Enable Group collaborates with Lumos

International children’s charity Lumos reports that... For the past year Lumos has been working with The Enable Group, a Derbyshire-based charity, on a range of events and initiatives with our country programmes, particularly Lumos' teams in Bulgaria and the Czech Republic.

The Enable Group provides different kinds of housing, support, care, social activities and training for people with learning difficulties and works to help service-users live within the community, as independently as they want to, and to take part in whatever activities they feel are right for them. The group is made up of two companies, the Enable Housing Association and Enable Care and Home Support.  Together they provide day service, housing and supported living care to over 350 people with learning difficulties in Derbyshire and employ 650 staff.

Lumos' collaboration with The Enable Group began in September 2010 when the organisation supported a study visit for our Czech programme. Following that, we invited Enable's Head of Property Services, Neil Barratt, to visit our country programme in Bulgaria in March 2011 to deliver training to local architects, building engineers and municipality representatives - involved in the design of 150 small group homes across Bulgaria - on planning this essential community-based care. Lumos' Training Officer in Bulgaria, Bisser Spirov commented: "The workshop with Neil was really inspirational. It helped change people's way of thinking and gave them a visual model to use as a starting point when planning these necessary services in Bulgaria."

In July 2011, Enable and Lumos hosted a study visit of key representatives from municipalities in Bulgaria, who are responsible for designing the community-based services for children leaving institutions. The group visited Enable's range of services in Derbyshire and reported that it was valuable to see such a diverse range of social services and found it useful to learn more about the process of closing institutions and setting-up of community-based care.

Jackie King-Owen, Executive Director of the Enable Group, said that Enable believes it is important to collaborate with more people and organisations who are working to provide better lives for institutionalised children. Jackie has extensive experience in deinstitutionalisation; in 1990 she was responsible for closing down a big long-stay hospital and moving 140 adults with disabilities into small group homes in the community.

Enable and Lumos are planning to work together on more workshops, events and longer-term projects. 

"The story is also on the Lumos website blog http://www.lumos.org.uk/news.php/397/enable-group-collaborates-with-lumos "