Saturday 1 May 2010

Employment

Back in 1999, there were a lot of employers sued for discriminating disability, sex and race.
People with disabilities feel more of a Health and Safety Hazard at home than work. A lot of us stuffer from Anxiety and depression, we need to keep our bodies and minds busy.I spent 13 yrs signing on, which made me very down in myself. Since I have been working 3yrs ago, helping others like myself, I can take anything that life throws at me. My work can at the right time for me just a little before my Nan died and as my last relationship was breaking up.Everyone has the rights to a life, you wouldn't like sitting at home staring at the wall all day long, why should people with disabilities and Health problems. I like to end the days knowing that I have made differences to people's lives.

If you read my report on Access All Area Now and Our Shout I have written about how I am willing to help people like myself to gain a career of their choice whether they want to be employed or Self employed. Baring in mind that Access All Areas Now! has only just started and it need time to build, we have a lot to learn ourselves just yet. We are just on our business plan at the moment.


People with learning disabilities are treated better than they used to be but we still have a long way to go. People's attitudes still need to get better towards people with disabilities. A lot of people with LD, such as myself didn't learn anything at school mostly due to lack of communication and understanding with teachers. A lot of us didn't leave school with qualifications, which made us feel useless.

A lot of us went to college after school, achieving qualifications, not getting job for years or not at all. No one gave us enough support to get work, which meant not giving us enough time or and not enough chances. Not many of us had paid work or we were on training schemes, which was very low pay. Most of us had to spend our time st airing at the four walls at home doing nothing. The people were lucky enough to do something were messed about place to place through discrimination in the work placements or and at college achieving qualifications but not knowing what our future was. We just had to enroll every September, which were mostly the same ones for eg; English and maths. Most people didn't find the course very interesting. Society didn't seem to think many of us were very clever. All we needed was the right support. Why have most of us been given the job all day long when we have been on placements?
This has made us feel like dog's bodies.

Support and attitudes needs to get better. Jobs need to be more interesting, we need to spend our days doing different jobs not the same. Those people like myself with dyslexia need more support. People with LD should train people without LD. We should be given the right support for the LD we have got. No one should be left out no matter what.

There's still too much information and too much jargon. The government or and managers should all staff what our rights so we don't get different information off different people.

There are a lot us with LD who are creative so we should create creative jobs. There still isn't enough people with LD with jobs at all but it's better than it was. Mencap works hard to battle with with government to see that people with LD get our rights. We believe a future for all people with LD when we see it.

People with high support needs need their benefits more than people with mild needs. The government should spend money on the people who need it most otherwise they are also costing themselves too much money. With the right support people with mild LD should get a wage like everyone else. With the right support people with LD accept good and bad in life like everyone. For eg; having to pay tax.

We should be given the right support to learn Health and Safety. We should be given the right support be healthily and safe in all areas of life, which includes the work placements.

Back 2008, Our Shout Self - Advocacy were talking about a Travel Buddy Social Enterprise. This is what Andy and myself from Our Shout read at the Learning Disability Employment play.

People with LD are being encouraged to access community facilities but this will be hard and too much money for those who don't travel independently.

Isolation is a feeling that most people with LD face in the evenings and weekends. There's very little help for these people to get out and about to see, they have never had the chance to achieve this without Families/carers. Many could travel independently with the right support.

A ' Travel Buddy' will help people with LD to travel on pubic transport to get to where they want to go. This will help build Self-stream and potentially lead them becoming independent travellers in the future.

To promote Health and Wellbeing of people with LD by increasing involvement in community based work and activities.

Intensively trained adults with LD to set up a City wide team of paid ' Travel Buddies.'

The proposed service will help encourage social inclusion, promote independence, and give paid work chances.

Many people with LD do not like traveling on ' Special buses to the Day Centres. To up date this report to 2010, we have found out the work we have been doing for the last year that prices have gone up on the Day centre buses. Now many a people with LD who go to these Day Centres could have learned with the right support to travel independently. These people often spend a long time on the transport while others get picked up.

Since 2008 myself and Jessica Bromley have started a business 'Access All Areas Now!' in December 2009. At the moment Access All Areas Now! is just a LD Awareness Training service, which trains all services around LD awareness. We also hope to create a service to support people with LD with all areas of life. We are not building our hopes up but never say never. It will be a long time if it ever does happen. We will work our hardest to see that the Travel Buddy service does happen.

Often people are travelling to Day Centres before going to college in the morning. This means people are taking two journeys instead of one.

Background.

In the past people such as myself from Our Shout Self Advocacy group haven't had any good luck in employment this why we wanted to work for ourselves. At the moment there's only myself and Jess. We hope all of Our Shout be with us but it's a case of more support and funding. One of our areas now we hope to achieve is employing people with LD and creating jobs for people with LD.

Transport has always been a big issue for many people with LD and it was highlighted that there was a need for a travel service to support people with LD to access the communities when people with LD need to and want to.

Aims

The Travel service will give proper paid jobs for people with LD with 1 to 1 support with who wants to use pubic transport to get around.

To help social inclusion people with LD help them to become confident and independent.

To give Wolverhampton a unique bus sevice that supports people with LD help given by people with LD. there are many egs; in other areas of the country where this is working well.

In 2008, Mencap put together a bid for some Eurpopean funding and are continuing to look for other funding chances in case we are successful.

Jess's boyfriend Andy Howell is working with myself and Jess at Access All Areas Now! but he isn't Self - Employed yet but he will soon will be.

1 comment:

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