Enable in the wider community

For 20 years Enable has been working for the rights and choices of people with learning difficulties and promoting best practice. We do this every day in individual homes and day centres - but we also campaign actively for those rights in the wider community.

Housing bodies

We have been working to improve access to housing with care and support for more than two decades.

Enable is a founder member of the national Association of Supported Living, a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to the improving supported living services for people with learning disabilities. Enable's Executive Director, Jackie King-Owen chairs the Supported Housing Committee for the East Midlands Region and is an elected member of the regional council of the National Housing Federation.

Voluntary associations

Enable takes part in campaigning and lobbying for people with learning difficulties through a range of regional bodies. We are an active member of the Association for Real Change, which promotes best practice within the learning disabilities sector. We also have an elected representative on the Derbyshire Safeguarding Vulnerable Adults Partnership. And Enable's Executive Director is a Board member of NDVA, which supports health-related voluntary organisations across Derbyshire.

Neil Barratt, Head of Enable's Property Services, training Lumos staff in Bulgaria

Neil Barratt, Head of Enable's Property Services, training Lumos staff in Bulgaria

Community-based care

Enable Housing Association began life in 1990, with the closure of a big long-stay hospital and the transfer of 140 adults with learning disabilities into small group homes in the community.

This experience is at the heart of our collaboration with Lumos, an organisation founded by JK Rowling, which is campaigning to move children across Europe out of institutional homes and into the community.

Lumos works with the UN, the EU, national governments, policy makers and practitioners to enable children to grow up in a family-type setting. In July 2011, our two organisations hosted a study visit from municipalities in Bulgaria that are designing community-based services for children leaving institutions.

The group visited Enable's services in Derbyshire and commended their diversity and strategies for setting up community-based care. Enable and Lumos are planning to continue working together with more workshops, events and longer-term projects.

For further information please contact the

Executive Director's PA on 01246 599968 or
email pa@enable-group.org.uk (please put Executive Director's PA in the subject line).