A long and productive working relationship

A really useful meeting this morning. I travelled up to London for a meeting at the Mencap head office in the Barbican with Dame Jo Williams, the Chief Executive, and Heather Honour the Campaign and Policy Manager, and Director of the Learning Disability Coalition.

Dame Jo and I had been keynote speakers a few weeks ago at an event at the St Stephen's Club on the future of learning disability services, and found that we had very similar views. We agreed to meet up to discuss points of common interest.

Our time together was really productive, and I agreed to share two Select Committee reports commissioned by Kent Adult Social Services - one on Transition and the other on Learning Disabilities. I also agreed that our policy officers would work together with Mencap to work up proposals to Government as to how Social Services, Health and partners such as Mencap could better work together to provide more appropriate services in line with the personalisation agenda which we all agree should be the way forward.

I sense that today was the start of a long and productive working relationship. For the sake of thousands of learning disabled service users, let's hope so.