Admin Monday 14th June
This week, Stoke-on-Trent City Council and Stoke-on-Trent Clinical Commissioning Group launch ‘Living My Best Life’, an exciting new strategy, co-produced with people with learning disabilities, families and carers.
Living My Best Life is based around achieving five outcomes, all of which came from conversations with adults with learning disabilities. The strategy’s vision is that people with learning disabilities will be able to say “I feel safe. I am healthy. I achieve my goals. I love where I live. I enjoy my life.”
Each day this week, as part of the launch, Reach, an independent self-advocacy project and part of Asist (Advocacy Services in Staffordshire) are writing a blog about one of these five outcomes, using ideas and experiences people have shared as part of the strategy development work, and in other discussions over the years.
Today, we’re writing about ‘I feel safe.’
Nationally, more than 7 out of 10 adults with learning disabilities have experienced some kind of hate crime. Locally, Challenge North Staffs believe this issue is significantly under-reported, meaning the situation may be even worse than it first seems.
Organisations like Reach and Challenge North Staffs have supported people to fight hate crime and bullying, “If it hadn’t been for Reach, coming to you when we were being bullied and picked on, I don’t think we would have been able to report the hate crime [to Challenge North Staffs] we went through, you helped and made it easier to cope with.”
Last year, during discussions about the big issues that should be in the strategy, people told us safety was a hugely important, and urgent issue.
“People see a disability as a weakness, they pick on people… they call them names and threaten them, make them cry. Disabled people attract it sometimes because they are a bit different.”
“It’s important to feel part of your community, and it’s right, you do need to feel safe to do that.”
Living My Best Life includes measures to improving peoples’ confidence with an expansion of the city’s Safe Places scheme, supporting people to understand and report hate crime and bullying and working with Staffordshire Police to help them understand the needs of people with learning disabilities.
Safe Places are shops, cafes, libraries, GP surgeries and any other community places that display the Safe Places logo sticker in their window, alerting people with learning disabilities who have signed up for the scheme that they can go inside and ask for help and reassurance while they are out and about in the community.
Adults with learning disabilities spoke to us about what Safe Places mean to them.
“It makes us feel more confident when we are out and about, knowing there is somewhere to go where we can get help if we need it.”
“I agree with the Safe Places stuff, I think it’s a really good idea to open it up for younger people, from 14, that should make things safer for them too, fantastic idea.”
“They [Safe Places] can offer support to anyone who needs help, everyone can be vulnerable, we all need a safe place at some time.”
People also spoke to us about the importance of raising awareness and understanding, discussing and speaking up about issues.
“I think people should take more time to understand people with a learning disability. Why should we fear going out?”
“People generally just don’t understand about people with learning disabilities. It’s them, the people out there that need to understand more and stop picking on us.”
“Supporting people to speak up, making decisions, that’s what it’s all about, yes. It is important that you speak up, speak your own mind, thoughts, speak your opinions and that they listen to what people say.”
“We need to keep safe and help each other along the way”
The newly relaunched Stoke-on-Trent Learning Disability Forum is one of the groups responsible for checking that ‘Living my Best Life’ is improving things for people with learning disabilities in the city. Part of this work includes focusing meetings on the strategy’s outcomes.
On Monday 19th July 2021 via Zoom the Forum will be discussing ‘I feel safe’. People with learning disabilities, organisations that help support people, local councillors, the police and many others are working together to tackle the issues. This work will help to ensure people can feel safer, more confident and a greater part of their communities.
Margaret Mason, Reach member and Stoke-on-Trent Learning Disability Partnership Forum Co-Chair said “I think this strategy will make a big difference and really help people because it’s about what people with a learning disability said they needed and because it’s for everybody with a learning disability all through their life.”
Thanks for reading, and sharing this blog. Tomorrow, we look at ‘I am healthy.’
You can download ‘Living My Best Life’ here: https://www.stoke.gov.uk/downloads/download/891/learning_disabilities_strategy
You can find out more about Challenge North Staffs and reporting hate crimes here: https://challengenorthstaffs.org/
You can find out more about Reach and Asist here: https://www.asist.co.uk/
