The Accomplished Community, Building Inclusive Communities.

Simon Goldsmith and Christine Burke

Foundation for People With Learning Disabilities, 2012

This booklet draws on work undertaken between 2009 and 2011 as part of the Building Inclusive Kent Communities (BIKC) Programme. This set out to extend interest in opening up community and public services so that people with learning disabilities in particular could have better access and ultimately improved life chances alongside other people.

The programme brought together multi-sector teams from Swale, Tonbridge and Malling and Royal Tunbridge Wells to look at what difference community groups and public services could make together. This included finding ways to be partners and exploring work that could lead to shared outcomes, by:

• Working alongside disabled people to identify and remove the barriers that prevent some people from being present within local communities;
• Working with community based partners and disabled people on shared projects to develop more inclusive practice.

The purpose of this booklet is to:

• bring together what has been learned from the BIKC project about improving access
• share some practical examples of work undertaken
• make the case for broad definitions of community access
• present Eight Community Accomplishments as key drivers of the broad access agenda, which others can use in their work

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