Working with medical charities to make our roads safe
I’m DVLA’s relationship manager for medical charities and I work in our Corporate Services Team. It was set up just over 3 years ago to gain a better understanding of our corporate customers’ needs.
We work closely with a variety of stakeholders on anything from the launch of new services, to raising awareness of what drivers need to do if they have a medical condition. We currently work closely with around 15 key medical charities.
How it all started…
In 2016 we invited some key medical charities to DVLA to talk about our drivers medical work. It was a great opportunity to share views, discuss current topics and build on the work we’ve done to develop a service for drivers to tell us about a medical condition. It’s proved to be of real benefit to everyone involved. Our charity forum now meets every 6 months with members representing customers affected by medical conditions that could impact on their ability to drive.
Listening to views
We’ve discussed how people maintain mobility if they need to give up their driving licence and carrying out driving assessments for people wanting to understand how their illness affects their driving. This gives us real insight into the challenges drivers, with specific medical conditions, face on a daily basis. We also talked about how we help customers better understand how their condition affects their driving by directing drivers to charity websites.
Working together
We shared what we’re doing to improve some of our customer facing letters and how the charities help us gather valuable insight. All the charities are supportive and we’re working with them to survey some of their customers to find out more.
We also discussed how we could work together to understand why young people are reluctant to tell us about their medical condition. Towards the end we also talked about geographical hot spots and the most common medical conditions we’re told about.
Most people who report a medical condition keep their licence
Working closely with charities in this way should help them support their members and encourage them to be confident in telling us about a medical condition. It will also help us in our aim to encourage anyone with a medical condition to have all the information they need to continue driving and, make sure all drivers are safe on our roads.
Do you want to get involved?
We’re looking for lay members for our medical panels. Medical panels help maintain and improve road safety, giving expert advice on relevant medical conditions and their impact on driving. You’d play an important role on the panel and be expected to challenge assumptions and ask for explanations of medical terms and concepts that aren’t clear. We’re recruiting this autumn – so, if you’ve an interest or some experience in diabetes, vision, neurological conditions, psychiatry or cardiovascular illness look out for our adverts on Charityjobs.co.uk and Civil Service Jobs.
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