WHAT HAVE I DONE TO HELP OUR SHOUT?

The first thing I have done helped Our Shout is, I have taken part in a play with the other members of the Our Shout group, called 'Bad Experiences That People With Disabilities Have Faced With The NHS.' We enjoyed raising awareness of what people with disabilities go through, which is mostly neglect. I have read out Our Shout's stories and someone from Our Shout has read mine. It's hard to explain our stories but these things shouldn't have happen so we want to work hard to create a future so people disabilities will be taken care of. What made Our Shout do this play is, I was reading the news on Mencap website, there was a report called Death Indifference. Six people with disabilities had been neglected by the NHS. For eg this young woman named Emma, she was only twenty - six, she had cancer. When they tried to save her, she wasn't responding to the treatment so the doctor didn't carry on trying. Her families' views were, that they let her die unnecessary. At the time I had only just started with Mencap Our Shout, I rang up Lucy our group leader of Our Shout to tell her that I had a looked at the Mencap website and told her about the very upsetting report I had seen. Lucy said

" Thanks, I like the way you inform me, Sara,"

If you want to find out more about the Death Indifference report. WWW.mencap.co.uk/media files/death-by-indifference.mp3. You will get two women who work for Mencap telling the stories about the people with disabilities. Emma's story is the first story. We will understand people don't want to read these sad stories but it just shows that thing need to get better. We need to treat people with disabilities like human beings instead of just like nobody because they all somebody just we are all are. If the website address is wrong or slightly, just type Death by Indifference in the search engine.


From then on it gave us the idea to do the play, tell people about our experiences we've had from the NHS and raise awareness. We have Performed our play at Pond lane Clinic Park fields, The Partnership Board Meeting at the Civic Centre and New Cross hospital in Wolverhampton.
Several Health care staff watched our play, they found us very successful. We told the Health staff, how we and want to be treated by Health staff in the future. Debra Edwards who holds the hospital meetings had told us, we had been through a lot but not as much as the six people who died under the NHS care. She also told us that they will work very hard to improve things but it will be a very slow improvement. I told her, we agreed but our reasons for performing this play is to raise awareness in hopes that people with disabilities don't die unnecessary in the future, she agreed.

We are now going to perform the NHS play at The University of Walsall to educate the Student nurses.

On Thursday the 18th September 2008, we had been to the University of Walsall to educate the student nurses with our play. They were very successful, we have been ask to perform in front of GPs and people who sell medicine behind counter in the Chemical. We will also be performing our play Wolverhampton University in December this year.

I might ask Mencap if I can do a talk about the effects of my old medicine so other people don't have to go through with what I did. It affected me getting out and about without support, my educate, I was unaware if car, person or animal was about to bum into me and many other things too.

On Friday 17th October 2008, we had a meeting at The Bingly Centre, the Health and Welbeing group about people with disabilities having dental care. One things I spoke about at the meeting was most tablets people take can make people's gums soft, I think is very hard thing to look into.

I know funding from the government can be a big problem but they tend to spend the money on the least important things, health is important. For eg I guess Health staff are getting paid less wages, they are short of staff and people's health are neglected.