Living Options Devon exists to ensure people with physical and/or sensory disabilities and Deaf people with sign language can make an active and equal contribution in society. Our purpose is to:

encourage people to feel more informed, valued and confident to take part in society through relevant training and support,
enable people to identify priorities and develop user-led services,
engage people in effective communication with local and national service commissioners and providers,
empower people to raise awareness of what society needs to do to provide equality of opportunity both locally and nationally.

Living Options Devon is a leading, local disability organisation with an excellent reputation for providing a range of user-led projects to improve services, equality of opportunity and social inclusion across the County. We are supported by a mixture of public sector funding and grants from external trusts including the Big Lottery Fund and Comic Relief. We also generate our own income through delivery of high quality, user-led disability and Deaf awareness training and access audit services.

All of our work with local disabled and Deaf people is about identifying needs, challenging attitudes and achieving positive change. We can summarise most of what we do under two broad areas:-

a) projects that support people with disabilities and Deaf people to have a say about local services and how they might be improved. For example our Outreach and Deaf projects

b) projects that fill some of the most important service ‘gaps’ they identify. For example D4 - Disability Awareness Training and Access Audits; See Hear Centre - a resource centre for people with sensory impairment, and Devon Link Magazine supporting disabled correspondents to help produce Devon County Council’s specialist disability magazine

You can find out more about each project within Living Options Devon from the navigation bar on the left hand side of this page.

Living Options Devon is also commissioned regularly to involve service users in high profile, public service reviews and user-led research. We are a member of a variety of influential public sector partnerships where it is essential that the views of disabled and Deaf people are represented.

In addition to years of experience of delivering high quality research about disability and Deaf issues, Home Office Change Up funding is now enabling us to lead a county-wide project to improve awareness of diversity and equality across the voluntary sector. An exciting part of this work is to develop a Devon Disability Network to connect up local disability organisations, all supported by a wider Devon (voluntary sector) Consortium.

For much more about Living Options, and to find out how Living Options came about, please see our timeline.