A Fairer Scotland for Disabled People: summary

Five ambitions

This Plan is built around five key ambitions and a set of over 90 actions to be undertaken in this Parliamentary session. Only the main actions are included in this summary.

Our five ambitions

1. Support services that promote independent living, meet needs and work together to enable a life of choices, opportunities and participation. Health and social care support services are designed to meet - and do meet - the individual needs and outcomes of disabled people.

2. Decent incomes and fairer working lives. Making sure disabled people can enjoy full participation with an adequate income to participate in learning, in education, voluntary work or paid employment and retirement.

3. Places that are accessible to everyone. Housing and transport and the wider environment are fully accessible to enable disabled people to participate as full and equal citizens.

4. Protected rights. The rights of disabled people are fully protected and they receive fair treatment from justice systems at all times.

5. Active participation. Disabled people can participate as active citizens in all aspects of daily and public life in Scotland.

'The Scottish Government Disability Plan is much needed and the particular commitments around both establishing a strategy to tackle social isolation and loneliness and fund opportunities for disabled people to volunteer are backed by thousands: disabled people want to contribute and be part of our communities and yet we are not even able to be the main drivers of our own lives at times. We are frequently isolated and lonely with no great sense of meaning or purpose. I firmly believe that with the right support and connections, we can make our important contributions.'

Susan McGinley
Disabled person, Glasgow Disability Alliance ( GDA) Drivers for Change