DISABILITY ACTION

Disability Action provides a range of services and projects, which are aimed at improving the quality of life of people with disabilities, their families and carers in Northern Ireland Disability Action is unique in its work, as it is the only Northern Ireland wide pan disability organisation working with disabled people with various disabilities; physical, mental, sensory, learning and hidden. Our work is important as one in five people in Northern Ireland has a disability.

Disability Action, as it is currently constituted, is the result of a regular refocusing of its mission, systems and structures since the early 1960's. At that time, the Northern Ireland Council of Social Service, now (N.I.C.V.A) Northern Ireland Council for Voluntary Action supported 3 standing committees, which grew throughout the 1970's and 1980's to become the independent bodies, Age Concern Northern Ireland, the Northern Ireland Association of Citizens Advice Bureau and Disability Action. Disability Action began life in the late 1950's as the Belfast Committee for the Handicapped and over the next three decades became the Northern Ireland Committee for the Handicapped (N.I.C.H), the Northern Ireland Council for the Handicapped, the Northern Ireland Council on Disability and finally in 1992 Disability Action. In its earliest form, the N.I.C.H was serviced by a part time secretary who was a member of N.I.C.S.S staff. The key elements that stimulated its growth were the United Kingdom's Silver Jubilee Committee on Improving Access to the Built Environment in 1978 and the International Year of Disabled People in 1981. As part of the former, N.I.C.H, then comprising a Council of approximately 25 disability organisations (mostly concerned with physical disability), undertook an access survey of Northern Ireland producing 6 county guides for use by disabled people and their families and friends. The member organisations became involved as volunteer surveyors and report writers and so a great energy was created around N.I.C.H. The latter, the International Year of Disabled People, built on this energy to create information services, activities and additional resources which were the platform on which the Disability Action of today is based.