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	TX: 23.10.06 - Disability Conciliation Service PRESENTER: WINIFRED ROBINSON
	Downloaded from www.bbc.co.uk/radio4 THE ATTACHED TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT. BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF MISHEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE BBC CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY. ROBINSON What do you do if you're disabled and you can't go shopping in your local store or get into the cinema or classrooms or canteens at school or in college? Go to court or talk it through? Well the fact is that more and more disabled people have been choosing mediation to try to persuade shops and organisations to comply with the Disability Discrimination Act. Mediation is providing a solution acceptable to both sides in three out of four cases. But the group providing the mediation service has ceased trading. One problem was that the Home Office cut back on funding for other work but according to Maria Arpa, from the organisation Mediation UK, they could have survived the Home Office cuts had the Disability Rights Commission not pulled out. ARPA We worked very hard as a board of trustees to try and rewrite our budget in order to accommodate that cut and we made redundancies and we lost one floor of our building and we put a lot of things in place. Unfortunately when you get that kind of a funding blow you are still spending money before you can get to the point where you save money because redundancies take a process of three to four months. So we reached a point where we had a cash flow crisis, we decided to go and talk to the DRC and ask them for support and to let them know that we believed a problem was coming our way. And we went there in good faith to talk to them and they seemed to give us the impression that they would look for some sort of problem solving dialogue. Unfortunately within a few hours of that conversation they decided to suspend all payments to us. ROBINSON Maria Arpa from Mediation UK. Bob Niven is the chief executive of the Disability Rights Commission, so why did he pull the plug on the service? NIVEN Well because I'm afraid they'd cease to be a going concern. They'd been a good organisation to deal with but our priority had to be of course continuity of service from the point of view of disabled people and the employers and the firms involved in conciliation cases, present and future, and we could not, as it were, throw public money further at this issue so we decided as a temporary measure we would take administration of the scheme in house, that's to say the paperwork, and then we'd consider the other options, including if people in Mediation UK wanted to put in a scheme we'd consider that. But our priority had to be continuity of service for disabled people and companies and that's what we've done, very successfully. ROBINSON But Miss Arba seems to feel that if you had continued paying them as you had been they would have been able to keep the service going. NIVEN Well I'm afraid we came to a different view, the receiver is now in and I don't want to get into the details but the trustees were not around, employees were told not to come into work and bills were not being paid from the independent mediators. This is a very important service, 300 cases a year, very good settlements for disabled people, enables companies and other organisations to reach settlements without having to go through the law courts and in ways that suit their needs. It's a very successful service, we wanted to keep it going and we did not want there to be any waste of public money. ROBINSON How many cases in the pipeline are caught up in all this? NIVEN Well we've got about 60 cases which we're now pushing out and processing and of course others are coming in. We're processing those as quickly as possible, conciliation is continuing and those cases that were live at the time of the difficulties that Mediation UK faced we're pushing out new cases to the mediators, it'll take us a few weeks to get up to speed but we're processing cases, we want people still to bring their conciliation cases to us and we will do a first rate job for them. ROBINSON You say that you're pushing out cases to the mediators, you've found new people to do this work then? NIVEN Ah the mediators are independents who have contracts - they're self employed people, if you like, who have contracts formerly with Mediation UK, now on a short term basis with us. So the mediation network continues to exist, they were not employees of Mediation UK, Mediation UK was doing the paperwork, we've just taken that over. ROBINSON Now what should people do if they were thinking of contacting you about a difficulty they have? NIVEN Well we have a DRC helpline, we have a website that provides those details. They should get in touch with the helpline, the helpline will discuss those cases, if we can find a solution straightaway that'll be done over the helpline, otherwise they will be referred now internally to the DRC and if there's a suitable case for conciliation they'll be passed out to conciliators and the individuals and the companies will be contacted as quickly as possible. ROBINSON And what is going to happen in the long term? NIVEN Well we need to think about the options now. Clearly we want a service that is viable, we want one that's cost effective, we want one that provides a quality service and we want it to cover the whole of the country. And within the next few weeks we will be reaching a view. We've had some expressions of interest from external companies and we shall consider the alternatives of in house and outsourcing and we'll come to a view in the next few weeks. But people need to be in no doubt that continuity of service will continue both in the short term and for as long as the DRC continues to exist. ROBINSON Bob Niven from the Disability Rights Commission and you can find their helpline number on our website after 3 o'clock or you can call us on the usual number. ROBINSON What do you do if you're disabled and you can't go shopping in your local store or get into the cinema or classrooms or canteens at school or in college? Go to court or talk it through? Well the fact is that more and more disabled people have been choosing mediation to try to persuade shops and organisations to comply with the Disability Discrimination Act. Mediation is providing a solution acceptable to both sides in three out of four cases. But the group providing the mediation service has ceased trading. One problem was that the Home Office cut back on funding for other work but according to Maria Arpa, from the organisation Mediation UK, they could have survived the Home Office cuts had the Disability Rights Commission not pulled out. ARPA We worked very hard as a board of trustees to try and rewrite our budget in order to accommodate that cut and we made redundancies and we lost one floor of our building and we put a lot of things in place. Unfortunately when you get that kind of a funding blow you are still spending money before you can get to the point where you save money because redundancies take a process of three to four months. So we reached a point where we had a cash flow crisis, we decided to go and talk to the DRC and ask them for support and to let them know that we believed a problem was coming our way. And we went there in good faith to talk to them and they seemed to give us the impression that they would look for some sort of problem solving dialogue. Unfortunately within a few hours of that conversation they decided to suspend all payments to us. ROBINSON Maria Arpa from Mediation UK. Bob Niven is the chief executive of the Disability Rights Commission, so why did he pull the plug on the service? NIVEN Well because I'm afraid they'd cease to be a going concern. They'd been a good organisation to deal with but our priority had to be of course continuity of service from the point of view of disabled people and the employers and the firms involved in conciliation cases, present and future, and we could not, as it were, throw public money further at this issue so we decided as a temporary measure we would take administration of the scheme in house, that's to say the paperwork, and then we'd consider the other options, including if people in Mediation UK wanted to put in a scheme we'd consider that. But our priority had to be continuity of service for disabled people and companies and that's what we've done, very successfully. ROBINSON But Miss Arba seems to feel that if you had continued paying them as you had been they would have been able to keep the service going. NIVEN Well I'm afraid we came to a different view, the receiver is now in and I don't want to get into the details but the trustees were not around, employees were told not to come into work and bills were not being paid from the independent mediators. This is a very important service, 300 cases a year, very good settlements for disabled people, enables companies and other organisations to reach settlements without having to go through the law courts and in ways that suit their needs. It's a very successful service, we wanted to keep it going and we did not want there to be any waste of public money. ROBINSON How many cases in the pipeline are caught up in all this? NIVEN Well we've got about 60 cases which we're now pushing out and processing and of course others are coming in. We're processing those as quickly as possible, conciliation is continuing and those cases that were live at the time of the difficulties that Mediation UK faced we're pushing out new cases to the mediators, it'll take us a few weeks to get up to speed but we're processing cases, we want people still to bring their conciliation cases to us and we will do a first rate job for them. ROBINSON You say that you're pushing out cases to the mediators, you've found new people to do this work then? NIVEN Ah the mediators are independents who have contracts - they're self employed people, if you like, who have contracts formerly with Mediation UK, now on a short term basis with us. So the mediation network continues to exist, they were not employees of Mediation UK, Mediation UK was doing the paperwork, we've just taken that over. ROBINSON Now what should people do if they were thinking of contacting you about a difficulty they have? NIVEN Well we have a DRC helpline, we have a website that provides those details. They should get in touch with the helpline, the helpline will discuss those cases, if we can find a solution straightaway that'll be done over the helpline, otherwise they will be referred now internally to the DRC and if there's a suitable case for conciliation they'll be passed out to conciliators and the individuals and the companies will be contacted as quickly as possible. ROBINSON And what is going to happen in the long term? NIVEN Well we need to think about the options now. Clearly we want a service that is viable, we want one that's cost effective, we want one that provides a quality service and we want it to cover the whole of the country. And within the next few weeks we will be reaching a view. We've had some expressions of interest from external companies and we shall consider the alternatives of in house and outsourcing and we'll come to a view in the next few weeks. But people need to be in no doubt that continuity of service will continue both in the short term and for as long as the DRC continues to exist. ROBINSON Bob Niven from the Disability Rights Commission and you can find their helpline number on our website after 3 o'clock or you can call us on the usual number. Back to the Transcripts homepage Back to the You and Yours homepage The BBC is not responsible for external websites

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