Centre for Independent Living (CIL) Steering Group

 The steering will identify the most appropriate development model to ensure that Merton CIL has sufficient infrastructure, capacity and sustainability in order to achieve its broad objectives:

 Broad Objectives of a CIL

• To promote the independence and inclusion of all disabled people in society.
• To Identify and pro-actively challenge the discrimination faced by disabled people.
• To encourage disabled people to work together to achieve change locally

What is a CIL - Main Features

• Social model of disability
• User Led
• Focus on Independent living &
• The right to fully participate in life
• A voice for disabled people locally- choice and control
• Working with local issues/bodies/organisations
• Meeting local need
• So each CIL is different depending on the needs/gap.

A local CIL could provide information, support, advice and consultancy that aims to enable disabled people to be equal citizens with choice, control, rights and full economic, social and cultural lives.

We wish to support and engage with all local disabled people.

A statement on the Social Model of Disability

We believe an understanding of the Social Model in theory & practice is essential to the development of a CIL.

We believe in the "social model of disability", which means when we talk about "disabled" people, we mean how society disables us by the way that it treats and excludes us whatever our impairment. We focus on how and where society fails to include disabled people by "disabling" attitudes and barriers and we aim to reduce and remove those barriers.

Social model of disability: is fundamental in every aspect of the organisation, acknowledges that disabled people are discriminated against through organisational, environmental, and attitudinal barriers and that society needs to adapt, not the individuals' impairment.