Bullying, Education, Learning disability, media & communication, Social care, Social exclusion, Uncategorized, Young people

“Information about autism is better coming from someone who is autistic”

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Simon after winning his award for public speaking on autism from learning disability charity Dimensions

By Simon Smith

My mum and dad realised something was different about me when I was about two to three-years-old, because I played differently to other children. I didn’t engage and interact with others. I didn’t cuddle or give eye contact. I had difficulties with speech and hated change.

I started realising from the age of 14-15 that people were treating me differently and this is when I first realised that I was different. At first I felt kind of annoyed about and wondered why I was getting all the attention. I then asked my mother what was going on with me. She told me I was different to the other kids. First of all she told me all the good things about me; such as my brilliant memory and amazing empathy with animals. She also explained why I was having difficulties in certain areas such as making friends and interacting .

I was diagnosed when I was five. I went to a mainstream school with a statement of special educational needs. At school had I one-to-one support, speech and language therapy. I also attended a behaviour unit and later on had support from the Autistic Spectrum Condition Support Services which came into my school to give advice and support.

Being autistic means I am someone who feels and sees the world in more detail then people without autism. I have heightened senses such as sight, taste, touch ,smell and hearing . This means that I can find things incredibly annoying that wouldn’t bother other people or in some cases it means that I find things more interesting.

Looking back, it was when I started school things became a huge challenge. People often thought I was a trouble-maker (mostly the teachers due to their lack of understanding of my autism and my behaviours). Other students often found me very strange and in some cases would be cruel; bullying me because I was different. Being treated badly by people who didn’t understand me made me very negative about my ambitions and myself which still affects me today. The other thing that makes me different is my obsessions, but I’ve used to help guide me through tough times and they have also created opportunities and brought me success, like the award.

At the moment I have no support except from my parents because the local authority says I don’t meet the criteria.

At the end of last year, I won an Erica Award from learning disability support organisation Dimensions for the talks I do about autism. The annual awards celebrate people with autism who help others. It’s nice to feel appreciated for the hard work I do. I’m very honoured by it and I still can’t believe I won it.

Simon, who loves animals, at home with Rona, the family's dog

My talks came about when my mum was working with pre-school children with autism so when one day she asked for some advice on how to support a child, it made me think back to when I was a child of the same age. I looked back on what made things hard for me and told my mum what it was like from my perceptive. I told mum what it was like for me being autistic and how it affected my everyday life.

My mum said she learnt so much more about autism from me that day that she thought it would be really helpful for other parents. She arranged for me to do a talk to the parents of other children like me.

My talks cover a lot of areas including sensory issues, how my brain works, how I learn to communicate and socialise, my repetition,imitation, obsessions and my behaviour issues. I also offer general advice and strategies to help support people and the opportunity to ask questions. I give out evaluation sheets so people can comment on my talk if they want me to add or change anything.

The feedback is amazing. One parent has written: “I got home yesterday and saw my son from a completely different perspective, thanks to your insight and inside knowledge of autism” and a professional commented: “Simon’s talk was super every trainee teacher/nursery/pre-school worker in the country should meet Simon and hear his experiences. I learnt more in one hour about autism that 20 years as a teacher have ever done. I feel very uplifted and look forward to sharing/reflecting to my colleagues.”

I feel happy that I am going to try and give advice which might help people that I’m talking too. Afterwards I feel mentally tired as it takes a lot out of me and I need feedback from people because I find it hard to tell how well I’ve done.

The feedback from my first talk made me want to help more parents, so my mum asked Amaze – an advice service for parents of children with special needs – if they could help. Through Amaze I did a talk to 27 parents. These parents requested that I spoke to the professionals that they have to deal with because they felt that they were often not listened to. So my mum arranged for me to do talks for professionals such as respite services, PRESENS (Pre-School SEN Services) and two local special schools. I do talks for professional services and parent support groups and have done two workshops at a conference.

It makes me feel uplifted to know how much people appreciate my talks, to be told how much of a difference I am making in helping them to understand more about autism from a personal perspective and this encourages me to do more. I believe that information about autism is better when it comes from someone who is autistic.

My plan is to do more talks and to encourage other people with autism to do them with me and to continue my mentoring. My biggest aim would be to form a group of people with autism who would be confident to be able to attend any meeting regarding anything that might affect people who have autism because I feel it’s very important to have individuals with the problems to speak out and have a voice.

I would like to make councils and governments have someone with the learning disabilities or someone with autism actually on board, attending meetings and giving their own personal input which I think we can all benefit from. If I could get the government to do one thing it would be to consult more with the people that experience the conditions that they are making policies about to get their points of view.

* Simon Smith, 23, from Brighton, won the 2011 Erica Award because of his outstanding contribution to helping others understand what it is like to experience autism.

Big society, Blogging, Education, Employment, Health, Housing, Learning disability, Local government, Music & arts, Older people, Poverty, Social care, Social enterprise, Social exclusion, Third sector, Uncategorized, Volunteering, Wellbeing, Women, Young people, Youth crime

12 days of Christmas, Social Issue-style

Season’s greetings from The Social Issue – to mark the jollities, here’s a snapshot of some of the upbeat posts and pictures about people, projects and places featured over the last 12 months. This festive pick is by no means the best of the bunch – the inspiring stories below are included as they’re accompanied by some interestin and images and almost fit with a festive carol, if you allow for a little the poetic and numerical licence…

Very huge thanks to the Social Issue’s small band of regular and guest bloggers, all contributors, supporters, readers and everyone who’s got in touch with story ideas and feedback. See you in January.

On the first day of Christmas, the blogosphere brought to me:

A tiger in an art show

Batik Tiger created by a student at specialist autism college, Beechwood

Two JCBs

The Miller Road project, Banbury, where agencies are tackling youth housing and training. Pic: John Alexander

Three fab grans

Hermi, 85: “I don’t really feel like an older woman.”

Four working teens

From antisocial behaviour to force for social good; Buzz Bikes, Wales.

Five(ish) eco tips

Eco hero Phil uses a “smart plug” to monitor domestic energy use

Six(ty) volunteers

Young volunteer with City Corps, Rodney WIlliams

Seven(teen) pairs of wellies

Abandoned festival rubbish, Wales, gets recycled for the homeless, pic credit: Graham Williams

Eight(een-years-old and over) people campaigning

Participants in the Homeless Games, Liverpool

1950s hall revamping

"The kid who talked of burning down the place is now volunteering to paint it."

10 lads a leaping

11-year-olds integrating

Children's al fresco activiites at the Big Life group summer scheme

12(+) painters painting

View from the Southbank of Tower Bridge, Aaron Pilgrim, CoolTan Arts

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Cuts, Health, Local government, Older people, Social care, Wellbeing

More recognition for the role of carers

Janet Down only realised she was a full-time carer for her disabled husband when she fell ill a few years ago and could not look after him. Suffering back pain from lifting and depression from coping unsupported, her inability to care for 65-year-old Dave exposed just how much she did for him. This prompted her to recognise her role, accept she needed help and find leaflets about caring at her library.

Carer aware, an innovative project that Down subsequently participated in and designed by Dudley borough council, is making it easier for carers like Down to get support. The online mini-training toolkit offers an explanation of carers’ rights, better access to support and reassurance that professionals are recognising carers’ issues. Down now champions the scheme as chair of Dudley Carers Forum. “Knowing how and what the carer is entitled to receive is empowering,” she says. Read the full piece here on the Guardian Social Care Network.

Uncategorized

Getting the rhetoric right on child poverty

Jason Strelitz, co-founder, Decent Childhoods research project
What does the word “poverty” mean to you? Consider this, from a mother involved with lone parent charity Gingerbread: “It doesn’t mean what you put on a plate…it also means, because learning doesn’t take place just in the classroom, it means holidays…and decent food…it means eating healthily – five a day.”

The poverty debate, along with campaigners’ and successive governments’ efforts to address it, was a focus in the recent report, Decent Childhoods: reframing the fight to end child poverty, which I co-authored with Kate Bell (the quote from the Gingerbread parent formed part of the research). The report comes just as many question the impact of the cuts on society’s most vulnerable and their effect on child poverty.

Concepts of poverty and rhetoric impact on improving childhood outcomes (pic: stock.xchng)

Our report questions why the target to halve child poverty by 2010 was missed – by a substantial margin. But we are also interested in why, despite Labour expending considerable political capital, investment and energy in “ending child poverty in a generation”, the issue did not resonate outside a narrow policy elite.

Poverty, it was argued in a 1981 article in the magazine New Society is a powerful call to action: if you see poverty then you must feel compelled to action. But while the argument has been invoked regularly by activists, there’s a problem with it as a basis for campaigning. Just because I see poverty, and tell you it exists, doesn’t mean you feel compelled to act – it depends on what you see as well.

Most people simply do not recognise the concept of “poverty” as the appropriate prism with which to view childhood disadvantage. It’s not that they don’t see disadvantage, inequalities, unfairness and absence of social justice; they just don’t call it poverty. The standard indicator of poverty – living in a household with income below 60% median is useful as a device to track progress, meaningful in analytic terms but hopeless in conveying a sense of vision or wider social purpose.

What’s more, most people who live in what sociologists or policymakers might call poverty would never describe themselves as poor. And, if there are 2-3m children in poverty in the UK, why are they and their parents so absent from these debates? There is a disconnect. Poverty is for many a stigmatising concept; announcing “I am at the bottom of the pile”.

Our public discourse plays to that stigma, drawing on longstanding images of the “underclass”and a culture that demeans those claiming benefits and living in social housing. This has been explored in Owen Jones’ Chavs: the demonization of the working class which talks about the change from working class “as salt of the earth to scum of the earth” and “a class to be escaped from rather than to be proud of”. There is a change in language and a clear hardening of attitudes towardspoverty . The recent British Social Attitudes survey revealed that people believe the root cause of child poverty is poor parenting.

So how can we communicate a vision of the kind of society we want for our children? “Combating poverty” may help to raise some outcry, but can we develop a more inclusive vision of change which those most effected may want to call their own?

Our aspiration for Decent Childhoods is that all children live in families with financial security; have meaningful opportunities; and are valued.

There’s little point denying that some of what is needed to achieve this requires investment, nor that given the economic times we live in, that this presents an immense challenge. But it’s not all about money. Changing the language around these issues whether as policy makers, professionals, the media and the public could make a profound difference. Whilst children’s sense of being valued comes first from their parents and families, we can do more to engender a positive inclusive language. Our report argues that three public “tests” might help further this cause. Are public services respectful of the agency and expertise of the people they are designed to serve? Can this agenda be an inclusive call to action? Does the language used by those with power and influence stigmatise those without?

Those concerned with demonization of those in poverty should take inspiration from how public language around race, homosexuality and disability has changed over the years. All are different from poverty and from each other as well, but what was acceptable 30 years ago, is no longer acceptable today.

In the way services operate perhaps some exemplars may come from unlikelier sources. Supermarkets wouldn’t dream of stigmatising their customers. They value their pound too much, and there is always another option down the road. If they don’t feel valued as a customer they can take their business elsewhere. Often in public services such an option doesn’t exist (nor should it – our argument here isn’t about choice), but engendering that same sense of volition must be an aim for services.

There are some successful examples putting this rhetoric into reality; although under threat in the current cuts, Sure Starts have been successful in their bottom up, parent led ethos and their universality. Another radical approach, the LIFE project, developed by social enterprise Participle and Swindon borough, for working with families in chronic crisis, puts people at the heart of the solution; they choose the professionals they work with, lead their process, the results have been very encouraging.

We think that rather than trying to sell poverty to a sceptical public, we need to be talking about a broader constituency, and a set of problems that affects both the many on the lowest incomes, and the many more struggling to keep their heads above water.

Decent childhoods means not only financial security, but better opportunities, and a sense that all children are valued. Surely these are things that everyone would want for their children?

Cuts, Education, Health, Housing, Local government, Social exclusion, Volunteering

Decent homes for the homeless

“Homelessness doesn’t have a face,” says Janet Marsh, “it can happen to anyone, anywhere.” Marsh, 65, from east London, lost her privately rented home in her 50s after her marriage ended, then became ill with epilepsy and arthritis. “People think homelessness is something you’ve done to yourself, there’s stigma and misconception,” she says.

Though Marsh is now living in temporary accommodation in Newham, her housing situation could not contrast more with the popular image of a tenure defined by shoddy, unregulated properties and unscrupulous private landlords. Marsh is a tenant of Local Space, an innovative housing association that uses private finance to buy homes on the open market, refurbishes the properties and leases them back to the council as temporary accommodation. Read the rest of my piece on the Guardian’s housing network.

Cuts, Legal Aid, Social exclusion, Uncategorized

Why we must protect the shrinking legal aid safety net

Nadia Salam, solicitor, Release
Sarah can tell you how quickly things fall apart. She has learning difficulties and mental health problems. She received benefits until a Department for Work and Pensions medical examiner assessed her as fit for work, without taking into account her mental health problems. Her benefits stopped as a result. She had difficulty understanding her letters and avoided opening post so she wasn’t aware of her rent arrears or that she was falling into debt.

When Sarah was threatened with eviction she decided to see a lawyer. By looking at the paperwork and making enquires on Sarah’s behalf the lawyer realised why Sarah had fallen into debt and that her home was at risk. She got advice in three areas so her benefits started again and affordable payments were negotiated on her behalf so her landlord agreed to take no further action.

Yet fast forward to 2013 and, under government plans due to come into force in just over a year’s time, Sarah will not get the same help. She will not even see a lawyer face to face, and will have to call an 0845 number just to get advice. The lawyer will not be able to carry out any preventative work or help with all the problems. Sarah probably will not even be able to afford the cost of the 0845 call. She won’t be able to turn up in person with all the paperwork, like she did before.

The government is putting a bill through parliament that would change the system for legal aid – when the state pays all or part of the legal costs for those who cannot afford them – so advice in certain areas of law would only initially be accessible through a mandatory telephone line. The current proposed areas are community care, debt, discrimination and special educational needs. All of these areas are complex, and often people who need this advice will be distressed, vulnerable and have difficulty understanding their paperwork or explaining their complex situation over the telephone.

There is currently a direct telephone advice line – however people still have the choice to access face to face advice. Under the proposals, this will no longer be the case. You won’t be able to choose the solicitor or visit them in person for initial advice in certain areas of law. This will all be done over the telephone, where someone who may not even be legally trained will decide whether you need legal advice and are eligible.

The reforms come just as councils are also cutting the services they provide. Vulnerable adults will be most at risk as it will be harder to get legal advice to challenge standards of community care or an assessment that they do not qualify.

On 21st November 2011 the Bill was debated in the House of Lords for almost eight hours. It is about to pass onto the committee stage, where peers will examine it line by line. There have been serious concerns from peers about a mandatory telephone line. Baroness Grey-Thompson highlighted this during the recent debate: “The cases of disabled people are complex… If a disabled person has struggled to put their case forward in an assessment process, a phone call will not make it easier”.

This is only one of the major changes being proposed. Other proposals would remove many areas of law from the scope of legal aid, so it will no longer be available for many parts of family and immigration law, and no problems dealing with employment, clinical negligence, or welfare benefits.

All of these proposals if introduced will affect many vulnerable and disadvantaged groups in our society, particularly the disabled. The government’s own figures reveal that 58% of people who lose legal aid for benefits issues will be ill or disabled. However despite this, the government is still adamant that the bill should go ahead as initially drafted.

The disability charity Scope points out that the Government has not recognised that legal aid is an essential element for the success of wider welfare reforms, helping people get the right decisions to access support they need to help them into work. With the Government completely overhauling the entire benefits system even more people will find themselves struggling like Sarah. More people will need advice, and it is more likely that errors will be made as DWP staff get to grips with the new rules. However unlike Sarah they will not be able to get the legal advice they so desperately need to prevent themselves from fighting fire.

It is important that we continue to support the campaign for free legal advice to ensure we will always have the law to protect those that need it the most and have access to justice. Go to Save Legal Aid, Justice for All and Sound off for Justice (previously featured in this post on the Social Issue) for ways you can get involved.

* Scope is collecting stories from disabled people who used legal aid to get the right benefits, contact cristina.sarb@scope.org.uk

Health, Mental health, Social care, Social exclusion, Third sector, Uncategorized, Volunteering, Wellbeing

We should be kind, while there is still time

Lol Butterfield, mental health campaigner
Over 30 years ago as a young man I first set foot in a psychiatric hospital. It was an old Victorian “asylum” in the rolling countryside of Bedfordshire. I had travelled to the south of England from my native north east to find work, and here I found myself.

I wandered down the endless dimly lit corridors and found myself surrounded by staring, pain-etched faces with wild curious eyes. It felt like I had stumbled onto the set of the film One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest. There was a sense of unreality to it all, but also of mystique. It was so stereotypical of all I had previously read in books and seen on television about asylums – those places others and never ourselves, of course, will be sent to for being “mad”.

Next year, it will be 50 years since the first steps towards community care for mental health (see this useful mental health timeline on the Mind website) this “anniversary” has made me revisit my early experiences as a mental health care professional and look afresh at the history of mental health care.

After 1962’s Hospital plan for England and Wales, large psychiatric hospitals closed and local authorities developed community services. That was, of course, the theory – not all local areas had adequate community services as we know, so there were still long-stay patients in hospitals up and down the country.

So it was more than three decades ago in that psychiatric hospital that my understanding and awareness of mental illness grew. I came to realise that the staring faces and wild eyes were ordinary people who had found themselves in extraordinary circumstances. They had been incarcerated many years before.

As a consequence of the debilitating illnesses they had, such as schizophrenia, and the horrendous medication side effects, they were displaying mannerisms that drew unwanted attention. Mannerisms that perpetuated the stigmatising process further. They had lost their self confidence, their motivation, and probably more importantly their daily living skills to function independently outside of the hospital confines. They had become institutionalised. The hospital was their home and they would eventually die there. Within the walls of the hospital the behaviour became normalised, the wandering up and down corridors, the staring at strangers and the shuffling gait. Outside in the local town it was polarised.

In the early 1990s many of the old asylums were closed. They had become anachronistic. More people were now being rehabilitated with the government’s proposal for care in the community, a radical shift in policy and approach essentially moving most of the care emphasis from the hospitals into the communities. People were discharged from the hospitals back into their communities with follow up planned support and care (in most cases).

Sadly some slipped through the safety net of care. And in the years that followed the medication improved and the stigmatising side effects became less. There was an increased acknowledgement of the importance of social inclusion, of recovery from illness, and of empowerment – treating people as individuals with informed choice and promoting equality.

Flashforward to 2011 and yet we still have stigma. We still have misunderstanding and we still have inequality in many sections of society for those 1 in 4 of the population who experience mental illhealth.

What is my long term vision of stigma and discrimination and where we will be in the next 50 years? I believe that stigma will have been eradicated completely following the success of campaigns such as Time To Change. I hope for a realisation that both our physical and mental wellbeing work in correlation and, as such, cannot and must not be split. I believe the strength and vision of those who have fought so hard will be acknowledged one day and in schools across the country their stories will be lesson material. Leading figures in the anti-stigma movement will be seen more positively as vehicles for social change. Mental health stigma will be seen in the same unacceptable light as racism and homophobia.

I have campaigned for many years, most of my adult life even, and no doubt ruffled a few feathers in the process. But I would rather stand up and be counted for saying something I passionately believe in than silently watch and do nothing. This I cannot do alone and I am always motivated by the support I get from others, more so from the victims of stigma and discrimination themselves.

As Philip Larkin wrote in The Mower, “We should be kind while there is still time”. In the case of mental health and tackling stigma and discrimination this kindness will hopefully continue through campaigning. We have come a long way, but we are not there yet.

Learning disability, Third sector

“Care is about people, it’s not just a process”

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Last Christmas was the first time in 14 years that Alex (not his real name) had spent the season with his family. It was the first time his parents had come to his house for Christmas dinner, the first time the 46-year-old had shopped for the meal, prepared it, laid the table and chosen the wine.

The event would have been inconceivable just a year before when, Alex, who has a severe learning disability, was living in a care home in Kent. He had already spent many years in a long-stay hospital ward. His challenging behaviour ranged from kicking to spitting and usually resulted in him being restrained by four members of staff, one pinning down each of his limbs, for up to 45 minutes.

Alex’s story, which outlines his path to appropriate social care, is among the powerful testimonies published in a report today by the Voluntary Organisations Disability Group (VODG). I was involved in producing the report for the VODG, which brings together more than 50 voluntary sector disability organisations, and I also manage the group’s blog.

Another Way: transforming people’s lives through good practice in social care, is a response to the Winterbourne View scandal earlier this year which involved the abuse of people with complex learning disabilities at a care unit in Bristol.

Gavin Harding, who co-chairs the National Forum for People with Learning Disabilities and chairs self-help advocacy group Voices for People, writes in the foreword to the publication: “There is another way, which is presented in this report. It’s about putting people with learning disabilities and their families at the centre of planning and delivery of care.” Harding adds: “Care is about people, it’s not just a process.”

The VODG report outlines the key elements that can contribute to high quality, cost-effective care.

You can read more about the report via this blogpost.

Education, Health, Uncategorized, Young people

A fight for the rights of students with long-term illness

Last year Ian Leech, who lost his student daughter to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, successfully campaigned for financial support for students whose treatment for illnesses such as cancer forced them to interrupt their studies. As a result of his work, young people no longer have to use student loans for support in such situations. In this guest post, he describes what happened – and why his campaign is far from over.

By Ian Leech

In 2007, having been diagnosed at the age of 20 with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, my daughter Melissa decided to suspend her university studies for a year to recover from this life changing illness and concentrate on getting well. It was a huge decision for Mel; she loved university and embraced all that university life had to offer (see this earlier post for Mel’s story).

The original prognosis was positive. Six rounds of chemotherapy three weeks apart, maybe some radiotherapy and it would, in the words of the consultant, just be a bad memory. It doesn’t take a mathematician to work out that treatment would last probably around 20 weeks. In that time Mel would endure extreme tiredness, confusion, have breathing difficulties, mouth ulcers and all that on top of the psychological aspect of being told that at 20 years of age, you have cancer.

Ian Leech and his daughter Mel

Having made the decision to suspend her studies, she applied for financial support. She hadn’t drawn on her student loan and had no savings. The response from the government was that she should either suspend her studies or use her student loan.

I wrote to my MP explaining the psychological effects of her having to abandon her studies and explained that I was under the impression a student loan was to support study and not act as a health insurance.

So began a battle with first, the Labour government and latterly the Conservatives to bring about a change in the law. It was nearly six months before Melissa received any financial support. Three months later she sadly passed away. I wanted to ensure that any student suspending their studies to recover from long term illness would receive immediate financial support.

As more emails arrived from parents and students relating similar stories, I continued the fight after Mel’s death. Eventually, the government listened and on November 1st 2010 the deeming rule was changed. Students were no longer assumed to have drawn on their student loan when suspending their studies. Therefore they could now apply for Employment Support Allowance (ESA). Victory for the little man!

As usual though, the government officials making the decisions had not thought the change through and they failed to remove the long-standing clause that to qualify for ESA, a student must be in receipt of Disability Living Allowance. This meant that the majority of students, when suspending their studies to recover from a long term illness still would not receive any financial support.

It is incredible that in this day and age our government treat people in this way. Mel never wanted hundreds of pounds, just a few quid to enable her to buy a bar of chocolate or other every day items without having to ask mum and dad. She wanted just enough to give her a bit of self-respect during a horrible time.

In my last letter to the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) I asked Sir Iain Duncan Smith how a student in Melissa’s position was supposed to live. The answer I received from the DWP was that people in Melissa’s situation are a minority and therefore they would do nothing more.

I wrote to David Cameron back in 2007 when he was in opposition. His reply, which I still have, stated that “the Conservative Party are committed to helping the most vulnerable in society”. How times change! Power really does change people!

My battle with the government continues. There are other avenues I am exploring to resolve this. Camping outside St. Paul’s Cathedral isn’t one of them, well, not yet! I still receive emails from parents and students who are experiencing similar problems. In order to receive DLA, you have to have had the condition for three months and it needs to be ongoing for a further six months.

One lady told me how her 20-year-old daughter, diagnosed with cancer, was told she wouldn’t receive DLA because her chemotherapy finished in four months and therefore her condition didn’t meet the six month criteria required for receiving it. It is unbelievable that those making decisions on financial support for seriously ill people think that a cancer patient’s illness ends when the last drop of chemotherapy goes through the veins.

The important matter in all of this is that when a student finds themselves in the position that Melissa did and decides to suspend their studies, they have access to financial support and they don’t have to wait nearly six months for financial support.

I recently received a letter from a lady who had been trying for nearly 12 months to get support for her daughter. Sadly, earlier this year the family were told her condition was incurable. The financial support quite rightly came flooding in, but as she said, “it’s a shame you have to be dying to get the help you needed in the beginning”.

I am all for getting rid of the cheats and scroungers that play the system, but whilst doing that, the government must not lose sight of why the welfare system was originally put in place, to look after those in need, or as David Cameron put it whilst leader of the opposition, in a letter to me in 2009, “to help the most vulnerable in society”

The fight goes on.

* You can read more about Ian’s work and campaigning on his website Mad4Mel. For information about lymphoma visit the Lymphoma Association website.

Cuts, Education, Employment, Third sector, Uncategorized, Volunteering, Wellbeing, Young people

Neets: “Unemployment knocked my self-esteem..I wasn’t good enough at anything.”

William Wright left his Somerset school with a handful of GCSEs. Confused about what to do after school, he felt his teachers had “given up” on him. Wright found temporary work as a plasterer but lacked the qualifications for a permanent job. Unemployed and uncertain, he fell into a vicious circle; being jobless destroyed his confidence and made him feel depressed, which made it difficult to find work. Now 26, he says: “I felt like a failure. Unemployment knocked my self-esteem and made me feel like I wasn’t good enough at anything.”

One million 16- to 24-year-olds in the UK are not in education, employment or training, just as William was. Read more here in my piece from the Guardian on Saturday.

And in the same youth supplement this piece by Kate Murray, who also blogs on this site, explores how to restore young people’s faith and involvement in politics with comments from MPs – including children’s minister, Tim Loughton – youth workers and community activists.

Saba Salman on social affairs