What's happening?

• Webinar on Disability, Sex and Relationships

  The session covers:
  
  Self perceptions of being disabled and in a relationship
  Perceptions of society towards disabled people and relationships
  Exploring the barriers faced by both partners
  Some tips and advice and an opportunity for you to ask questions if you want to
  
  Hosted by Martyn Sibley, with guest speakers Kirsty Liddiard and Mèlani Halacre. Kirsty has completed a PhD on sex, relationships and disability and shares her research findings. Mèlani, from Spokz People, share from her personal and professional experiences as a disability counsellor. If you missed it you can click on this link to listen to the webinar here.

  Find out more?

  Click here for summary of Kirsty's reseach or here for more about her research.Kirsty Liddiard is a sociologist from Ryerson University in Toronto who has carried out research with disabled people, exploring their experiences of sex, relationships, and love. Her research collected disabled peoples' own sexual stories in order to understand how they feel about their sexual selves and identities, and how they manage and negotiate within their sexual and intimate lives. Please click here for copies of her Research Summary in both standard and large print...

• Meet Spokz People C.I.C. (Community Interest Company Number 7854738). We are now officially a social enterprise!

  Welcome to our new website www.spokzpeople.org.uk. After a year of free hosting through Spokz, our retail arm, we have now set up our own website and have applied to Company House to be social enterprise. The social, non-profit aspect is reflected in the 'Community Interest' statement we have submitted to Companies House. Being a Social Enterprise means that we are able to use revenue to pay for costs to run Spokz People (overheads, reasonable salaries etc), but that profits are put back into the company to help grow the company or subsidise our work so we can offer low-cost services.

• We have been awarded our first grant!

  We have received our first small grant from Unltd (Unlimited), a charity supporting social entrepreneurs! This is great news and is great recognition of the work we are trying to achieve! The funding will go towards our core costs and expenses and will also be used to set up our own website. We are very grateful to Spokz, our sister company, for hosting our website this past year and supporting our work. We will continue to work with and support Spokz, and have links to each other’s websites. We feel however that a separate website and .org website address (rather than .co) demonstrates the not-for-profit ethos of our services. The new website will be www.spokzpeople.org.uk and we will let you know when we launch the new website address.

• New Support Group in Birmingham

  We are still looking for a few more people who are interested in joining our new support group in Birmingham. The group is open to any adults with a physical disability. Please click on this link for more information about our support groups or contact us.

• Naidex Birmingham 2011 presentation

  At Naidex we gave a presentation in the Inspiration Theatre called 'Living with Disability - Beyond the impairment' on the emotional impact of disability on relationships, confidence and fatigue. Ali Gibson did a wonderful job sharing her experiences of disability, relationships and parenthood with the public and Mel Halacre spoke about some of the issues the partner of someone with a disability may come across and what support is out there. You can watch the video below if you missed it! It's in 2 parts, this is part 1 (you can find part 2 on YouTube also):

• Spokz On Sex Education Show

  If you missed it, Steve (MD Spokz) was on the Sex Education Show, talking about sex and disability.
  You can find the link here, we're on Episode 2 from series 3:
  
  http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-sex-education-show/4od
  
  All episodes from this series focus on 'being normal' featuring sex when you're older, have a disability, obesity and learning difficulties.