A meeting to discuss how disabled people in Suffolk can work together to give themselves a more representative voice is being arranged by Optua on Monday 15 November at Suffolk Police Headquarters, Martlesham Heath.

The meeting will discuss the government’s requirement for each local authority to have a ‘User Led Organisation’ in place by the end of 2010 to promote independent living and the active participation of disabled people in the design, delivery and monitoring of services that affect their lives. Sue Bott, Chief Executive, National Centre for Independent Living will be at the meeting to talk about how Suffolk disability groups and individual disabled people could work together to fulfil this role.

The meeting will also discuss the Disability Forum for Suffolk which was set up several years ago to enable all disabled people and disability organisations to come together and have a united voice on issues that were of concern to them. The Forum has not met for a while but the meeting will discuss whether it could play a future role in representing the interests of disabled people in the county.

Linda Hoggarth, Chairman of Optua, said: “In Suffolk, there is already an amazing amount of work being carried out by disability organisations and individual disabled people which makes a significant difference to the lives of disabled people. By working together to represent disabled people we can be even more influential than we are already. I hope many disabled people and disability organisations will come along to this meeting to discuss how we can work better together in the future.”

The meeting will take place at 2pm on Monday 15 November at the Police Headquarters in Martlesham. Anyone interested in attending can call 01473 836777 or email [email protected].