Championing Social Care with Purple Tuesday kicked off their campaign to improve the experiences of disabled people in the social care sector with a webinar for home and service manages to improve the experience of disabled people in the social care sector.
Mike Adams OBE, Purple CEO, said: “We have a huge opportunity. For the social care sector to redefine accessibility. Our perceptions and approaches to all things disability. Staff and customers. Purple Tuesday is key to unlocking this opportunity and partnership. Working together we can make a big positive difference.”
Championing Social Care are working with Purple Tuesday across the social care sector, to drive better awareness, understanding, knowledge and best in class practice for disabled people, both as service users and members of staff.
Over the last three years, Purple Tuesday – created and coordinated by Purple – has become the #1 brand for improving the disabled customer experience. Organisations commit to making changes to their activities and wider practice to raise the quality of their service for disabled people. Purple is also a leader in disability employment issues.
The Purple Tuesday social care events programme launched with a managers Webinar, encouraging service and home managers to challenge their processes and improve their best practice for both their disabled customers and colleagues. The session hosted by Mike Adams OBE, Chief Executive of Purple was joined by a panel of fantastic experts in their field.
A significant 22% of the population is disabled. That’s an opportunity to plug the recruitment gap and tackle the recruitment crisis which is being felt across the social care sector right now! The panel included Jonathan Cunningham who shared his experience of employing his fantastic Maintenance Manager who he shared has some learning difficulties.
Tom Lawrenson, Divisional Director at Gilbert Meher outlined huge business benefits of hiring disabled people, include the incredible benefits of bringing additional skills into the workplace, for example, British Sign Language. He also outlined the fantastic support available to businesses employing disabled people, including the Access to Work subsidy which can aid employers to make a small adjustment to a workplace, making it more suitable for someone with a disability. Tom went on to share fantastic evidence that disabled talent will often remain at a workplace that is suited to them, significantly improving a team’s retention rates.
If you are wondering where to start, Tom recommended engaging your team with disability awareness training and becoming a disability, confident employer.
Jonathan Freeman, Caretech Foundation CEO, commented: “Those with disabilities who need the amazing support of social care providers should not be considered as the passive recipient of services but treated with the respect and attention of the consumers that they are. Equally, as one of our largest workforces in the country, the social care sector needs to shift the dial on recruiting and supporting staff with disabilities. It is great to see so many in the sector working together through this new partnership to deliver real meaningful change on these vital issues.”
“Looking forward the Championing Social Care and Purple team are steaming ahead planning a roundtable event as the culmination of their joint campaign. Given all that the social care sector has gone through over the last eighteen months, they hope this conversation with challenge us all to improve the experience of disabled users and customers of our services. The session will address the needs of the current and future social care workforce, including supporting those whose mental health has been impacted by working on the front line throughout the pandemic.”
If you would like to be the first to find out about events just like this in the future and find out more about Purple Tuesday please register to the Championing Social Care mailing list – https://championingsocialcare.org.uk/
