How Can Disabled People get their voice heard?

I have had a very interesting TwitCon this morning which in my opinion outgrew Twitter as a medium for discussing it 3 others and myself started by discussing Labours culpability for ATOS and the Work capability Assessment (WCA) and progressed to a "guerilla" campaign against marginal seats at by-elections. I have copied this conversation to the end of this Blog for completeness.


In my opinion the conversation was about how the disabled can mobilise to act as a political force and we got to the point where we started to discuss ideas.

My position.

• I do not believe the disabled are represented adequately by any organisation. Each organisation has it's own agenda and there is an "I'm alright Jack, don't want to rock the boat before my honour for Services to the Disabled is announced attitude" amongst the leaders of our Charities/ Organisations.

My ideas are as follows:

1. What should a disabled candidate at an election for parliament stand for? The choice is to either stand as: 
1. A candidate with a manifesto covering all areas of Policy; or 
2. A Single Issue Candidate standing on a platform of fair play for the disabled.
2. What is our manifesto? What do we campaign for? eg. If we campaign against ATOS and the WCA what do we replace them with? If we campaign for a fair share of government funds for disabled issues what is fair and where does the money come from? These are answers we need to have.
3. Can we defend the share of the welfare budget that supports disabled people and can we dispel the myths surrounding government support for the disabled and contrast this to support of non-disabled people through eg. housing benefits/ support of the old through pensions etc.
4. What are our key manifesto commitments?
1. What benefit levels and qualifications for access to them do we propose?
2. Do disabled people have adequate access to society (eg Premium rate phone lines for tickets to the Paralympics). What do we suggest?
3. Do Disabled people have appropriate access to the job market. Is equality of treatment the right measure or should different requirements be considered for disabled candidates? Isn't equality measured better by equality of access rather than equality of treatment?
5. Can we paint a compelling picture for the Daily Mail reading public of just how the benefit changes are affecting disabled people. Can we personalise our issues (with permission!!). C4 made a start!!!
6. Can we both find candidates to put up for election that will be able to get our message across and will we be able to raise the necessary money to fund the campaigns.
7. What disabilities are we concerned with? Invisible disabilities and mental health issues are invisible and the public doesn't seem to understand or want to support them. Are we going to highlight this issue in phase 1 or is that a phase 2/3/4 issue?
8. We are having this conversation. DPAC are fielding a candidate at the Corby by election. I don't care who leads us but in my opinion we need to have an inclusive organisation that can organise the response of Disabled People.
9. Do we have any "Rock Star" supporters that would be prepared to give us the PR edge. Are any Paralympians prepared or able to put their heads above the parapet to launch and support us.
10. Do we want to organise at a National level or do we want to organise at a local level with some kind of "franchise" providing support/ assistance and consistency of message?

I hope this is enough to kick start the discussion?

Please leave comments?



TWITTER TIMELINE
Eugene Grant ‏@Eugene_Grant

Far from scoring political points, #Labour is correct to blame Govt, not #Atos, for #WCA shambles. Govt designed test and oversees contract.

Ian Jones ‏@edwinmandella

@Eugene_Grant but #Labour designed and introduced #WCA and #ATOS so some of the blame is theirs!

@edwinmandella Absolutely. But both govt used #Atos as shield - outsourcing services also means shunning responsibility for wider failures.

Ian Jones ‏@edwinmandella

@Eugene_Grant < exactly, but the problem becomes who has the guts to sort it out. My MP has written to both Yvette Cooper & IDS #gutless

Eugene Grant ‏@Eugene_Grant

.@edwinmandella a key thing here is that political parties don't see #disabled ppl as voting bloc to appease and please, unlike pensioners.

Tanni Grey-Thompson ‏@Tanni_GT

@Eugene_Grant @edwinmandella agree. Disabled people not seen as coherent voting group

Tim Murray ‏@TimMurray16

@Tanni_GT @Eugene_Grant @edwinmandella Unseating or the threat to unseat a marginal does matter to all parties. Orginising is the all.

 Ian Jones ‏@edwinmandella

@TimMurray16 @Tanni_GT @Eugene_Grant we gave a DPAC candidate in Corby, #@Adam4Corby Adam Lutun but it has gone quiet. Organisation???

Tim Murray ‏@TimMurray16

@edwinmandella @Tanni_GT @Eugene_Grant I don't think putting up candidates is the way to goHe she will lose. Lobby and influencing mp is all

Tanni Grey-Thompson ‏@Tanni_GT

@TimMurray16 @edwinmandella @Eugene_Grant lobby locally o believe is answer

Eugene Grant ‏@Eugene_Grant

@Tanni_GT @TimMurray16 @edwinmandella even if they did, still need majority of MPs to see #disabled ppl as a powerful voting bloc like OAPs.

Tim Murray ‏@TimMurray16

@Eugene_Grant @Tanni_GT @edwinmandella It is not impossible...Even Simon Hughes is in danger. He has input in his own party.

Tanni Grey-Thompson ‏@Tanni_GT

@TimMurray16 @Eugene_Grant @edwinmandella need to target a number of constituencies. Not all

Tim Murray ‏@TimMurray16

@Tanni_GT @Eugene_Grant @edwinmandella Exactly it must not be seen in any way as political. Our politics will differ anyway. One reason only

Somebody Help Me out!

I've retired, or at least for 2 years until my youngest is a bit older. However, I can see me getting bored within that time frame so I thought I'd try to build up a network of people that could spring into action and find me a job when I wanted them to! RADIATE is an organisation that develops NETWORKS for disabled high flyers and although I feel a bit old in the tooth to be called a "high flyer" I thought I'd try them.There is an event tonight organised by RADIATE with Chris Holmes (the LOCOG Director of Paralympic Integration) speaking. I personally, feel there have been some bloody big anti-disabled people cock ups at the Olympics (disabled having to use a premium rate services to book seats, wheelchair users not able to sit with more than 1 of their family, The Royal Mail with the support of the British Paralympic Association discriminating initially against gold medal winning Paralympian's) but I wanted to hear his views as to how it went.

So I tried to book a place at this event.

RADIATE sent me back a registration form which I filled in and returned.

RADIATE called me and said I hadn't filled in the bit concerning my employer. I explained I was currently unemployed. I might well have called Agnes a bigoted useless interfering jobs-body because I got immediately excluded  RADIATE is only for those in work!

I did two things then. Firstly I checked RADIATE's web-site. I cannot find any requirement on the website to be in work! Secondly, I phoned Disability Rights UK (Disability Rights UK was formed through a unification of Disability Alliance, Radar and National Centre for Independent Living on 1 January 2012. They aim to be the largest national pan-disability organisation led by disabled people (in the pockets of the ConDems?). RADIATE is a spin off from RADAR) to ask them is they knew of an organisation that could help me.


The Chief Executive of Disability Rights UK is Liz Sayce. Liz Sayce prepared the report for the CONDEMS suggesting they close Remploy.

Disability Rights UK said they have no funding to do this but suggested I contact, yes you've got it,

Remploy.

I need to start planning my return to the workplace in 2014 now. Has anybody reading this Blog got any ideas what I could do! #justasking !!!

RT @christineburns: The lesson of the Paralympics is of what people can do if you redefine the rules to enable them, not about what they can't do if you don't

Life has a way of simplifying itself, doesn't it. I can imagine at schools up and down the country little girls and boys in wheelchairs will be seeing their career advisors about their career choices.



"Well, what do you like doing, Johnny/ Julie?"

"Well sir, I like maths/ English/ science and would like to be a banker/ journalist/ pharmacist."


"All very commendable but the only thing you are allowed to be is a Paralympian so spend the afternoon pushing your wheelchair round the playground for me."


OK, maybe a touch oversimplified but it seems to be the mood of the country? - "Look at all those Paralympian's doing amazing things. Why can't all the disabled benefit scroungers be like that?"


I'm just a run of the mill normal invisibly disabled person.After my accident I didn't consider Paralympic Sport because all I wanted to do was play normal sport again. My choice and I don't regret it.
Having tried and failed, I thought if I can't excel at sport I'll excel at work so over the next 17 years, by not highlighting my invisible disability and allowing people to think I was eccentric because I did things slightly differently, I ascended the tree to end up at Executive level.

I tend to think I ascended to the level where my disabilities matter because since then Nada, nothing, zip. It takes me time to develop relationships with people.When I'm thinking you can see it on my face. When I get angry no matter how I behave my face (through its involuntary twitches etc) makes it clear. I can control the way I consciously act but I am eccentric.

The world of sport is not equal. If it was Paralympian's and Olympians would at a minimum compete in the same games and ideally in the same events. As this isn't completely achievable the Paralympic Games is run in Parallel to the Olympics (hence the name!!) and the events are designed to allow the athletes to demonstrate their ability and high level of achievement.

Unfortunately, when you apply for a job their isn't a special category of jobs for the disabled to apply for. There are no "T34 CFO Jobs" advertised. In our dash for equality we forgot that we are different. That is not a bad thing, but if you put me up against a non-disabled person for a job I have to compete on his terms. No allowances. You can ask for reasonable adjustments but when you do they often get refused because they would give you an advantage over non-disabled candidates. All quite reasonable within the law.

But it's worse than that.

There is a wide ranging and rich diversification of disability out there. We are not all the same! Consider this scenario.

A company decides that it will recruit solely by telephone interview. There are 2 candidates, a candidate in a wheelchair and a head injured candidate. They know exactly the same things and are equally as qualified. They give exactly the same answers. Who gets the job?

Before you answer that be aware that under the stress of the interview the head injured person's speech became slightly slurred and he took longer to begin to answer the competency based based questions as his severe memory impairment impacted on his speed of recall of the exact circumstances surrounding the example but still gave exactly the same answers.

Now who gets the job? A lot of interviews are decided upon "soft" criteria and "Who is most like me?" You may think that is OK because the candidate in the wheelchair presented better at interview. Are you saying that an interview is the only way of selecting people for jobs? Does an interview itself not run the risk of being discriminatory purely because you are seeing how people perform in a situation which in the main bears little resemblance to the day to day job being interviewed for? What if there is a cognitive problem that causes problems at interviews but is rarely an issue in day to day life (don't laugh, they do exist - I have such a problem (spasticity caused by brain damage in my frontal lobe))!

So what do we do? Starting from the premise that the interview system will never be perfect what about instead of treating people equally make positive allowances to minimise the effects of any disability? But that will advantage the disabled over the non-disabled - NOT FAIR!


There is a current feeling of pride in our Paralympian's for their achievements. But haven't we made positive allowances by changing the events they compete in to minimise the effects of any disability. Doesn't this disadvantage the non-disabled as they are excluded from competing at the Paralympic's whereas the disabled can compete at the Olympics - Oscar Pistorius.

Why is Sport different from Work?

Celebrate diversity!

By the way, I do not rule out the possibility that I am not good enough to get the jobs I go for and I am unmanageable and thoroughly unpleasant but will leave it to others to Blog that!!

RT @christineburns: The lesson of the Paralympics is of what people can do if you redefine the rules to enable them, not about what they can't do if you don't

Where Do We Go From Here?

As I write this the Paralympic's has just about finished and I am thinking what are my memories of it? Sporting memories will be covered in depth elsewhere so here are my slightly funky memories:

1. The Royal Mail decided that disabled people were less worthy than non-disabled people and initially planned to offer disabled gold medal winners less recognition that non-disabled gold medallists. A public outcry followed on Twitter and the decision was reversed but amazingly the British Paralympic Association fully supported the decision to discriminate against disabled athletes.
2. LOCOG thought it reasonable to charge disabled people a premium to access the Paralympic's through a Premium rate phone line. Dame Tanni Grey-Thompson is reported to support this position (I will happily edit this post if I am wrong) but it seems to me that we are suggesting it is OK to charge disabled people a premium to access services compared to non-disabled people who could book on-line without needing to use a premium rate phone number.
3. It appeared to be difficult for disabled wheelchair users to secure "Olympic" seating with their families.Some reported on Twitter that staff at the venues bent over backwards to allow families to sit together but should the disabled have to rely on Charity in the 21st Century?
4. Oscar Pistorius had a "hissy fit" and made life difficult for all of us that need "reasonable adjustments" at some time. Him of "blades fame" complained that a competitors blades were too long and gave him an unfair advantage. The blades in question were legal for Paralympic competition but illegal for Olympic competition. This gave support to the argument of "ablists" everywhere that the disabled ask for adjustments just to give them an advantage, NOT to level the playing field.

Glass is half full kind of memories. Maybe, but enough people are celebrating the achievements!

So what should be the legacy of the London 2012 Paralympic Games? I read a Tweet today from Christine Burns that to me encapsulated all I could hope for. Having asked permission to quote it hopefully you can see the magic in it.

RT @christineburns: The lesson of the Paralympics is of what people can do if you redefine the rules to enable them, not about what they can't do if you don't.

Redefine the rules to access: Employment; Schools; Parliament; Shops; life?