Built from lived experience and professional grounding
DPAN is a Disabled People's Organisation working where practice and policy meet.
Our values
Collaboration
We co-design and co-produce our work with disabled people, and work with DPOs and other organisations, choosing collaboration over competition.
Fairness
We pay fairly and prioritise paid opportunities for disabled people. Our work is low cost or free for disabled people, with the cost shifted to organisations and funders who can afford it.
Accessibility
Accessible design is at the heart of every project, from our resources to our communications.
Innovation
Our projects do something new or clearly needed in the sector, rather than repeating work that already exists.
Evidence-based
Wherever possible, our recommendations are grounded in research and proven approaches.
Meet the team
Sophie Braithwaite
Founder and Executive Director
Sophie's route into this work started with her own experience. After years of fighting to get her needs met in education, she earned a place at university to study Occupational Therapy, wanting to help people like her live meaningful and fulfilling lives. In the final year of her BSc, she focused her studies on disability issues, including performing arts and deafness.
Inspired by her advocate, Abdul, Sophie went on to study an MSc in Disability Studies, Rights and Inclusion. She is due to graduate in 2027.
Alongside her studies, Sophie met many barriers at work because of her disabilities, while watching the political climate grow more hostile towards disabled people. The change she had hoped to make in her career felt close to impossible. Inspired by her lecturers and their activism, she left traditional employment to build her own solution: DPAN.
Sophie also writes for the National Deaf Children's Society blog. She is a keen hobby photographer and a musical theatre fan.
Cath Bacon
Non-Executive Director
Over a decade of governance experience across housing, finance, local government and the voluntary sector, focused on giving the people most affected a real voice in decisions.
Cath also draws on her own lived experience of disability to volunteer, supporting other disabled people to find their way through the DWP system.
Su Crossland
Non-Executive Director
Su has been a tireless ally to the disabled people's community, in her career and in her personal life.
A retired Occupational Therapist specialising in wheelchairs, seating and neuro rehabilitation, Su founded MESH Movement, a dance school for all ages and abilities, and teaches with the charity We Can Dance.