DISABILITY: Disability Inclusion Zones

On a previous excursion he had had a hypoglycaemic attack - his first - linked to his diabetes. The school didn't want a repeat, so he was bounced from the list.

A year-and-a-half later, the school paid him 3,000 in damages. The judge at Preston County Court found that the Clitheroe Royal Grammar School's decision was "fatally flawed in the manner in which it was taken". It breached the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA), which makes it illegal to discriminate unfairly against disabled people.

That was 2000. Oddly enough, Tom White only won his case because the trip was an activity, not an educational event. Back then, education was excluded from the DDA.

Recent legislation has changed that. It is now illegal to discriminate against young disabled people in education as well as in providing services, thanks to the Special Educational Needs and Disability Act 2001 (SENDA).

If a young person comes to a youth group and wants to take part in activities, it is an offence to turn them away or offer them less of a service because they have a disability. This has led to fears among some projects that they will have to close down.

But the Disability Rights Commission, the independent body with legal powers to prosecute breaches of the act, says its whole point is to improve services, not to close them down. "If a youth group had to close because the costs or difficulties of opening up to a disabled user were too great, that would clearly not be a reasonable adjustment," explains Sue Pratt, spokeswoman for the Commission.

Pratt believes that in Tom White's case the school was at fault because it issued a blanket ban preventing him going on trips. It did not do a risk assessment or look at ways to support him in managing his condition.

Some premises and activities can only be made accessible to disabled young people with thought and effort. The law says effort needs to be made: proactively in advance.

And the act is not confined to those with physical impairments that visibly affect mobility, such as wheelchair users. It includes young people with learning difficulties, sensory impairments to vision or hearing and medical conditions such as diabetes.

The DDA recognises the complexities of the changes and the pressure likely to be felt by service providers. It requires them only to make "reasonable" adjustments. to things that are likely to place a disabled person at a "substantial disadvantage".

So what is reasonable in a youth work setting? A code of practice gives various examples. Perhaps a detached youth worker is arranging activities for young people on an estate. The only young man around has learning difficulties. The youth worker has found it difficult to communicate with him, and decides not to arrange activities that evening. That is likely to be unlawful, because another young person would have been treated more favourably.

So how are youth services preparing? Terry Cane, now a youth service consultant, was the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) Youth Service Unit representative on the group that developed the code of practice.

His view is that there is plenty of good practice, but youth work is underdeveloped.

"Ofsted inspections require a report on gender and ethnic minority involvement in youth services," says Cane. "But not on how many disabled people the service reaches." A recent report on Cornwall youth service said only two per cent of users have disabilities. Nationally, there are 623,000 disabled people aged 16 to 24, representing 10 per cent of the population in the age group.

One of the more proactive authorities is Lancashire youth and community service. Terry Cane calls it exemplary. Brenda Lynton-Escreet, Lancashire's disability worker, admits the service is more advanced than some.

Lancashire's senior management made a decision in 1999 to appoint a specialist post and Lynton-Escreet was made disability and diversity worker, after being a youth worker for 20 years.

"In 1999, we did an extensive survey and audit of all our buildings, staff, service users and service provision," she explains. "We started to put into action our plans for changing use, and trained every one of our youth and community workers about the SEND Act."

Ongoing training is key, because ending discrimination is not just about getting young disabled people into buildings. Lynton-Escreet says it is about "hearts and minds". Her service has developed an interactive CD-Rom based on a pack developed for the DfES, with a quiz testing people's knowledge of the requirements, the legislation, case studies and examples.

Lancashire's aim, for inclusive rather than segregated provision, is demonstrated by projects throughout the county: Wheels and Feet in Pendle, Prime Connections in Rishton, Jigsaw Projects in Clitheroe and Shattering Images Theatre Company in Lancaster.

But not all authorities are so committed. Chris Traill, head of development services at the National Youth Agency, is irritated by some of the attitudes she has seen. She says: "People look at it as a restriction. But in some cases it is an opportunity lost."

Caroline Cooke, policy and research officer with disability charity Scope, agrees that the response is patchy. "We have concerns that SENDA hasn't been promoted in the post-16 age group setting and to youth services as widely as it could have been," she says. "There needs to be more awareness of statutory responsibilities. The inconsistencies in the Connexions service and the differing paces of its development are all a source of concern."

The statutory sector may have something to learn from others. Because the voluntary sector did not have the education exclusion it has been covered since the original 1995 Act. Susanne Rauprich, chief executive of the National Council for Voluntary Youth Services, says the voluntary sector had no grants for improvements.

Girlguiding UK has a nationwide network of disability advisers that predates the requirements of the act. Helen Brocklehurst, disability adviser for Norfolk, says: "Guiding is positive about young people with disabilities and including them in everything."

Most counties have a disability-awareness programme for Guiders and girls.

There are advanced plans to introduce an awareness challenge, mainly for Guides who don't have disabilities.

Brocklehurst is often asked to give advice to leaders who have a disabled person in their unit and are not sure how to make the programme accessible.

"After discussion and some training you can usually find ways to adapt for the individual but still make it exciting for the others," she argues.

Young people from Whizz-Kidz, the mobility charity, are clear that they want the same options as their able-bodied peers. Kate Worden, the charity's children and young people's manager, says: "They want to be with their peer group.They want to go of their own accord and they want to be able to do things they choose to do."

An insight into how big the job facing the youth service is came from research published last year by Whizz-Kidz. It reported that two-thirds of able-bodied young people have never even spoken to a physically disabled person of their own age. As Terry Cane says, for a service committed to inclusion, there is still a long way to go.

What the act means for Joshua

When discrimination against disabled people was made unlawful by the Disability Discrimination Act of 1995, education was left out.

But the Special Educational Needs and Disability Act 2001 (SENDA) includes education. As from 1 September 2002, it was unlawful for a local authority youth service to discriminate against disabled people.

KEY POINTS

- Most reasonable adjustments should have happened by 1 September 2002. Adjustments to auxiliary aids and services should be in place by 1 September 2003 and adjustments to premises by 1 September 2005.

- Youth services must comply with "anticipatory duty" to cater for young disabled people's requirements rather than wait and respond to them.

- The Government has made available 31 million for the period 2002 to 2006 to assist local authority youth services to meet the new duties. Some 7m is allocated for the financial year 2002-03 and 8m for the financial year 2003-04, with a further 8m allocated for both 2004-05 and 2005-06.

- A person has a disability if they have a physical or mental impairment that has a substantial and long-term effect on their ability to carry out normal activities.

- Some things are specifically excluded. Addictions to alcohol or tobacco are not disabilities. Nor is hay fever, unless it aggravates the effect of another condition. Tendencies to set fires, steal, or physically or sexually abuse people cannot be regarded as disabilities.

- Non-statutory youth services are covered by a different part of the DDA, operating since 1995.

- Many youth workers are disabled, and the same adjustments should apply to them.

FIND OUT MORE

Disability Rights Commission the best source of information, has a range of material downloadable from the web: www.drc-gb.org

DRC helpline Freepost MID 02164, Stratford-upon-Avon, CV37 9BR

DDA helpline 08457 622633; Email: enquiry@drc-gb.org Terry Cane email terry@consulttc.info.