Disability Cambridgeshire

Help with searching the directory

Top tip! to avoid getting a very long list in the 'results', just put one search term in at a time and add further ones only if required. This is because the results are 'added on'...

Type of service provided

This is used by database editors to categorise records in the database and by searchers looking for lists

Accommodation and housing including residential care, adaptations, repairs, heating/energy
Advice & information agencies including legal, advocacy, wills, campaigning
Carers
Children/young people including childcare and playgroups
Communication disabilities including visual, hearing
Development/services for organisations, groups and employers (ie not direct to users) including advice, fundraising and courses
Equipment/aids including computing
Health/care including well-being, sexual health
Leisure/holidays including exercise, sport, visiting Cambs, holidays, days out and respite care
Mental health and learning disability
Money including benefits, grants and insurance
Older people
Physical disabilities
Support groups, including counselling, friendship, bereavement
Transport and mobility including 'dial a ride' and travel
Work/education, learning and volunteering including courses
Other

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Frequently asked questions

We hope the search for the Directory will be easy to use. Let us know if you are having problems with it and we can add some tips here.

What is in the Directory?

There are many hundreds of records of organisations, groups and websites in our Directory. These have been collected by staff and volunteers of Disability Cambridgeshire (formerly Directions Plus). They are a mixture of national ones (eg RNIB) and local ones (eg Camsight).

We are particularly keen to have a good set of records about the smaller groups and informal clubs that can be so useful to people in Cambs but sometimes don't get much publicity and are hard to contact.

How can I find a group - I know its name?

If you know the name of a group, you can find the record for it by clicking on the A to Z links (eg R for RNIB). If you want to see all the records that are in the Directory, click on 'List all'. However, this isn't the best way to find a record - see below.

Why is it best to use the search form?

The best way of finding a record is to use the search form. This is because many organisations change their names or have more than one name. The A to Z list just lists them by the name we find most easy to use eg 'JobCentre Cambridge', which would be listed under 'J' rather than 'C'.

If you use the search form, you can type either 'Cambridge Jobcentre' or 'Jobcentre Cambridge' and you will find the record for it.

You can type in more than one box on the search form.

How can I find all the records that are relevant to my town?

This is a tricky one because most organisations cover an (often quite complicated) area that is larger than their postal address - often this depends on their funding. Sometimes they will provide services for different ages in diferent areas too. Many organisations are also quite flexible depending on their resources.

If you are interested in all the organisations that have a postal address of 'Ely', you can type 'Ely' into the address part of the search form.

How can I find all the records that 'do something'?

If you are interested in 'swimming clubs', you will be able to find them by typing 'swim' or 'swimming' into the 'description' part of the search form. This searches in the description field and also the (hidden) keywords that we can use. We have been quite careful to include common phrases in these descriptions so they will be easy to find. If you can't find your organisation by something that it does, let us know and we will add it to the description/keyword field for it. We have tried to keep the descriptions fairly short so they will not date too quickly, which means we might have missed off a new service.

What are the 'types' useful for?

We thought it would be useful to have 'types' of records for searching but it is quite tricky to categorise all the records into a useable small list.

If you want a list of organisations that provides anything to do with 'leisure' or for 'older people' you may find this useful.

Some of the organisations provide help to other organisations rather than direct to users and these are listed under 'development'.

Can I print out the record pages?

Yes, we have designed the webpages so they just print out the record details without all the 'junk' around them. This should make it easy and economical to send/fax them to people.