Disability Information and Service Day

Written by Anne Marie Taaffe

Thursday, 15 January 2009 14:18

Reaction to the Disability Information and Service Day held in the Mullingar Park Hotel on Friday 5^th December 2008.

A very successful event was held on 5^th December in Mullingar Park Hotel. The WCDL Disability Working Group had discovered that there were many services for people with disabilities in Westmeath but many service users did not know that such services existed. Therefore the objective of this event was to bring services users and providers together for the purposes of networking and sharing of information.

Susan Bray from Enterprise Westmeath Network was contracted to co-ordinate the event with the Support from the LDSIP Co-ordinator Linda-Jo Quinn. The event exceeded all expectations and was extremely successful. There has been a call for a similar event to be run in 2009 and this possibility funding permitting will be looked at shortly.

The work of the disability working group will be ongoing in 2009. The aim of this group is to look at a more co-ordinated effort to improve services for people with disabilities and ultimately remove structural barriers that actually dis-able people. Working from a social model model of disability it is hoped more advances and awareness raising on issues of concern can continue in 2009.

	Below Expectations	Met Expectations	Above Expectations	Yes	No
How would you rate the venue?		10%	90%
Was this a good networking opportunity?				100%
Will you plan to attend this Open Day next year?				100%
Would you like to receive any future updates from Westmeath Disabilities?				100%

On a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 is very poor and 5 is excellent, how would you rate the overall event?

1	2	3	4	5
			13%	87%

Space on the questionnaire was also provided for further comments and suggestions. The feedback was very positive.

Feed-Back/Comments:

30 Organisations attended on the day, each were given a questionnaire to complete at the end of the event. The following is a breakdown of the surveys completed:

Number of Stands: 33

Number of Groups Attended: 29

Members of Public Attended: 211