01 December 2006 - DWP pledges equality for disabled people
By 4 December, all public sector bodies have to set out how they plan to promote equality for disabled people when the Disability Equality Duty comes into force.
The DWP has published its own Department- wide disability equality scheme today together with its gender equality scheme and a progress report on its race equality scheme. Each of its main businesses - The Pensions Service, the Disability and Carers Service, the Child Support Agency and Jobcentre Plus - are also publishing their own disability equality schemes. The Department’s Ministers and its Permanent Secretary are today visiting DWP offices throughout the country in order to make their own personal contribution to the launch of the schemes.
John Hutton, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, said:
“The new Disability Equality Duty is a ground-breaking step on the route to the Government’s vision of achieving equality for disabled people by 2025. I am particularly pleased that my own Department is today publishing plans both for the Department as a whole and for its individual businesses”.
“Discrimination of any sort is unacceptable. Yet the truth is that many disabled people still face barriers in all walks of life which prevent them from reaching their full potential. My Department will do all that it can to enable them to do so”.
Permanent Secretary of DWP, Leigh Lewis, said:
“The Department has a responsibility for implementing and promoting diversity and equality in our day-to-day dealings with our customers; with each other; and with our partners. We are already committed to doing so but our priority now has to be to turn our good intentions and our plans into reality for 2009 and beyond.”
In preparing its own plans DWP held a number of events for customers and local representative groups to gather their views on our businesses. It also ran workshops involving large numbers of disabled customers and met with leading disability charities to find out their views. Our customers told us about a number of areas where they would like to see improvements:
- we need simpler letters and instructions and we need to make better use of telephones and typetalk;
- we need more staff training in both general disability awareness and for specific conditions;
- we need to join up our services better to avoid customers having to provide the same information to several different parts of the Department;
- we need to review how we involve our disabled customers in setting our priorities and in the improvements we want to implement;
- we need to spread the excellent practice that can be found at local level across the whole of the Department.
The Department’s plans reflect these priorities and commit us to improving our services accordingly.
Members of the public can, from 8 am today, see DWP’s diversity equality schemes, which include our disability equality action plans, on our website, www.dwp.gov.uk. They are also available in a range of accessible formats such as audio, braille and easy read versions. To order a copy, call 0800 132 660 or email: orders@dwpequalityschemes.co.uk
Notes for editors
- Visits by Ministers and senior DWP officials will be made on Friday 1st December.
- The DED is part of the Disability Discrimination Act 2005. There are four
key elements to the duty, which require organisations to:
- eliminate unlawful disability discrimination and disability-related harassment;
- promote equality of opportunity for disabled people
- promote positive attitudes; and
- encourage disabled people to take part in public life
- The Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit report ‘Improving the Life Chances of Disabled People’, published in January 2005, set out the Government’s strategy for disabled people. For information on progress in delivering this strategy, please visit www.officefordisability.gov.uk
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Website: www.dwp.gov.uk