ARC was founded in 1976 as the Association of Residential Communities for the Retarded. For a brief period of time it looked as if 'mental retardation' would come over from the United States as the new terminology to replace 'mental handicap' which was unpopular. However, that did not happen and the term 'learning disability' was adopted by the Department of Health. ARC quickly shortened its name to the Association for Residential Communities and then later to the Association for Residential Care. The most recent change reflects the major policy changes in social care in that ARC now stands for The Association for Real Change. ARC was incorporated as a registered charity in 1982. In 1992 the ARC Training Consortium was set up to support members who wanted to increase their own NVQ assessor/verifier capacity and to enable their staff to gain the appropriate NVQs and subsequently the ARC Training Centre. It is part of the coalition of charities and councils urging the British government to solve the social care crisis and was part of the campaign by the major care provider bodies around the Mental Capacity Bill.
Organisation
ARC is a UK umbrella organisation that is managed by a Board of Directors; the current Chair is Agnes Lunny, the chief executive of Positive Futures. The Managing Director is Máire Gallagher. ARC has offices in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland with a Country Director managing each office. James Fletcher, is the director for Scotland. The previous Chief Executives were Jacqueline Bell, and Mark Gray (Formerly the Chair of British Institute for learning disabilities, who succeeded James Churchill who had steered the organisation for 28 years. Peter Jung, of the National Autistic Society Scotland is a long standing board member. It supports the National Involvement Network, a group of over 80 people with learning disabilities or support needs in Scotland, and their publication of the Charter for Involvement which has been adopted by more than 50 organisations as a guide to good practice. It runs the National Learning Disabilities and Autism Awards in Northern Ireland with Mencap Northern Ireland.
Projects
ARC aims at provision for people with a learning disability and is involved in national and international projects. These projects range from improving management and training programmes and promoting best practices in the learning disability sector to Black and Minority Ethnic projects. ARC is a partner in developing the ECC European Care Certificate. It is particularly concerned with "mate crime", which they define as a situation where someone makes friends with a person with learning disabilities and goes on to abuse or exploit that relationship. They have campaigned for both police and social workers to be more vigilant of this sort of abuse. Its Safety Net campaign was launched in 2009 and ran for three years. They were aware that these crimes were hidden and especially in rural areas people did not know how to report them and there was not enough support.
Disclosure checks
ARC is a registered umbrella body offering a full service to all 4 nation countries, enabling member organisations to obtain Disclosures for their workforce.
