10 September 2009
PAMIS celebrates yet again
A Dundee charity is celebrating after being awarded nearly £250,000 for a new project that will help people with profound and multiple disabilities make the transition to supported self management.
PAMIS, based at the University of Dundee, was one of the largest beneficiaries of the £2million Self Management Fund, which is available to voluntary organisations and community groups throughout Scotland.
The Long Term Conditions Alliance Scotland (LTCAS), in partnership with the Scottish Government, today announced the first round of successful projects that applied for assistance from the Fund.
The £249,555 grant will allow PAMIS to offer free support to young people with profound and multiple learning disabilities (PMLD) and their families to manage the complexity of the transition into adult services.
The project will give intensive support to young persons and their family for one year prior to leaving school and for approximately six months afterwards. It will be rolled out across the Tayside, Fife, Grampian, Greater Glasgow and South Lanarkshire areas.
PAMISDirector Loretto Lambe said she was “over the moon” at news of the award.
“Everybody at PAMIS is absolutely delighted with the award of this grant as it will enable us to address an issue that is of great concern to people with profound and multiple learning disabilities and their parents,” she said.
“We will use this grant to support the young person with PMLD through the transition from child to adult services, something that parents often refer to as the black hole of transition.”
The LTCAS brings together more than 100 voluntary and community organisations that support and represent people living with long term conditions. In total, 16 projects from across Scotland benefited from the Fund. A further £2million funding will be available for voluntary organisations next year.
The purpose of the Self Management Fund is to support work encouraging people living with long term conditions to learn more about the management of their condition, and to become active partners in their own care.
Shona Robison MSP, Minister for Public Health and Sport, said, “The spread of successful grants clearly illustrates the range of long term conditions which can benefit from self management, and the very diverse forms that self management can take.
“I very much hope these projects make a real difference to people’s ability to live with their long term conditions, and that these learnings can be shared across Scotland.”
PAMIS aims to ensure that people with PMLD are valued both as individuals and in the contribution they make to the community.
They also campaign for people with PMLD to be given the support necessary to realise their full potential and for the knowledge and experience of family carers to be recognised and their views taken into account in service development.
This award is another milestone in what is becoming a landmark fortnight for the organisation. On September 2nd, representatives of PAMIS joined politicians and carers at Holyrood to celebrate the success of their “Changing Places, Changing Lives” campaign.
The campaign, led by PAMIS and MENCAP, with the support of several other organisations, aiming to ensure that there is at least one public toilet built to the Changing Places standard in every town centre with a population greater than 15,000 and within each new public building such as shopping centres, concert halls, railway stations etc.
On Tuesday, parent and carer Linda Burke again visited the Scottish Paliament to deliver a 3000-signature petition calling for the Government to use the new British Standards BS8300:2009 Design of Buildings to provide the facilities that PAMIS are campaigning for.
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Grant Hill
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University of Dundee
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