We held our first public meeting on 3rd December, also known as the UN International Day of Persons with Disabilities! It was also part of York Disability Week which included some other great events.
At the meeting, we talked about our annual survey results and what your top three concerns were in regards to coronavirus, and outside of coronavirus.
When it came to coronavirus you were concerned with:
- Changes to blue badge parking in the city centre – read our recent blog posts to find out more about what’s going on with this
- The impact of shielding on your mental and physical health – we’ve pulled together info about where to turn for support, whether it’s a food delivery or help managing the impact on your mental health
- Impacts on health and care needs
In terms of non-coronavirus concerns, your top three issues were:
- Transport
- Physical accessibility
- Attitudes and awareness
We wanted to know more about those non-coronavirus concerns so the discussions at the meeting centred on them. We got some great information and feedback and it was great to get together to talk about the things that are important to the disabled community in York. We gained a lot from hearing everyone’s thoughts and experiences and hope you feel the same. The information we gathered is really useful when thinking about tangible, achievable goals for the coming year.
You can read our summary of the priorities we’ve identified from the feedback collected from emails, letters and social media messages from disabled people in York, as well as through our annual survey, and the public meeting.
We have already begun working on them and have shared your concerns with the York Civic Trust who are involved in the council’s next transport strategy and will be sharing them with some of the local councillors soon. We’ve also started making connections with other groups including with MySight York and the York Cycle Campaign.
But the meeting wasn’t the end of those discussion, it was just the beginning…
As a first step we’ve set up a private Facebook group for members of the Forum where we can chat amongst ourselves, get organised and start taking action. Please join up if you’re a Facebook user – you will be asked some questions and then you will be able to join discussions once we’ve approved your request. This is just so that we know everyone is actually from York, UK, and will help to keep it a safe space for open, free and respectful discussion.
We also want to know if you can help? We’d like to put together working groups to start taking action on some of these priorities. Please get in touch with us at hello@ydrf.org.uk if you’d like to be involved.
If you couldn’t join us, you can catch up on YouTube.