Accessing Public Services Toolkit – Cerebra’s updated guide.
This guide aims to support disabled people and carers, as well as their families and advisers, who are encountering difficulties with the statutory agencies in relation to the provision of health,
social care and education support services.
UK law provides powerful rights to such support services, but this alone is insufficient. The law can be complicated and difficult to understand. Even when you know what your rights are, it can be
daunting, exhausting and sometimes intimidating to challenge public officials. There is a power imbalance and much research establishes (and indeed the Government accepts) that many
families are fearful that complaining may make things worse.
This guide aims to help unpick these problems, to develop effective strategies for resolving them and to keep your blood pressure within safe limits. It is based on the idea that it is not in the interests of public bodies to have these commonly occurring
problems and that most such problems are capable of being resolved without lawyers and without great expense to the public body.
The toolkit considers nine general categories of dispute, suggests how these can be resolved and identifies key factors that empower people to claim their rights and to challenge failures when they occur.
You can access the toolkit here: https://cerebra.org.uk/download/accessing-public-services-toolkit
