London Campaign Network

London Campaign Network

People First is one of 16 projects to be awarded a grant from the Disability Justice Fund

This Trust for London fund is to 'diversify the disability sector and build the capacity of Deaf and Disabled people’s organisations to campaign for change'.

With the fund we will strengthen our governance, management and networking and improve our communicating and connecting across London.

We will be working to create a ‘London Campaign Network’ of self-advocates with learning difficulties. The aim will be to share the campaigns we are working on and also to come together to work on common campaigns over the next three years. 

We will pilot a user-led Management Committee Development Programme with our Management Committee and then work with other London self-advocacy organisations to adapt and improve it where needed, then share and deliver it with them. 

Strong and skilled Boards are essential to all charities, but we know from experience that self-advocacy organisations can benefit from more accessible training and support in this area to ensure their Management Committees can work more efficiently and effectively. 

This work will establish a link for sharing other areas of good practice, e.g. policy and systems development.

Many self-advocacy groups have closed or have been taken over and our member groups have dropped by 50% in the last 10 years. We want to work with existing self-advocacy organisations across London and support groups to establish themselves in areas where they don’t exist.

We want to make sure that:

• people with learning difficulties have a louder voice and a bigger profile
• self-advocacy organisations collaborate and have greater influence on policy
• the governance of self-advocacy groups is strengthened
• self-advocacy organisations who are under threat of closure or of changes that they don’t agree with have support