230228-EAPMintues-V02

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Equal­ity Advis­ory Pan­el Meet­ing Held vir­tu­ally on 28 Feb­ru­ary 2023

Present: Anita Howard Bo Mansell Calum Hendry Fiona McLean (Chair) Kate Christie (CNPA) Kath­er­ine Will­ing (CNPA) Kev­in Hutchens Lina Payne Linda Bam­ford Peter Kennedy

Apo­lo­gies: Becca Mayo Lil­liana Corrieri

1. Wel­come and Minute Review Dis­cussed | Action —-| — - • Fiona wel­comed the group to the meet­ing. • The minutes from the pre­vi­ous meet­ing were reviewed and agreed. • The action log was agreed. • The group iden­ti­fied issues with the meet­ing join­ing link, it was agreed that a future action is to resend the meet­ing invites.

2. Item 1: Able to Adven­ture Dis­cussed | Action —-| — - • Calum gave an over­view of Able to Adven­ture and explained how Access Mhor links to Able to Adven­ture. Calum asked the group to com­ment on the following:

   • What else could we include or change?
   • Would a sep­ar­ate Impact State­ment for Access Mhor Cairngorms be helpful?
   • Sug­ges­tions for people and groups to contact.
   • Ideas of where the off-road mobil­ity scoot­ers are which were pre­vi­ously based at Glenmore.

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* How do the website pages look?

• The pan­el sug­ges­ted sev­er­al pos­sible sources of fund­ing such as banks or build­ing soci­et­ies and reach­ing out to char­it­ies such as Mot­ab­il­ity who help fund act­ive travel pro­jects. • The pan­el sug­ges­ted sev­er­al organ­isa­tions to con­tact regard­ing pos­sible publicity:

* SCVO
* Social work departments
* Community Councils
* Benevolent Associations
* Talking Newspapers
* Contact for Families with Disabled Children Scotland

• The pan­el iden­ti­fied that there were areas of improve­ment for the web­site sur­round­ing access­ib­il­ity. The pan­el sug­ges­ted that Calum looks at using one of the online web­site access­ib­il­ity check­ers as this will help with some sug­ges­tions on how the web­site can be made more access­ible. The pan­el also sug­ges­ted to help with access­ib­il­ity on using soft­ware such as the new­est ver­sion of Microsoft word to check that all text is in plain Eng­lish. The pan­el also sug­ges­ted look­ing at the con­trast on the web­site to help aide accessibility.

* The panel also identified some ideas for content and information that could be included on the website: An explanation on what groups the organisation is aimed at serving.
* Details of paths and places which are accessible, the panel suggested it may be helpful to work with other organisations such as the Badenoch and Strathspey Access Panel who have created an app called the Disabled Access Guide.
* A profile on each piece of equipment to explain the specification and who it is best suited to.
* A section on getting to Access Mhor, specifically for those who do not have a car.
* More imagery that has an intersectional approach.

• The pan­el sug­ges­ted con­tact­ing the loc­al access pan­el regard­ing the off-road mobil­ity scoot­ers. The pan­el felt that off-road mobil­ity scoot­ers were the best option as they do not require as much

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bal­ance as some oth­er options but there are altern­at­ive options that could be con­sidered such as tan­dems which can be help­ful for blind or par­tially sighted people who require a guide.

1. Item 2: EAP Review — Fiona McLean

   Dis­cussed	Action
   • Fiona explained that it was iden­ti­fied at the pre­vi­ous review meet­ing that it would be bene­fi­cial to con­tin­ue the dis­cus­sion at a future meet­ing. This had allowed Fiona to review the main top­ics and to con­sider how to address these. Fiona sum­mar­ised that the main top­ics raised were:
   * The impact of the panel
   * The effect­ive­ness of the panel
   * A lack of breadth of rep­res­ent­a­tion on the panel
   * Pro­mo­tion of the work of the panel
   * Identi­fy­ing what the pan­el did well and aim­ing to do more of this
   • The impact of the pan­el was dis­cussed. It was agreed that there would be a more sys­tem­at­ic approach to meas­ur­ing the impact of the pan­el going for­ward. To aid this it was agreed that the sur­vey which goes to presenters and the guid­ance doc­u­ment that is to be cre­ated will be shared with the pan­el mem­bers. The pan­el were reminded that their con­tri­bu­tion and advice is val­ued by CNPA officers.
   • The effect­ive­ness of the pan­el was dis­cussed. It was agreed that the lack of rep­res­ent­a­tion may be a con­trib­ut­ing factor. The pan­el dis­cussed and agreed that hav­ing ses­sions from indi­vidu­als with lived exper­i­ence would be help­ful but that this would not go far enough to over­come the lack of rep­res­ent­a­tion. It was agreed that there would be anoth­er round of recruit­ment of mem­bers to the pan­el. The advert­ising will be expli­cit about what groups the pan­el is aim­ing to increase rep­res­ent­a­tion from.
   • It was agreed that the pan­el would bene­fit from identi­fy­ing what they felt they did well.
   • The pan­el reques­ted a change in how the meet­ings were struc­tured. The pan­el have reques­ted to have one dis­cus­sion seg­ment and one learn­ing seg­ment where speak­ers come. It was

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agreed that there would be bene­fit in pan­el mem­bers sug­gest­ing poten­tial speak­ers. The pan­el were reminded to keep in mind the object­ives of the pan­el and to ensure that CNPA officers were still able to get bene­fit from these learn­ing ses­sions. • The pan­el dis­cussed pos­sible places that the work of the pan­el could be promoted:

* Presentation at the SCVO gathering
* Article in Third Force News
* Article in the Press and Journal
* Articles in talking newspapers
* Article in the Inverness Courier
* Article in the new Cairngorms National Park Magazine

• It was agreed by all in attend­ance that the time for reflec­tion had been use­ful and that this dia­logue should be con­tin­ued to help improvement.

1. Any Oth­er Busi­ness Dis­cussed | Action —-| — - • The pan­el were advised that sev­er­al items would be dis­cussed via email correspondence.

2. Next Meet­ing will be the 28 March 2023

End of Meeting