Sitra annual policy conference and AGM 2010: Gearing up for change

A General Election may be looming but its result does not seem likely to alter the priorities for providers and commissioners of housing related support and housing with care. All the main parties agree the future is about leaving funding decisions to local government and personalising services.

So the theme of this year's conference was about getting on with what we know is ahead. The day provided one of the first opportunities to hear the CLG Select Committee’s chairwoman, Dr Phyllis Starkey MP, give her reaction to the Government’s response. The conference also considered the plans for taking forward the Right to Control, which has major implications for service users and providers, ideas to protect housing related support from the dangers of including funding in the Area Based Grant and and the new safeguarding requirements affecting commissioners and providers.

Programme

Speaker biographies

Evaluation form

Dr Phyllis Starkey, Labour Member of Parliament, Milton Keynes South West

Dr Phyllis Starkey has been the Labour Member of Parliament for Milton Keynes South West since 1997. Since she was elected, Dr Starkey has held a number of important Parliamentary posts: between 1999-2001, she was a member of the Modernisation of the House of Commons Select Committee; In 2002 she became PPS to Denis MacShane, the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs; in 2005, Dr Starkey was made Chair of the Select Committee for Communities and Local Government - a post she still holds.

Most recently, in 2009, Dr. Starkey was elected as a member of the Reform of the House of Commons Select Committee. Dr Starkey has a strong interest in the situation in Palestine and the wider Middle East: she is vice-chair of Labour Friends of Palestine and the Middle East as well as vice-chair of the all-party Syria group.

Liz Sayce, Chief Executive, RADAR

Liz Sayce is Chief Executive of RADAR, the UK’s leading pan-disability organisation. She is a member of the Disability Committee of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, a Commissioner at the UK Commission for Employment and Skills and a trustee of Stonewall.

From 2000-2007 she was Director, Policy and Communications, for the Disability Rights Commission, where she led on creating a new Disability Agenda for policy for the next two decades, covering skills, employment, housing, health, social care and more. She also directed a Formal Investigation into physical health inequalities experienced by people with mental health problems and/or learning disabilities. Previously she was Director of Lambeth, Southwark and Lewisham Health Action Zone. She spent 8 years as Policy Director of Mind, and one year as a Harkness Fellow in the USA, studying the impact of the Americans with Disabilities Act and related policy initiatives. She was a member of the UK Government’s Disability Rights Task Force (1997-99). With personal experience and knowledge of mental health issues, she has published widely on mental health, disability and social inclusion, including From Psychiatric Patient to Citizen (Macmillan-Palgrave 2000).

Paul Greenwood, Chief Executive, Bay Housing Association

Paul trained as a teacher and taught in a large Blackpool Primary School for eighteen years. He has also been a theatre organist for over thirty years appearing primarily in the Opera House and Empress Ballroom, Blackpool, the Plaza Theatre Stockport and the Strumpshaw Steam Museum, Norwich. He has a number of CDs and films to his credit including Bobs Weekend with Bruce Jones (Les Battersby) and Ricky Tomlinson in which Paul plays the part of himself at the Tower Ballroom Wurlitzer.

For the last fifteen years he has worked part time as Chief Executive of Bay Housing Association, a small provider of Supported Housing to thirty 16 to 25 year olds.