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What is DTACS and what are we hoping to do?

Since this is the very first post for DTACS (and I am honoured to be writing it!) I thought I would take the chance to explain a bit more about our aims. Future posts will cover all sorts of information such as legal updates, news, training and employment opportunities and fact sheets on your rights. For now, this is just a bit more about why we created DTACS and just exactly what we hope to achieve…

DTACS was formed by a group of people working in different parts of the transport, legal and disability advocacy networks. We have known each other for a long time and all share the feeling that the pace of change in providing fully accessible transport is too slow.

There are undoubtedly a small number of transport providers who are making huge efforts to provide an accessible, customer focused service but for too many passengers, taking a journey by bus, taxi or minicab is a complete lottery.

Whilst education, training and advocacy are critical to making things better, we believe there will always be a need for enforcement and legal action. Enforcement of discrimination law is complicated and we know it places huge pressure on individuals. Enforcement of criminal law is haphazard and varies widely across the country.

To fix these problems, DTACS aims to do two things:

The first is to provide a single point of contact for bus, taxi and minicab complaints. This will help us to map and to demonstrate the true scale of the issue. With this information in one place we will have a much better chance of doing something positive about it. We will not be dealing with any other forms of transport yet. This is because there are already great organisations dealing with these issues with far more experience in these sectors than we have. We stick to what we know which means we can help and not hinder.

We know a lot of people don’t want to take formal action in court, and so we offer a range of alternatives to try to resolve issues quickly, effectively and with the minimum of stress possible.

The second aim of DTACS is to offer professional investigation services to make sure crimes and acts of discrimination are dealt with thoroughly and that victims can access justice if they chose to do so. We know a lot of people don’t want to take formal action in court, and so we offer a range of alternatives to try to resolve issues quickly, effectively and with the minimum of stress possible. If people do feel that they want to go to court, we can assist by putting them in contact with experienced lawyers who understand the issues and the aims of DTACS.

DTACS is about offering people the opportunity to tell their side of the story

We are experts who understand the issues and the law and we can provide the support needed to report issues effectively. DTACS is about guiding people to make sure they are fully aware of all of their options to obtain justice. And DTACS is about providing people with the skills to protect themselves, to gather evidence and challenge criminal and discriminatory behaviour. We are not a charity and are not funded by other organisations. This means we are completely independent and can always act in the best interests of our clients.

Of course, there is a cost to this investigation and advice service but we try to cover that cost as far as we can by providing training, selling specialist camera and audio equipment that helps people to protect themselves, and by offering consultancy services to businesses who want to improve their service. Some of our services are free of charge. Where we do charge, for example, to investigate an incident and gather evidence, we keep the price as low as possible to make sure as many people as possible can access our service and obtain justice.

We are at the very beginning of this journey. As we grow, we hope we can provide opportunity for more disabled people to join us and to become their own boss by offering the DTACS service in their home region. We will offer training to make sure that people can fulfil their potential and have an interesting career as an investigator of criminal offences and civil wrongs. If you are interested in finding out more about this now, please get in touch using the email address contact@dtacs.org

Thank you for visiting our site. Thank you for reading this first post. Please tell your friends and family and colleagues about the service. There is real strength in numbers and we do hope that by focussing our efforts we can finally start to make a real difference.

Jamie

DTACS

DTACS is operated by experienced professional criminal and civil investigators, people with a disability and those with knowledge of the problems of those travelling with a disability.