Monday 22 March 2010

Chapter 4 - continued

Birmingham Disability Resource Centre eventually opened in 1992, but only after a prolonged seven-year process of campaigns, meetings, reports, surveys, promises, offers and ample amounts of head shaking, door knocking, site visiting and form filling.

If disabled people were going to get their own centre in Birmingham, it was not about to arrive on a plate and the proverbial level playing field certainly existed in the sense that the Group were destined to inch slowly, though relentlessly forward, through the same local authority hoops and around the same pitfalls of official procedure as everyone else.

There would be no special treatment and no charitable handouts on this journey.

Some of the key milestones along the way included:

1985

Birmingham Disability Rights Group established, first discussion at BDRG on the idea of a resource centre run by and for disabled people:

Research carried out by BDRG suggested that the best plan for achieving its aims would be to set up a Disability Resource Centre (DRC) which will provide:

  • a social meeting place
  • training opportunities
  • a comprehensive information and library service
Members of BDRG visit the Disability Resource Centre at Waltham Forest, East London. Later on, city councillors and officers also make a fact-finding visit to the same centre in London.

September 1986

BDRG begins a feasibility study into the need and support for a Disability Resource Centre run by and for disabled people.

October 1986

A report submitted to Birmingham City Council by BDRG titled Disability (Resource) Centre with an additional Resource and Finance Breakdown

November 4, 1986

Birmingham City Council gives all-party support for the establishment of the Birmingham Disability Resource Centre (Resolution 8478).

April 1987

A response issued by the Economic Development Committee titled A Disability Resource Centre for Birmingham.

May 15, 1987

The report of the feasibility study is published from the BDRG office at Birmingham Tribunal Unit, Cornwall House, Lionel Street, Birmingham.

December 1987

BDRG publish a follow up to the feasibility study titled Why Birmingham Needs a Disability Resource Centre?

1988

Bob Findlay writes an article, Kerbing Disability Rights in Brum, for Birmingham Campaign News. The article looks at the cutbacks in council spending and its impact on disabled people.

February 1988

Disability Projects – A Report of Evaluation published by Economic Development (Community Enterprise Sub Committee).

April 1988

Joint report – A Disability Resource Centre for Birmingham – by the Director of Development Committee and the Director of Social Services to the Social Services Committee and the Economic Development Committee.

July 1989

Disability Resource Centre report by joint Economic Development / Education (Training and Employment Support Sub-Committee).

Tilton Road School designated as the site for the DRC. BDRG start investigations and assign an architect.

August 1989

Birmingham Disability Resource Centre – Feasibility Report by Emma Woolf of Radius Project Development brings together previous research and ties the development of the Tilton Road School plans to an action plan by a Working Party.

September 1989

Architect reports on unlikelihood of using the site. A new search begins for alternative premises.

October 1989

Architect reports that Tilton Road School will cost £1.5 million to repair and that the city is unlikely to provide the finance.

December 1989

Other buildings are considered, such as Ladywood Neighbourhood Centre and Bierton Road School.

September 1990

Programme of conversion of Bierton Road to office accommodation commenced with end date of December 1991.

February 1991

Operational Policy produced by BDRG setting down details for the running of the organisation. Completion date of refurbishment of Bierton Road stated as January 1992.

November 1991

The Birmingham Disability Resource Centre report by Radius Project Development.

September 1992

BDRC officer Anne Boothe writes an article in Pinpoint Magazine on the newly opened Disability Resource Centre.

February 11, 1994

Memorandum and Articles of Association incorporated.


March 7, 1994

BDRC registered as a charity.

Sir Albert Bore recalls that the central driving force for everyone concerned was a spirit of perseverance that had been engendered by the 1980s:

“It was perseverance on all sides really, but it was the environment of that decade where there were ideas bubbling up and where you had a political establishment, if you like, which was keen to run with ideas. You had people from the Disability Rights Group who persevered; you had officers of the council who persevered and the politicians persevered with the idea.

“Yes, it took a long time but, as we have already said, aspects of this had to be worked up, things were knocked back, resources were not available etc, etc, but in the end it happened. And I think that we just have to accept that this was one project which took a long time in gestation, but which, eventually, ended up very much in the vanguard, if you like, of what was happening anywhere in the country. And that is as a consequence of the perseverance on all sides.”

Perseverance was certainly what drove the members of BDRG, especially in response to some fairly significant knock-backs along the way such as the withdrawal of the provisional offer of the Tilton Road School site in October 1989 on the grounds of expense. Former BDRG management board member Katherine Walsh remembers that Tilton Road was a favoured site being closer to the city centre than the site they eventually settled on at Bierton Road in South Yardley.

The Group’s senior paid worker during this time, Terry Vincent, maintains that perseverance was more often than not reigned in by compromise, especially as the reality of the centre drew nearer and some staff and committee roles, therefore, began to metamorphose from the auspices of the freely acting and passionately autonomous Rights Group to the more measured and publicly accountable Resource Centre:

“BDRG was adamant about things, DRC were more pragmatic. So the same people on two committees could hold separate feelings. I did. I was torn a lot of the time between what is negotiable and what is non-negotiable.

“But, of course, the funders being so well versed in their own field were very good at saying why it had to be this, or that and the choice in the end was probably Hobson’s choice – no choice. It led to a lot of unhappiness because the people at BDRG were saying ‘we’re supposed to be running this’ and then we would come back from the meetings and say ‘yes, well the funders said this’.”

Bob Findlay also recalls this period of mounting division between the expectant parent organisation, BDRG and its imminently due off-spring, the Disability Resource Centre (DRC). Tensions began shortly after BDRG moved into its Sparkbrook office base at Southside, during the latter stages of the DRC’s development at Bierton Road:

“It was shortly after the move into Southside that the decision was taken to split the two projects into the BDRG and the DRC. I think it was partly to do with pressure from a number of sources.

“Personally, I think mainly from again officers in the council who were discussing the legality of setting up a board of directors for the DRC and whether they would be a company limited by guarantee, a charity; and the BDRG saying that we didn’t want to be a charity or anything to do with that.

“And in my opinion it was a spurious argument as they said ‘what if there is a conflict of interest between the BDRG, the host organisation, and the DRC itself?’

“It was around that time of the debate that the separation took place. But one of the big problems with that (which I think you can guess) was that all the money went in one direction – it went to DRC and BDRG had nothing.”

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