The Disabled Facilities Grants - Aims, Objectives, and Outcomes - Research Paper Example

Funding Application Name Institution 1. The Need. Housing and Disabled Children. Disabled children need housing that they can freely access any location in the house, including kitchen, toilets and bathrooms this can lead to improved independence, confidence and self- reliance. Beresford and Rhodes (2008). The family life can be more enjoyable and less of a pain if the house they live in is more adaptive to the disabled child. However, many families with disabled children live in houses unsuitable or restrictive for both the able and disabled. Children Act(CA) 1989. Housing authorities are obliged to have specific consideration to the disabled children. This is under the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act (CSDPA) 1970. There is need for co-operation between the housing authorities and children’s services authorities to ensure that needs for the disabled children are met. Children Act 2004. 2. Aims, Objectives and Outcomes. The aim is to improve independence, confidence and self-reliance of the disabled children by improving housing adaptability and suitability. Improvement in housing situation leads to positive outcome to disabled children’s improvements. The objective of improving the housing conditions is to improve independence, confidence and self reliance. The outcome is that the independence led to participation in self care and play. Parents have also reported that there has been reduction in physical and psychological stress due to the care the children get. Beresford and Rhodes (2008). There is need for space for the disabled child to store equipment such as wheelchairs and enough space for therapy to be conducted. Kitchens, toilets and bathrooms need to be tailor-made in order to be usable by the disabled children. Being able to help out in doing utensils/laundry helps a great deal in improving the self-esteem of the disabled child. Being able to shower and take themselves in toilets leads to stress reduction and more healthier growth due to acceptance. The presence of a downstairs toilet leads to accessibility to the disabled child instead of carrying him/her upstairs every time they need to use the washrooms. Better housing for the disabled children will increase safety for them, it is evidenced that families with disabled children find that the houses they are living in are not safe for them because they might trip and fall e.g. in door entrances. Families with disabled children are more likely not to own their own houses according to surveys. There are inequalities in allocation of houses to families with disabled children. (Heywood et al, 2005, p.6). It is important that private tenants prioritize the needs and favor families with disabled children. Disabled children spend a long time in their homes so it is important that their homes make their stay comfortable. By building them suitable homes, it is evidenced that they can increase their ability of movement, involvement in all activities both indoor and outdoor hence boosting their self-esteem and allowing growth. The limited space available in most homes for the disabled children leads to delayed healing because there might be less space for conducting therapy; this means that it might not be as effective as it is supposed to be. 3. Project Plan/Tracking Progress. The government has provided funds through the Disabled Facilities Grant (DFG) program in order to improve the housing needs to suit families with disabled children. The government also provide occupational therapists to assess housing needs for various families. Beresford and Old man, (2002). Houses that cannot be entirely renovated have been altered in order to suit the needs of the disabled children. Parents have reported positive feedback from their children as a result of improved housing, they reported higher confidence, independence and self-reliance. Children reported independence, more participation in taking care of themselves and playing. There is a report in the reduction of stress that comes from taking care of children with disabilities. The Disabled Facilities Grants (DFGs) are public funds that families with disabled children can access in order to meet the costs of house renovations. DFGs helps in turning homes into better facilities for the disabled. Our firm hopes to access funding in order to; a) Make homes safer for living to the disabled children. b) Ease access to the major living room. c) Ease access to the bedroom. d) Ease access to the lavatories/toilets. e) Ease access to the bathroom f) Ease access to the kitchen g) Improve the heating system to meet the requirements of the disabled. h) Ease to access and control of power, light and heat in the house. i) Ease to access the garden. In order to make the home safe for the disabled kids, installation of alarms is essential in case urgent help is needed. Our scheme is planning to train the central government and the local authorities together with other agencies about housing needs and how improvements can be facilitated. The training will entail on the importance of better housing facilities to families with disabled kids. Taking into consideration that the central government and local authorities recognize the need for better housing for disabled kids, the funding will enable proper partnership. Proper housing benefits disabled children and the siblings in development, learning and social life. Parents also benefit by suffering less stress and back injury while taking care of the disabled kids. (Heywood et al., 2005, p. 5) 4. Staffing levels (roles, terms and conditions)/activities. Housing authorities have the mandate to take in deep consideration the welfare of disabled persons and in particular disabled children. This is according to Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act (CSDPA) 1970. Our scheme will enable the co-operation of housing authorities and children services authorities in the verge of ensuring housing needs are met. Housing authorities should also partner with health authorities to ensure the health and welfare of children with disabilities. Funding our scheme will enable us foster these relationships. An individual care plan should be established by the social services authorities and housing authorities to restore and preserve non-institutional living and preserving a cost-effective care plan, housing to meet future needs. 5. Legal structure of the organization. Our entity is a non-governmental organization (NGO) which is non-profit and organized on a local, national and international level. We address concerns of humanity particularly the disabled children. We are focused on making things happen by carrying on tasks at hand. We focus on bringing the citizens concerns to the government for discussion and monitoring programs implementation. In this case, housing for the disabled children. Our organization also focuses on encouraging the civil society stakeholders to take part at the community level. We offer investigation and know how, warn the authorities of speculated setbacks and keep track with international agreements in the case of international agreements. 6. Supporting policies. Government (regional and local) and inspection bodies make sure those families with disable children or rather disabled children are a priority when making housing planning strategies. Inspection bodies, that is the Audit Commission and planning inspectorate make sure that disabled children housing is a major concern in their works. For instance, the inspection bodies can consult with families in the locality especially homes with disabled children to determine whether the housing and children services departments are doing their work as required. Our organization recommends that for the local government to take housing for disabled children as a priority, it is important that there is at least one officer dealing with this issue in all localities. A Common Assessment Framework is important to know homes with children with special needs. Another issue of concern is that, housing providers need to be aware that families with disabled children need more spacious houses. 7. Budget and Evaluation Process. Our organization together with our partners, that is the government and other non-governmental agencies hopes to improve housing adaptations processes to enable more homes with disabled children live a comfortable life. This means that supplementary funding will be necessary to fund the Disabled Facilities Grant. The DFG is in the range of 25,000 pounds to 30,000 pounds per grant for disabled children housing. With extra similar grant from The Big Lottery Fund Organization, we could construct and renovate double the number of homes for the disabled kids. The adaptations needed should be thoroughly assessed and determined so that inconvenience in altering the grants in future can be avoided. The DFG scheme and our funds will also cater for specialist equipment installation whereas smaller equipment will remain the responsibility of Children’s Services Department. The disabled child’s parents are the beneficiaries of the DFG and any other form of funding. They are the tenants, owner-occupiers and licensees. The DFG and our funds are only available to existing tenants. It is a requirement that the disabled child’s family lives or intends to live in the home as their main or only residence for the grant condition period. This period is mostly 5 years. However, the deteriorating condition of the disabled child should be taken into consideration because this period could be less or more. Our organization in partnership with the housing authorities must approve or deny an application within six months of application and the DFG payment may take up to 12 months. There are exceptions in approval of applications. Some applications are prioritized according to the severity of the disability and deterioration of the disabled child. Our authorities together with the government authorities have the responsibility to measure any hardships experienced by the disabled child in adapting to the equipment and the new home before terming the project as complete. References. Beresford and Rhodes. Housing and Disabled Children. June 2008. Web 31st March 2016. < https://www.york.ac.uk/media/chp/documents/2008/housingdisabledchildrensummary.pdf> Housing. Web 31st March 2016. < http://www.councilfordisabledchildren.org.uk/media/80206/CDC_LH_Chap_6c.pdf> Every Disabled Child Matters. Disabled Children and Housing. June 2008. Web 31st March 2016. < http://www.edcm.org.uk/media/8104/disabled_children_and_housing.pdf> Needham and Sanders. Getting Funding and Planning Successful Projects. March 2012. Big Lottery Fund Guide to Outcomes. 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