Disability Sheffield

Good Causes Exhibitor 

The Centre for Independent Living

Disability Sheffield Centre for Independent Living ( DSCIL), formerly Sheffield Centre for Independent Living, is a disabled persons organisation with over 10 years’ experience in providing services for disabled people in Sheffield.

The organisation acts as a single point of contact for commissioners, service providers and local service users, providing a one-stop-shop resource with experience in areas such as advocacy, accessibility, self-help, peer support and helping the disabled gain paid employment.

We currently employ 8 staff, who work alongside approximately 11 Volunteers. We have recently taken on an internship and also have students on placement and offer work trials for disabled people. The majority of staff, volunteers and trustees have an impairment or long term condition.

Accessible Sheffield is a new initiative with the ambition of making Sheffield an accessible and fairer city for all who live, work, study and visit or use the facilities within Sheffield.

Figure released in the summer by the DWP estimated that the combined income of disabled people (after housing costs) is £212 billion. Known as the purple pound this represents a huge number of people with spending power often unrecognised as potential customers for businesses.

We are working with Nimbus Consultancy to develop the ‘CredAbility Scheme’ which gives businesses the chance to show they are committed to quality for disabled customers. Businesses who achieve the CredAbility award can use the logo to publicise that their services and/or goods are appropriate and user friendly for disabled people.

As a disabled person’s user led organisation, we are in a unique position of being able to fully understand the barriers that disabled people face in the employment market. Our workers have faced personal barriers when trying to gain paid employment or volunteering from confidence to physical accessibility and therefore consider ourselves to be experts by self-experience. We recently completed a project for the Office of Disability Issues working with disabled people to assist them in moving nearer to the job market. By working closely with local businesses we were able to provide work placement and volunteering opportunities leading to paid employment in some instances for people who had been out of work for a long period of time.