a sit-down comic" because he performs in a wheelchair and uses his experience of living with cerebral palsy as material. Next month he is touring his show,Health Hazard,which he describes as "a one-man mission to sell the benefits of free healthcare". And just in case anyone is confused by his slurring speech patterns, Clark has been known to open his act with the words: "No, I'm not pissed."

If some audiences find this uncomfortable, Clark remains unrepentant. "All comics draw on their personal experience – that's the job," he says, when we meet in the Soho Theatre bar in London. "No one's telling Jo Brand not to do stuff about eating cake or being a woman."

Clark, 38, was diagnosed with cerebral palsy when he was born. It interferes with nerve signals to muscles, often arising out of complications developed in the womb and resulting in problems with posture, movement and co-ordination.

After a long labour during which he suffered a lack of oxygen, doctors warned his mother that he would probably have learning difficulties and be unable to look after himself. "I think they actually used the word 'vegetable'," he says.

At school, despite being interested in drama, he was advised by the careers office to go into IT. "Computers are like basket-weaving," Clark says, drily. "It's a stereotypical occupation for disabled people nowadays because you can do it sitting down." He ended up getting a PhD in computers and biology. But he found the work boring and started writingcomedyscripts. Before long, he was performing: "I thought it was the only way of getting my stuff heard."

His 2003 appearance at the Edinburgh Festival was the first of six acclaimed shows there and Clark now spends 100 nights a year in comedy clubs up and down the country. He has just won a commission from the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad – the only comedian to do so.

Has he ever been heckled? "I can only remember one time and it was just a knob basically, shouting abuse."

But it is not only as a comedian that Clark is seeking to challenge our notion of what disabled people can or can't do. He and his wife Adele, 34, who also has cerebral palsy, are parents to two able-bodied sons: Tom, eight, and nine-month-old Jamie. As a couple, they refuse to be defined by their impairment in a society that is still shockingly unused to seeing disabled parents intent on pursuing independent lives.

When Adele was pregnant with Tom, she remembers going to the chemist in her hometown of Liverpool to buy folic acid tablets and being looked up and down by the checkout girl. "She said: 'I just didn't think people like you could have babies," Adele recalls. "I could write a book on all the times people said things like that to me."

The Clarks' story is featured in a documentary tonight on BBC1 as part of the BeyondDisabilityseason, a series that looks at our attitudes to disability in the 21st century. InWe Won't Drop the Baby, narrated by David Tennant, the Clarks are shown juggling their daily lives around caring for their children in much the same way as any other family. Their house is adapted for their needs (with wheelchair access and electronic key fobs) and they rely on help from grandparents and "personal assistants" employed directly from their care budget, which is provided by the state.

"We don't say 'carers' because that implies something being done to you rather than something you're in control of," says Laurence. Recent government cuts have not made this way of life any easier. "It's getting more and more difficult to get funding for independent living, yet at the same time people are being taken off incapacity benefit and being told to get out and find jobs. Part of the problem in how people think about disabled parents is that you don't tend to see them portrayed that much in the media and, when you do, the footage is all focused around young carers, looking after their parents – downtrodden children who have been put into this situation."

Tom is far from being downtrodden. He is an energetic, happy boy obsessed withDoctor Who. "It was only when he started primary school he probably began to notice a difference [with the other parents]," says Adele, who jointly runs the training and consultancy company Difference Matters with her husband. "But we don't make an issue of it." Occasionally another child will say something. "The classic is 'You mustn't be able to play footie because your Dad can't kick back.' He would just say: 'For one thing, I'm not into footie and if I did want to play I'd do it with my granddad, who's a massive Liverpool fan.'"

There are still those who argue that it is unfair to bring up a child in a restricted environment where parents cannot fully participate in physical activities. What do the Clarks say to that? "We decided to have kids for the exact same reasons that anyone else decides to have kids," says Laurence. "If nothing else, this documentary shows us being good parents."

Adele adds: "The other issue is that as a disabled person, your sexual identity isn't respected… There's a notion that we, as disabled people, are infantilised." Cerebral palsy is not hereditary, so that was not a concern for either of them and the Clarks refused to have any prenatal tests for impairment. "I think our biggest worry was that he [Tom] could have turned out a Tory," Laurence jokes.

Growing up with parents who have limited mobility has affected their children in positive ways. According to Adele: "We'll be out as a family, and if there's no wheelchair access Tom will ask off his own bat 'Why haven't you got a ramp?'" In fact, though some parenting tasks might require more effort than for able-bodied parents Adele believes: "We're not disabled by the conditions we live with, but by societal values and the assumptions people make – it's a load of baloney."

What would they like to come out of this documentary? Laurence grins. "I wouldn't mind being onLive at the Apollowith Michael McIntyre."

Please click on this link to find the original article