1. National Gardening Week

This is National Gardening Week, and the RHS's theme is "Knowledge is flower" which just sounds like rather contrived wordplay to me!

As an enthusiastic gardener, though, I am in favour of anything that helps encourage more people to discover the positive benefits of spending time outside taking care of plants.

Making it accessible would be top of my list - we have information about how to do just that here

2. Assisted living in Yorkshire

A new state-of-the-art assisted living property for disabled people has been opened in Harrogate. The first phase of the St Roberts Grove development was launched with Paralympian Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson and local MP, Andrew Jones cutting the ribbon.

The facility, which is owned by Highstone Housing Association with Harrogate-based charity, Disability Action Yorkshire providing care and support will ultimately consist of 35 individual flats (with 23 now open), with a focus on enabling tenants such as Nick Moxon, pictured here, to live independently.

Keep reading here

3. Academy for Disabled Journalists

Ability Today's Academy For Disabled Journalists (ADJ) has launched its fifth year of the Certificate in Foundation Journalism course, which is delivered in partnership with the National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ). 

This is the entry level qualification creating a great opportunity to learn new skills and start from the ground up on a pathway to a new career.

Find out more and read Ella Brown's story here

4. Alzheimer's prevention campaign

If you ask the average person what causes Alzheimer’s they’ll probably say ‘it’s in the genes’. In reality, only about one in a hundred cases are caused by genes.

This is good news, as research reveals the great majority of cases are down to lifestyle factors - which we can change.

A group of 30 world-leading brain health scientists are launching Alzheimer’s Prevention Day on May 15^th with the aim of working out what’s driving your future risk and what you can do to reduce it.

Find out more here

5. New crash mats from Medpage

Independent Living subscriber Medpage Limited has collaborated with a leading UK manufacturer of crash mats to deliver a cost-effective tool for falls management strategies.

The inclusion of their new TumbleCare full-length pressure mat sensor ensures that if a patient falls out of bed, an alarm signal is generated to alert care staff to the incident, resulting in a recordable improvement to patient safety and service.

Read more details here

6. Government consultation on PIP

At the beginning of this week, the government published its Modernising Support Green Paper.

This includes plans to "reform the disability benefits system to ensure they're targeted at those most in need." No doubt this will sound as drearily familiar to you as it does to me...

There are proposals to move away from a fixed cash benefit system towards tailored support. The consultation on the proposals runs for 12 weeks, until 23rd July.

We have more information here