Meena Patel

Meena’s background is in the voluntary sector working at both strategic and operational levels advising and enabling organisations to consider and respond to the needs of their local communities, ensuring that people have equal access to opportunities to learn, to work and to a range of other facilities and services, irrespective of their background. Over the last 9 years Meena has also worked with national and local government on issues of equal access.  She is particularly interested in how local government can, through being more flexible and creative, engage with local people to ensure that they have a voice that is heard and acted upon.  She has recently completed an Equal Access Framework to Self Directed Support for CSIP, which local authorities and their partners can use to ensure that disabled, older people their families and carers can have equal access to a range of services and opportunities that are centred on their wishes and aspirations. Meena also works with local authorities helping them to embed equality and diversity within all their functions through adopting and implementing the Equality Standard for Local Government, a tool enabling local authorities to ‘mainstream’ equalities.