Merton Centre for Independent Living

Merton Centre for Independent Living (Merton CIL) is seeking a new Treasurer with expertise in Finance to join our Board of Trustees, currently made up of ten members, eight identifying as Deaf or Disabled.

Welcome to the August edition of CIL Matters. This CIL Matters newsletter follows on from what we discussed at this years My Voice Matters event. We want you to have your say and help us to develop our Independent Living Toolkit. We also have lots of Merton CIL news to update you on. We have a new CEO Tom Lichy. 

This is a great opportunity to join our dynamic user-led Deaf and Disabled people's organisation in Merton and to support our continued growth, strategic direction and governance on the trustee board.

On June 25th 2019, Merton CIL held its annual event ‘My Voice Matters’ at the New Horizons Centre in Mitcham. Deaf and Disabled People came together with the local community to talk about what we need to live an independent life.

This trainee role is a great opportunity to develop core information, advice and advocacy knowledge and experience while working with and supporting our committed team of caseworkers. You will be focusing on Personal Independence Payment applications, from form-filling to representation at the First-tier Tribunal and social care (Care Act 2014) assessments, reassessments and reviews.

Merton Centre for Independent Living (Merton CIL) are pleased to announce that Tom Lichy will be joining them as Chief Executive Officer from 12th August 2019.

Merton CIL has started a review of housing for Deaf and Disabled people in the borough and we want to hear people's views and experiences.

In May, the government has confirmed its decision to go ahead with the plastic straw ban despite the strong objections of Disabled people including members of Merton CIL. We used the consultation to tell the government that banning the general use of plastic straws would add to the barriers Disabled people have to deal with but they're going ahead with it anyway," says Michael Turner, Merton CIL Policy and Strategy Manager.
 

This CIL Matters newsletter is focused around 'togetherness'. We have articles on co-production, we speak about ways that you can get involved at Merton CIL and much more. We are also very excited to invite you all to this years My Voice Matters event in June. We hope you enjoy reading it!

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) is consulting on whether to introduce deposit return schemes to improve recycling. This broadly means that bottles may cost a little more to buy, but you can get money back if you return them. Our members raised concerns about whether Disabled People who need support to live independently might find that they are paying more for goods, and they are unable to get back to shops or reverse vending machines to get money back.

Merton CIL are looking for a new CEO, as their current CEO is moving overseas. This role is an exciting challenge for someone who is self-motivated and enjoys a varied and strategic role. It will be a demanding role combining day-to-day management of this user-led Deaf and Disabled People's Organisation, with accountability to the trustee board and responsibility for supervision and development of the senior management team.

A big thank you to all our members who came to the recent Craftivism and Chat group to talk about sex! Specifically, we gave feedback on Merton's planned Sexual Health Strategy. The London Borough of Merton and Merton Clinical Commissioning Group (NHS), working alongside NHS England, are responsible for commissioning sexual health services in Merton. They are currently developing a joint 5 year sexual health strategy. This strategy aims to set out how everyone in Merton has good access to sexual health services and is supported to be healthy.

Merton Centre for Independent Living is disappointed to announce that Merton Council has decided not to continue funding our unique home-visiting advice service for local Deaf and Disabled people. 

This world book day authors have been urged to feature Disabled characters in their stories. Deaf and Disabled people are often not as visible as they should be in literature, and this has to change.

Earlier this year we made an effort ahead of world book day to crowd-source a list of books by or about Deaf and Disabled People. Check out the list our members and supporters came up with, and feel free to suggest your own. You can send suggestions via email or tweet us @MertonCIL

The post will manage all aspects of the evaluation for the Pan-London Hate Crime Partnership and selected projects within the Partnership, working collaboratively with Inclusion London’s London Hate Crime Partnership Project Manager. It will ensure that our partners meet all delivery and monitoring requirements, and that project communications, publicity and evaluation work is carried out to ensure learning from the project is captured and shared with stakeholders. The post will also undertake Merton CIL’s self-evaluation.

Thank you to all our members who came to our recent Craftivism and Chat group and responded to Merton Council's consultation on the Local Plan. We have put together a consultation response with the support and input of our members, and shared this with Merton Council. Member's 25 key suggestions, across infrastructure, transport, environment, housing, economy and more have been passed on and we welcome further engagement and conversation on these matters.

Thank you to all our members and supporters who helped us feed back to Government how we feel about plans to ban plastic straws. In summary, we said we want to save the environment too, but, please don't ban plastic straws until there is a real alternative (there isn't one yet), because some Disabled People need them to drink!

We're thrilled to be able to send you thisshare our special 10th anniversary edition of CIL Matters. We hope you enjoy reading it and please do get in touch to share your own memories of Merton CIL! 

In September, the Merton CIL Craftivism and Chat group got together to respond to the Local Government Association (LGA) green paper on adult social care and wellbeing. The group's response was one of 500 responses sent to the LGA.

You can read our draft response to the consultation on plastic straws. We would love to hear from you if you have any further comments. Deadline 30th November 2018