Disability voices: understanding the lives of disabled people in Cumbria

Between January and March 2023, Healthwatch Cumbria conducted the Disability Voices: Understanding the lives of disabled  people in Cumbria project. 

This project aimed to capture the voices of disabled people across Cumbria in order to understand their experiences of everyday life, the barriers they encounter, their frustrations or worries, and what changes they feel are needed to improve their lives. The original idea for this project was instigated by the Health Inequality Group and was based on the Marmot principles/recommendations.

The Health Inequalities report, produced by the Health and Wellbeing Board, identified that: ‘Further work needs to be undertaken with local organisations who support people with disabilities to gather information on what the local impact has been and develop appropriate actions.

The data for the Disability Voices project was collected by Healthwatch Cumbria, who engaged with disabled people across Cumbria - these are people who self-describe as ‘disabled’ under the definition of a disabled person set out by the 2010 Equality Act, which means that they feel that their daily activities are limited significantly due to a mental or physical impairment. 

In April 2023, Health and Society Knowledge Exchange (HASKE), at the University of Cumbria, was commissioned by Healthwatch Cumbria to undertake an analysis of the data collected for the Disability Voices project.

A total of 758 people were engaged for this project, including 54 focus groups, 202 case study interviews and an online survey, which had 155 responses. 

There are recommendations in this report.

• Ensure that disabled people are part of and have a voice within the decision-making process at both strategic and operational level in the health and social care system.
• Everyone should continually self-reflect and question why disabled people are facing so many barriers and what can be done to make an inclusive society, as it is evident that all organisations and members of society could be doing more to support those living with a disability in Cumbria. 
• Reduce physical barriers
• Reduce transportation barriers
• Reduce organisational barriers
• Reduce attitudinal barriers
• Reduce communication and information barriers
• Reduce technological barriers

There are follow up actions in this report. These include sharing the report widely, including with commissioners, conducting more work on this topic, and working with the local disabled people's collaborative.