MASI Proposal in Collaboration with Discovery
LILW have applied to a funding call from the Morgan Advanced Studies Institute with a proposal in collaboration with Discovery, the University’s affiliated volunteering charity.
All life is precious but lives of disabled people often get forgotten about. They are often seen as the exception, are often overlooked, and they are rarely accommodated appropriately in society. What is forgotten about even more is the lives of the people who support those with disabilities.
It takes a huge amount of time, effort, and energy to navigate the world as a disabled person, as well as those who support and care for them. Therefore, anything that can save time and effort is exceptionally valuable.
The Legal Innovation Lab have a remit to use technology to improve access to legal rights through developments and use of technology. Discovery is committed to social justice, supporting Disabled adults, young people, and their parents and carers.
We are applying for funding to explore the issues around barriers to Disabled people and their parents / carers to accessing and exercising their legal rights. Particularly their right to support to live their lives in the way that they want to and around transitions, such as child to adult services.
The funding is available for a 3 day event following this structure;
Day one: Consultation, exploration of barriers and challenges. This will be via group discussions or one to one interviews, and can be face to face, by questionnaire, or via video call.
Day two: Analysis, discussions, planning, exploring solutions to our findings.
Day three: Presentation of findings and feedback. The hope is that this will then inform development of technology that will help to address some of the issues and barriers.
We would be flexible in the structure of the first day to ensure maximum engagement from disabled people offering one to one, groups and video call engagement, depending on what would suit individuals best.
The organisations that have already stated they would like to be involved are:
Legal Innovation Lab Wales
Discovery SVS
Your Voice Advocacy – advocacy project for disabled adults
Swansea Carers Centre
Swansea parent / Carer Forum
African community Centre
Chinese autism support service
Mixtup and Interplay – two charities providing support for disabled children and young people
We are awaiting replies from:
Ethnic and Youth Support team – Wales wide charity with Swansea roots that provides support across a wide range of issues
Swansea University Disability Support Service
We know their staff and the people they support will have a huge amount of insight and experiences to share.
After the event, the Research Assistants from the Legal Innovation Lab Wales would write a white paper on the findings from the event and seek publication.
The Software Development Team from the Legal Innovation Lab Wales would act on the findings from the event to develop a tech solution to combat the issues identified. They would likely create an app that would function as a decision tree or a chatbot to enable users to ask questions and navigate information more easily.
If we are granted the funding we will seek to invite relevant members of Welsh Government and local authorities that hold budgets and design and run services for disables individuals so that they can learn from our findings and hopefully we can influence how their services are designed and delivered to make them as accessible and efficient as possible.
We will seek out international best practice and hope to bring either leaders within the Disabled community or examples of best practice in the process in the most accessible and appropriate way.
Room hire – £1,000
Travel – £1,000
Catering - £2,000
Marketing – £3,000
Software development - £5,000