Disability Advice Project

The Disability Advice Project is a Torfaen based charity that serves the needs of disabled people, their families and carers in our community and surrounding areas of Torfaen, South-East Wales.

The Disability Advice Project covers the surrounding areas of Torfaen such as Blaenau Gwent, Caerphilly, Monmouthshire and Newport.

The Project is an independent charity that is a member of DIAL UK and affiliated to SCOPE. This status means we can operate without the expensive and time-consuming bureaucracy of a national charity and yet we are able to utilize their experience and expertise when needed. The Project is run by a group of volunteers who either have the experience of being a disabled person or of caring for a disabled person. This innate knowledge combined with a continuous training programme has created a committed group of individuals with a considerable expertise in all disability issues but particularly welfare rights and access auditing. There is a charge to service providers for our auditing and training service, with all monies being reinvested into the Project to fund our free welfare rights work for individual clients. We are also dependent on donations from our clients and any other individuals, as we do not receive funding from local government.

Since April 1999, we have represented over 300 people at disability benefit tribunals, with an 80% success rate. We have dealt with up to 250 enquiries in one month. We achieved the Investors in People standard in March 2001 (one of only 3 voluntary organisations in the UK and the first in Wales) and were awarded the Community Legal Service Quality Mark in January 2002. Both awards have subsequently been maintained.

In 2000 the project was awarded a Wales Training Award and in 2005 was the winner of a National Training Award at a UK level.