Feature

Equal quality people

No longer will people with learning disabilities allow others to speak for them. They have found a voice. Co-workers from Advocacy in Action explain

Do you want to speak out ? The more you speak, the more chances you get. The more you speak, the more people listen.

We are learning disabled people. Most people are stopping us but we’re not having it! Speaking out is something we can do in our lives. In our lives its made it very good. When we speak out to people we feel we get a lot out of it. We want you to hear us, not stop us. You are Top People. We want you to talk to us and listen to us. We want you to listen properly and not turn your backs.

We want to do things for ourselves, don’t let anybody boss us around. It’s our lives not anybody elses. We would like to speak for ourselves about our whole lives and friendship and about our future and where it lies and where does it go from here. It is hard to do it, but we always try to speak for ourselves. We always say ‘go for it !’.

We are a worker collective. We have left the hospitals and the day centres behind us. Now we run our own place called an office. Most of us are disabled. Some non-disabled supporters work with us. No one is in charge. We call ourselves co-workers. This is because we work together and share our skills. This is because we are all equal. There are no top people and no bottom people. We are all equal quality people. We learn from one another and we learn from ourselves. We make plans and deliver services together.

We don’t take funding because people think they can control us. We don’t take charity because it grounds us and makes us feel small. We go out and earn money just like everyone else.

We don’t pay ourselves but we keep the office running and help other disabled people speak out all over the country. We have helped people in Oxford, Manchester, Coventry, Leeds, Leamington and Leicester. We are going to Bolton, Bradford and Newcastle. We help them learn how to talk to top people and how to have a good image and how to stick up for themselves and how to set up an advocacy group and how to get on to committees and make plans that work. We will go anywhere we can to help disabled people in their lives.

We also work with doctors, social workers, teachers, nurses, community workers, universities, schools, parents, carers, councillors and top decision makers. We tell them not to have meetings about us without us. We show them how to make equal quality information that everyone can understand. We show them how to work with us, not do things for us. We show them how we can work together as a team.

We are good at giving people confidence. We are good at encouraging people to do things for themselves. We are good at speaking out. We enjoy helping ourselves and others. We are very good at equal people work. We are very good at helping oppressed-down people.

We sit on top committees. We are on Joint Planning and Equal Opportunities. We are on the Disability Employment Committee and the Advisory Committee for the Greater Nottingham TEC. We have helped with the complaints procedure for social services, and with the new Diploma in Social Work for the university. We are helping to look at services and say what is good and not good about them. We look at community care services and ask people whether they are happy in their group homes. We say what improvements should be made.

We have got noticed. Last year we won the Social Work Today award for innovation in community care, in the equal opportunities category. We have just got a regional commendation for effective training from the Department of Employment. We have also been named regional winners for the Whitbread Voluntary Action Awards 1991. Some of us are going to London to find out who are the national winners.

We speak at conferences, even to three hundred people. We tell them about our rights and say how we expect to be treated. We tell them about the hospitals and the centres and about how we suffered.

Some of us were labelled as ‘challenging behaviour’ people. Well we are all challenging now. We are challenging the things that kept us low and took our lives from us and turned our lives into something that only professionals could control. We are challenging the things that took our power from us and took our voices from us and kept us low and silent and small. We are challenging all the damaging labels like ‘mental handicap’ that gave us a bad image of ourselves. We are challenging the limits that other people put on us.

What are our limits ? We can grow and grow if other people stop getting in our way. We were told we didn’t have skills. We were told we could only get so far. We were told we couldn’t do things for ourselves. Well we say that our biggest disability is other people. We say that we have proved what we can do.

We also say that all disabled people can do things for themselves and even people who can’t speak with their voices can make choices. People can speak out through signs and tapes and pictures. And where they need support then other disabled people like us can help them because we know what it’s like to have a disability. We know what it feels like from the inside.

Black people don’t let white people speak on their behalf. Women don’t let men speak on their behalf. Why can’t disabled people represent themselves ? Why do non-disabled people always think they know best ? Do they know what it feels like to always be told what to do or treated as if you’re not there or told to get out of the way or labelled a ‘client’ or a ‘patient’?

Well we are practising speaking out for ourselves and we are practising making choices for ourselves and we are speaking out for those who can’t. We are even working with disabled children so their lives will be better than ours were. We say to them: ‘Look ! You can stand on your own two feet.’ The children know it’s true because they can see us doing it. And a fantastic thing has happened which is that some of the people who didn’t speak out before are starting to find their voice.

It wasn’t easy to get people to listen to us. We felt like shadows. We couldn’t find the words at first. We had to practise and practise and practise. Sometimes we all ended up on the floor crying. We had to help one another. The first time we stood up before an audience we were shaking and nervous. When everyone stood up and clapped, it made us want to cry with happiness. Now we talk to audiences all the time. We run Talking to Top People workshops round the country. Even Top People come and listen to us.

We are proud of ourselves and what we do. We are proud to be what we are and we’re not going to stay out of sight. We have a disabled women’s group and a black disabled worker group.

We want to work with you all as equal quality people, sharing our talents and our experience and helping one another. We are not disabled people with skills. We are skilled people with disabilities. Will you treat us as equal?