EDP monthly meeting

We move from Leicestershire Centre for Integrated Living (LCIL) on Upper Brown Street to the LGBT Centre on Wellington Street - from our monthly meeting as the Regional Equality and Diversity Partnership (REDP) to our monthly meeting as the Equality and Diversity Partnership (EDP). We're joined by colleagues from Age Concern and from LeicestHERday Trust. Also with us is Philip Parkinson, Chair of Leicester City NHS and Chair of Leicester Partnership.

We have a special focus today on children's issues: school transport for disabled children; eradicating child poverty; review of the incorporation of equality considerations in the mainstream of the Children's Trust Board for Leicester; children and Young People's JSNA (Joint Strategic Needs Assessment).

Find out more about Leicester LGBT Centre:
http://www.llgbc.com/

VAL GETS TWO-THIRDS OF THE DAY

This morning, members of REDP's Working Group at Leicestershire Centre for Integrated Living (LCIL) to "bottom" (in Kelly's words) fundamentals about why REDP exists, its features and benefits, all of which must be presented in consistent fashion at our upcoming "involvement" meetings around the East Midlands in January and February.

After this, another meeting in LCIL, with two representatives of Voluntary Action LeicesterShire (VAL). Dee Martin from LCIL, Iris Lightfoote from The Race Equality Centre (TREC) and I meet with Michelle Skinner and Andy Foskett regarding involvement of the Voluntary and Community Sector in the management of Leicester City Council's new Children's Trust in Leicester. A preliminary paper had been circulated about a month back and the member partners of EDP had been invited to respond from a general equalities consideration as well as with regards to our specialist areas. Iris had shaped it into a coherent whole before sending it to VAL. It's clear from this meeting that issues around legitimacy of representation and related topics need to be ironed out to ensure that the right groups are involved from the beginning, rather than as an afterthought.

More stuff with VAL follows, but in the afternoon I make the short hop across Newark Street to a meeting at their place. I'm a member of an Advisory Group working on VAL's BASIS project. There are meant to be three of us involved from outside VAL itself, but at this inaugural meeting of the Advisory Group, I'm the only person attending from any external agency.