Today is International Day of Persons with Disabilities and this years' theme is; Building Back Better: toward a disability-inclusive, accessible and sustainable post-COVID-19 World.
Supporting our Customers with Disabilities is certainly something we’re working hard to do. 17% of MSV homes are supported housing for a range of people with physical and mental health needs.
We’re currently on site working on new homes including:
- A learning disability project in Stockport.
- A non-medical suicide prevention project with Maytree Trust (the first of its kind outside London).
- A range of homeless projects, Next Steps and a move on project in Salford with Mustard Tree.
We’re also on-site with 2 new HAPPI schemes in Bolton and Manchester, which provide fully accessible housing with enhanced natural daylight to help with mental health and are ‘care ready’ to prevent future moves into residential care.
We’re working closely with local authority partners and commissioners to maintain current services and accommodation in challenging times where local authority are under considerable budgetary pressure as a result of the Covid Pandemic.
The Supported Housing Team are working to involve tenants with disabilities in consultation, regardless of their capacity, to make sure their voices are heard on adjustments that need to be made and the development of policies and processes.
Supporting our Colleagues with Disabilities
MSV are committed to making sure all colleagues, regardless of their ability, have great experiences of work and in 2019 we joined the government’s Disability Confident Employer scheme.
As part of this, we actively advertise job vacancies to community partners working with disabled people (such as Manchester Deaf Centre) and offer interviews to disabled candidates who meet the minimum criteria.
10% of colleagues at MSV have a disability or long-term health condition. We work with these colleagues to make any reasonable adjustments they need and help them apply for Access to Work funding where necessary to facilitate this.
We’re looking to build on our flexible working offer with a new Flexible Futures proposition in 2021 and have colleagues already making use of flexible working arrangements.
We also provide specialist training for colleagues to make sure they know how to effectively work with a wide range of needs and understand how disability impacts people. Sessions have included Ambassadors of Hope, Understanding Autism, Dementia Friends, Mental Health First Aiders and Deaf Awareness and we’re hoping to run more training like this over the next year.
