Since 2010, BuDS has helped its volunteers towards work. Our Reach4Work project, created in 2018, codified and developed that help, creating a professional wrap-around service for our disabled volunteers who want to move into or closer to work.
BuDS is exceptionally successful at moving disabled jobseeker volunteers into or closer to work…
Please note that the BuDDies scheme is currently on hold due to ongoing challenges facing charity funding across England. Find out more at the button below.
Are you feeling lonely or stressed at home? Need a friendly chat with someone who understands? The BuDS BuDDies are here to help!
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BuDS publishes some of our articles in EasyRead format. These articles are produced by our volunteers, and so our capacity is limited. Over time we will publish more EasyRead articles. Please be patient with us whilst we grow this project.
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The BuDS Enquiries Team answers questions and queries from disabled people about a very wide range of issues. We try to fill the gaps left by other support services and helplines, so we often support disabled people with complex and difficult issues.
Any disabled person in England can contact the Enquiries project for help. Parents, carers, and supporters can also contact us on behalf of a disabled person. We don’t have strict rules about who we can help: we will always do our best to support you and will let you know immediately if, for any reason, we can’t.
The Enquiries project is staffed entirely by volunteers, many of them disabled people themselves. We are often very busy and there may be a delay in getting back to you. We are sorry about this, but we can only do so much. The Enquiries project is not a crisis or emergency service.
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The BuDS SEND Transitions Service is a three-year project funded by The Rothschild Foundation. The purpose of the SEND Transitions Service is to improve the experience of disabled children and young people moving through key transitions within school education and from school education into work or further/higher education. It will do this by:
The SEND Transitions Service is made up of workstreams from a number of BuDS projects, principally Fair4All Education and Reach4Work.
To learn more about the Reach4Work workstream, which is looking at disabled young people’s transition from education to employment, click here.
Fair4All Visitors is a BuDS project to help visitor attractions to be more accessible and inclusive for disabled people.
The Fair4All Education project tackles the most important educational issues facing disabled children and young people, and their parents/carers, in Bucks.
The core of the Fair4All Education project is a ‘working community’ of professionals, parents, carers and disabled young people who are passionate about making a real difference. Working under the BuDS umbrella, the Fair4All Education team works together to define an agenda for action and plan how change will be made to happen.
Read MoreDisabled people are often excluded from outdoor public events. This is not because they do not want to attend these events, but because the way the event is organized and staged creates barriers that make it difficult or impossible for them to attend. BuDS’ free-to-use Fair4All event project helps event organisers remove those barriers and attract more disabled people to their events, making them more successful. There are over 40,000 disabled people in Buckinghamshire and over 100,000 families with a disabled member, so being more accessible can significantly boost an event’s popularity and attendance.
Event organisers are often not aware that they are creating barriers which are reducing the appeal of their events. Event management training and qualifications do not usually cover disabled accessibility and inclusion. Disabled people are so used to events not being accessible that most do not even try to attend, which means event organisers do not see the difficulties that disabled people face.
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Disabled people are sometimes subject to abuse, insults or physical violence because of their disability. The BuDS Fair4All Attitudes and Hate Crime project supports people affected by disability hate, helps them report it to the police if they wish, and campaigns to change attitudes and combat hostility toward disabled people.
Read MoreThe IAG team works tirelessly to produce easy to read, fact-checked and reliable articles about issues relevant to disabled people. During the Covid-19 pandemic, these have included weekly risk posts which break down the latest case, hospitalisation, death and vaccination statistics; analyses of Government policy, and scientific updates about the coronavirus. To read these posts, please see below or visit our Facebook page using the button below:
If you would like to volunteer for the IAG team as a researcher or writer, please visit our volunteering page to find out more.
The Fair4All Card is a secure, evidence based card that can be used by any disabled person to communicate the reasonable adjustments they need.
We created the scheme in August 2020 and have grown from offering around 12 reasonable adjustments to now offering over 40.
Find out more about the scheme below.
BuDS is seeking two Charity Co-Secretaries to join our charity trustee team. If you have strong governance skills and knowledge of charity management, this role will give you the opportunity to put your expertise to excellent use in supporting the growth of this unique, dynamic, and expanding user-led charity and disabled people’s organisation.
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BuDS is seeking a Charity Co-Treasurer to join our charity trustee team. If you have strong finance, accountancy, and budgeting knowledge and skills, this role will give you the opportunity to put your expertise to excellent use in supporting the growth of this unique, dynamic, and expanding user-led charity and disabled people’s organisation.
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Buckinghamshire Disability Service (BuDS) is a leading disability charity operating across England. It is an independent pan-disability organisation which is not tied to Government, NHS or council contracts. Our visionary aim is to abolish disability by building a world which is Fair4All, free of the barriers which disable people. We are led by disabled people and committed to the social model of disability.
Buckinghamshire Disability Service (BuDS) is a user-led disability charity. This means that at least 75% of our trustees are themselves disabled people, and use their lived experience as disabled people to inform and shape BuDS’ policy and projects. Being a user-led organisation also means that the BuDS Trustees play a stronger and more pivotal role in the affairs of the charity than is often the case in other charities.
These two factors mean that being a BuDS Trustee offers greater opportunities to make a difference and a personal contribution than being a trustee of a non-user-led charity.
BuDS is evolving from a county charity to a national charity. This process began in 2020, when our work hugely expanded and became national in response to the Covid pandemic. Following approval from members in 2023, we aim in 2025-26 to change our name to ‘BuDS Disability Service’ and to formally re-brand ourselves as a national charity, alongside moving to Charitable Incorporated Organisation status.
The social model of disability says that ‘disability’ is caused by barriers in society and other people’s attitudes, rather than by bodily or mental impairments or conditions. People with bodily or mental impairments who encounter these barriers are ‘disabled people’ – disabled by the barrier, not their bodies or minds.
BuDS’ mission is to remove the barriers which disable people, so that everyone has equality of opportunity and access. If there are no barriers, there will be no disabled people (although, of course, the bodily and mental impairments that people may have will not have disappeared). Removing barriers is what BuDS’ projects are intended to do in all areas of life. We work for an inclusive world where disabled and non-disabled people have equal status and equal value opportunities to live their lives.
Although the social model of disability is decades old, and the ‘official’ position of the UK Government, many organisations and people still use the ‘medical model’ of disability. The medical model says that people are disabled by their bodily or mental impairments, and that the solution is to ‘fix’ the individual’s impairments through medical treatment and aids. People with impairments are often seen as inferior or broken under the medical model. If the individual cannot be ‘fixed’, the medical model tends to lead to segregation of disabled people from non-disabled people.
