Accessible Belper Recognised With New Award

Accessible Belper were invited to a gala awards evening, hosted by Accessible Derbyshire at Chatsworth House, where they received the award of “Most Accessible Town of the Year”.

The group were recognised for spreading the message of the importance of Accessibility throughout our town. Gillian Scotford said that the work of Accessible Belper did exactly what Accessible Derbyshire had hoped the towns throughout the county would do by spreading the message and encouraging work to ensure equality of access to all services in their town.

Siobhan Fennell, Chair of Accessible Belper, said that the award was a privilege and vindication for the hard work of the team to support the businesses and services of Belper with accessible issues.

Chatsworth House hosted the gala evening with the Purple Pound theme running throughout. The Purple Pound is the income available to businesses nationally from disabled people and their families. The Purple Pound amounts to £12.5 billion per annum. Chatsworth House was even lit up in purple for the evening.

Accessible Belper has been invited to run their popular workshops at the Strutts Open Day on Sunday 23rd October. To fit them in to all the Discovery Day activities, they have been ‘bitesized’ and will run between 11am and 12pm and then repeated between 1pm and 2pm.

The Introduction to Disability Equality workshop (now 30 minutes) aims to end the awkwardness around disability answering questions like, Where does the word ‘handicapped’ come from? Is it OK to say “you don’t look disabled?” Or say “you’re so brave?”

This will be followed by the Dementia Friends information session (also 30 minutes) which examines the myths around dementia and helps alleviate some of the fear and stigma towards dementia and after which attendees can commit, if they so wish, to becoming a dementia friend.

Becoming a dementia friend involves committing to a social action which may be being more understanding towards people with dementia or wearing your badge as much as possible to spread the message.

Photo: Siobhan Fennell accepting the award for the work of the team of Accessible Belper.