Disability, health problems and careers

The Our Shout days.

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 things 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 reason 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 asking 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 bump into me and many other things too.

On Friday 17th October 2008, we had a meeting at The Bingly Centre, the Health and Well-being group about people with disabilities having dental care. One thing 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.

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 suffer from Anxiety and depression; we need to keep our bodies and minds busy. I spent signed on for 13 and half years, which was very stressful on my Anxiety and Depression. Since then I have been a learning disability and mental health awareness trainer and Advocate, empower others like me to become more independent and raise awareness to students and professions.

When I started working in the learning disability and mental health for Mencap back 2007, my Nan was dyeing and my last relationships was breaking up so it came at the time but bad time. Without the work I would have been at my worse point Anxiety and depression. It’s quite strange how with Anxiety and Depression you can’t cope without anything at all but then you can’t cope if everything happens all at once.

 People with learning disabilities are treated better than they used to be but we still have a long way to go but due to these cuts now people with disabilities and health problems are having to be treat like been back in the dark ages again. People's attitudes still need to get better towards people with disabilities. A lot of people with LD, such as me 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 having learned nothing in 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 starring 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 enrol 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 me 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 is creative so we should create creative jobs. There still aren’t enough people with LD with jobs at all but it's better than it was. Mencap works hard to battle 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 was talking about a Travel Buddy Social Enterprise. This is what Andy and I from Our Shout read at the Learning Disability Employment play. 

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

Isolation was a feeling that most people with LD face in the evenings and weekends. There was 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 have independently with the right support.

 We hoped A ' Travel Buddy' would help people with LD to travel on public 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 travelling on ' Special buses to the Day Centres. To update 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.

Back in 2008 I 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.

 People are travelled to Day Centres before they went 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 was with us but it's a case of more support and funding. One of our areas now we hope to achieve was 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

 it was planned for the Travel service gave proper paid jobs for people with LD with 1 to 1 support with who wants to use public transport to get around.

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

To give Wolverhampton a unique bus service 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 European funding and are continuing to look for other funding chances in case we are successful. 

Jess's boyfriend at the time was Andy Howell he was working with us at Access All Areas Now! But he wasn’t quite self – employed but at the time we hoped he was going to be.

Profound and multiple learning disabilities.

This study is a part of your package for Learning Disability week Health June 21st - 22nd 2010.

I am raising Learning Disability and Health Awareness.

This is about Profound and Multiple Learning Disabilities, why do we need to talk about these people? We need to talk about these people because they need to be notice as much as what everyone else does.

People with Profound and Multiple Learning Disabilities are individuals just like everyone else.

They often have more needs than everyone else so they need more help to get along in life.

If you find out what those needs are you can do more to help these people.
People do not listen to them because they all have different ways of communicating with people. Every Learning Disability is different; people just need to learn how to understand them.

People with Profound and Multiple Learning Disabilities have more than one disability; in most people every disability is different. Well you need accept anything from anybody and everybody.

People with Profound disabilities need lots of support because they may have other disabilities as well.

People with Physical disabilities do have problems with their bodies or different parts.

People who use wheelchairs have Physical disabilities that can either mean Profound or Multiple Learning Disabilities.

Sensory disabilities are when people find hard to see and hear. These people have lots of Health problems, Mental Health problems and even Autism.

People with Profound and Multiple Learning Disabilities need a lot of help. They also find it very hard to communicate. 

People with Profound and Multiple disabilities communicate in lots of different ways. Not every person communicate the same, they do what is easy for them.

USING THEIR FACE. People might show how they feel by changing from happy to sad for eg;

MAKING A NOISE. Making a noise could be their way expressing themselves and to make themselves notice. 

USING THEIR BODY. People may show you how they feel by the way they use their bodies. For eg; they may learn towards you if they want something.

CHANGING BEHAVIOR. People may show you how they feel with the way they behave. For eg; push over a table if they are anger. If they don't feel listened to they may become anger, if they don't think you understand what they are trying to say or what they want.


USING SPEECH, SYMBOLS OR SIGNS.


Most People with Profound and Multiple Learning Disabilities find it hard to understand what others say.

It is important to spend time getting to know each person and learn about the way they communicate. 

It's also important to learn them the way these people understand things so you can help them.

One way is to show someone an object to remind them of something they do often.

For eg; if the person likes art you could show them a paint brush or a picture to give them a choice to do art if they want to.


Some people might need special aids to help their bodied stay straight. Aids are something that helps people do things more easily. 

If someone has Physical disabilities they could have Physiotherapy.

Physiotherapy is where someone called Physiotherapist helps them move their bodies more easily. 

There are lots of other people who are paid to support people use their bodies. For eg; Occupational therapist helps people learn skills with the right aids.

Carers of people with Profound and Multiple Learning Disabilities must be trained so they can help take care of these people in the right way.


People with Profound and Multiple Learning Disabilities often need lots of support with their health.

Many people have Epilepsy.

Some people need lots of help when they swallow their food.

This is important as everyone needs food to stay Healthy. 

Some people might get food through a tube.

Some people may need a carer to use aids to take liquid out of their throat so they don't choke. 

Someone with these disabilities find it hard to tell you if they are in pain. They may need to support to know they are in pain and to make them feel better.

Some people may behave in a way that most people find hard.

This might be because they are not getting enough help to live their lives.

It's important to understand why a person behaves like they do. For eg; I used to pull temper paddies as a child because I found doing things for myself was hard for me but I wanted do them myself without help just like other people. Late in my life, I found even people without disabilities needs help at times.

They may behave in a certain way because that might their way of telling you that they are not feel well.

They may not like the place that they are in.

People with Mental Health needs need the right help. 

Most people need help personal care, for eg; washing, bathing, feeding and going to the toilet.

People should have help to tell other people what they want and need.


People with these disabilities will carry on learning things all their lives, just like everyone else.

They will learn slowly though, a bit at a time.

It helps these people to learn when someone shows them lots a times.

Some of the things these people learn are things that people learn when they are young. For eg; how to press a button to make something happen.

Other people with these disabilities are not treated in the same way as other people.

Other people do not understand that they have the same rights as everyone else.

Other people need to understand that people with these disabilities can make their own choices and do things they enjoy like everyone else but with the right help.

The government needs to wake up.

More disabled and unwell people want to work than not. I myself as a disabled person had sort of a living job over Wales when I left school. For the first three years I didn't get paid then I was put YTS at the age of 19.  There were lots of animals and we did Riding for Disabled. I was there for five years. It was called the Camnant Centre. I moved on because I was hoping for a change of career, which I didn't know what at the time. As well as looking after animals myself and 10 other young girls my age at the time did housework and took most of our education there. It was ok but we were out in the sticks where we couldn't get on buses and get anywhere else easily. We always had these older women around us so we never really had our own lives so not that much of a social life either. We'd start work at 8am and finish at 8pm.

Over the years I myself had been on different schemes from YTS onwards from the age of 19 to 27. I have had been put many different places, which I weren't there very long because I was far too slow to learn the jobs as far as the managers were curtained.
 At age of 23 I got into creative writing. Writing says short stories and pieces of writing about things that came into my mind at the time. When I was 27 I went to poetry which started over what I thought at the time was a very bad relationship break up but from there I wrote poetry about all kinds of subjects. I had one each published in 11 books but then my Mother thought I had been spending too much money on the books so I stopped but then I carried on try by looking the internet and that, I have had no luck. When been on disability benefits and that publishing aren't easy to afford.
Back 2007 I discovered another career Advocacy, Learning Disability and Mental Health Awareness, which I did for Royal Wolverhampton Mencap until the government cut the funding in 2011. In 2012 I started working for 1 Voice in Wolverhampton as an Office Access Assignments then went back to Advocacy in 2013, which is where still am.

In 2013 last year I sat in a three hour assessment at West Bromwich Jobcentre. They told me I needed full support working in a supermarket. Even though it's not the job I want I said ye fine. When I agreed to go along with what they wanted they changed their minds and told me to go back see my Learning Disability Employment Advisor.

The awareness of my experience with the Jobcentre has taught me is that the government needs to make up their minds what they want people to do, even more so with people with disabilities. On one hand they are making us aware that there's cuts everywhere so if that's the case what chance has anyone got? The 1 minute we can work with support then the next minute there's not enough funding to pay for support. If people are put into work that they can't manage the support needs to be there but if there's no funding that's not possible. Therefore they need be creating jobs that people disabilities can mange otherwise it's going to be hard for people with disabilities to a achieve work and what the government wants to achieve. On the other hand it's about what people can manage and what they enjoy. From my own experience as a person with disabilities I am more at a health and safety risk with the jobs I can't mange than can, this is where the support comes in if necessary but as the government knows the funding isn't there they shouldn't except too much off people.
 I have found a lot people like and including myself have been on job clubs and job courses for years on and off but haven't had a great of support looking for jobs on the computers but for me that hasn't been on everyone but most.

Unemployment awareness.

What a fine start of the New Year this is. I am so sorry to bring such a subject: this is an important big worry.  If the truth is known I don't know where to start. I was reading this morning about the amount of young people out of work who are feeling as if life is not worth living. To me like a lot if not all people this is a very big worry. Many young people are close to suicide because of the lack of employment. I am very upset to hear that 751,230 young feel as if life isn't worth living. One in three 32% have contemplated suicide, one in four 24% have self - harmed themselves, 40% of young people are suffering from being employed and more than 440,000 young people are facing long term unemployment.
Although I have never had proper work myself, which is what I want. 

As many of you may have read on this site I used to do some work for Royal Wolverhampton Mencap but back in 2007 - 2011. The group Advocacy work project Our Shout, the work I was doing cut back May 2011 put Mencap had supported and someone else with a learning to have our learning disability awareness training business in a year Mencap ran out funding to support us. From the May of 2011 to the December I couldn't find anything else to keep myself going, was heart breaking at the time I was going out of my mind. I do have quite a bit of understand what it's like to be without work and how it can make very depressed it did the same for me. If you would like to contact me on this subject. sarajgorman@gmail.com

There again it's very hard to know the truth because there are many out there who don't want to work as well who make it hard for the ones who want to. You don't have to have disabilities and health problems to need support to find a job and that. Now the government has made cuts on the support people need. Even though support is hard to get, there's still good many people who don't do anything to try and get work but that's not everyone. Sadly because it very hard to tell the ones who want to work to the one who don't then more often than not the wrong people get judged. 

Yet it's hard to tell who are the ones who are playing the benefit system just because they don't want to work when they nothing with them at all. I need to be careful how say this because there's drinkers and there's drinkers, there smokers and there's smokers. The people who I mean are the very heavy drinkers and heavy drugs takers who make themselves so unwell so they don't have to work are making it very hard for the ones who really have reasons not to work but want to.

The British government better not make cuts on counselling services otherwise Anxiety and depression will be rising even higher what it is now, it's serious enough as it is. I guess there are more people suffering from Anxiety and depression since the credit crunch started back 2009, which have hit people in the last five years who had never suffered from mental health before. Depression is a feeling of sadness at any time whether you have a reason to feel that way or not but if you do have a reason, that reason can make you twice as upset than someone who doesn't suffer from depression.