The SHAC Disability Charter Scheme will allow housing associations to bridge a gaping chasm between a landlord’s fine words on equalities for disabled tenants and the tenant’s own lived experience.
The Charter Scheme is published here for consultation. You can leave suggestions in the comments section of this article, or email shac.action@gmail.com. Download the Charter here.
Better Understanding, Better Services
Housing associations are too often falling short on understanding, supporting, and providing services for those with disabilities, including mental health conditions such as autism spectrum disorder, dyslexia, and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Gift. The ‘hidden’ nature of these disabilities means that landlords must make an extra effort to achieve parity of esteem and service provision. Too many do not.
The Charter Scheme document provides insight and proposals which will help landlords improve conditions and support for all disabled people.
It will reduce the widespread stigma, mistreatment, and misunderstanding about the symptoms, needs and the impact of disability on tenants and residents.
The Charter encourages a collaborative approach to help improve partnership, engagement, and relations between landlords and disabled tenants and residents, ultimately improving quality of life and customer service experience.
Landlords will benefit through better compliance with housing policies, statutory guidance, and equality legislation.
We encourage comments and feedback initially by Friday 9th July 2021, but this is not a strict deadline. We anticipate that the Charter Scheme will evolve over time.
Rolling Out
Once the Charter is ready, we will be asking landlords to sign up. Every tenant and resident can get involved in lobbying their landlord to adopt the Charter. We will also work with other groups, particularly those concerned with disability and housing, to promote its use.
You can read more about our Disability Visibility agenda here.
21 June 2021
The only issue I have with the charter is a few incorrect usages of neurodiversity terminology. This blog post can help point those terminology problems. https://neurocosmopolitanism.com/neurodiversity-some-basic-terms-definitions/
Many thanks for your feedback Chris. We’re having another look at the Charter now to work through all the comments that were sent to us. Language is very important in setting the right context for behaviour, so we value your suggestions. We’ll let you know when the next version is out.