FCE’s Community Roundtables - Nov 2025 - Disability

Fife Centre for Equalities facilitates themed community roundtables focussing on the lived experiences of community groups with protected characteristics living, working and studying in Fife. Just as for our Fife Equalities Forum, our roundtables help partner organisations share and coordinate opportunities that can improve accessibility and inclusion across local services.

We share what we learned during group discussions to help develop a wider understanding and to encourage leadership and participation in addressing any barriers identified. We also report to relevant Fife partnerships any points raised to help improve service delivery.

Our pilot disability roundtable took place in November 2025 in Kirkcaldy, with 11 participants from 8 partner organisations.

The following initiatives were represented on the day:

• Fife Centre for Equalities

• Fife College

• Fife Council - Supported Employment Service

• Include me

• Kirkcaldy Hearing Loss Support Group

• People First Fife

• Scottish Autism - One Stop Shop for Autism

• The Yard

• University of St Andrews - ScotGEM

A variety of topics were discussed and the key themes have been summarised below:

• Advocacy and Human Rights

Discussions related to this theme explored the need for different types of advocacy - collective, citizen and self-advocacy.  Examples were shared of how advocacy services support our communities and their contributions to improving services for vulnerable groups of people. We learned about current work under the Fife Advocacy Strategy as well as well-established Fife Advocacy Forum coordinating work in this area.

“Advocacy is needed, gives clear and active voice, helps with education about the issues the given group faces.”

Concerns that were raised related to the possibility of advocacy for children in care to be moved from the third sector to Fife Council and the need for advocacy to stay independent and impartial was iterated. The need for more self-advocacy was also articulated to help people understand their rights and empower them to self-advocate with confidence for themselves and their loved ones.

• Safety

Many participants shared concerns around the news and social media narratives related to benefit claiming and the changes to the benefit system, which was causing a lot of anxiety in their members and/or service users. 

“News and social media narrative about benefits is concerning a lot of vulnerable people.”

Other concerns shared related to community alarms’ functionality during power outages, some teachers and parents still feeling unsure how to ensure young people are safe when using the digital devices provided by the schools, and worry of how to keep vulnerable people safe from radicalisation.

• Funding

A shared concern around constant reducing of funding and how this affects our communities - job insecurities for staff members as well as loss of connection between staff, volunteers, members and service users who have established trustful relationships over time.

“Funding cuts leading to projects/organisations closing, then others popping up creates loss of contacts and starting up again. This leads to damage to the grassroot community groups.”

A lot of the prevention work and support is underpinned by the voluntary sector, reducing burden on statutory services, and participants called for the recognition of the value this brings to our communities when considering funding cuts.

• Education

A range of concerns related to learning and education. “Schools are stretched” with great demand on teachers and pupil support assistants and not sufficient resources to meet the access needs for some of our vulnerable students. Participants shared that the culture of blaming the parents for “parenting wrong” still exists within our education system, when children’s needs are not diagnosed. We also heard that some supportive equipment (like headphones / ear defenders) might be taken away from the children, as deemed unnecessary, worries parents who feel these actually help their children cope in the school setting.

“We have the right to access education”

Fife College shared that the benefit system changes negatively impacted some of their students and their future outcomes. Students had dropped off college due to lack of finances, when their benefits did not come for 3 months, as they could no longer afford to stay on their chosen course.

• Health and wellbeing

There were two main areas related to healthcare, brought up during discussion.

Many shared difficulties accessing GP appointments as barrier for their communities and the lack of accessible options to book appointments. People felt phone only bookings were inaccessible and put people off from seeking timely help when needed. Participants expressed that it would be helpful to have more options when it comes to ways to book an appointment, like in-person, via text or e-mail.

The conversations also pointed to difficulties accessing diagnosis, especially when related to neurodivergence. Diagnostic routes for adults are closed in Fife forcing people to pay for private diagnostics, which many cannot afford. Meanwhile, there are cases of privately obtained diagnosis, leaving people having to pay for medication, which NHS diagnosed patients receive free of charge. In addition, media trends of people expressing views that children are being over-diagnosed with neurodivergence, causes fear that these can impact on future assessments and those waiting to be assessed, further worsening people’s life outcomes.

• Communication preferences

A consensus on the importance of inclusive communications was a continuous thread through this roundtable. Many organisations are working on improving access to information about their services and some examples of good practice were shared. Exchange of experiences and collaboration alongside including lived experience voice when considering our communication channels were identified as key elements. Providing by default things like printed resources, Easy Read information, subtitles on videos/films, use of social stories and sharing instructions in more than one way (verbally, written, visual/images and by showing/doing) helps inclusion across different needs, without the pressure on individuals to come forward and ask for reasonable adjustments. 

Collaboration and learning from each other

Opportunities for collaboration and peer learning were valued by all participants, as well as knowledge of existing support services and their qualifying criteria.

“Create a society where people can access services, leisure pursuits, people have need to connect with others.”

Partners established the need to:

• Further share information and resources and build on our collective voice to improve local services for all.

• Work on more publicity and sign-posting to what is available locally.

• Share examples of case studies to aid learning and better service provision.

• Invest in developing resources and accessible communications.

• Create more roundtables / opportunities to coordinate, share concerns as well as good practice to drive forward disability awareness and practice.   

• Use informal platforms for workers across sectors to share information, contacts, toolkits, initiatives and participation opportunities.

If you are interested in taking part in our future roundtables and representing your organisation, community group or initiative, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us. If you would like to share your personal experiences of accessing services and support in Fife, you can use our short Let’s Chat Equality Fife online form or contact us to arrange for an informal interview. We value your feedback and lived experience and are keen to hear from as many people as possible to better understand the everyday experiences of our diverse communities in Fife.  

Fife Centre for Equalities

Address: New Volunteer House, 16 East Fergus Place, Kirkcaldy, KY1 1XT.

Phone: 01592 645 310

Text: +44 7700 149871

E-mail: info@centreforequalities.org.uk

Website: centreforequalities.org.uk