A mini-post to bring you something I wish I could say I’d made earlier (given it’s the summer holidays and my kids are off school…). I mentioned this campaign on Twitter a few weeks ago, but liked the idea enough to share a couple of images of the creations already made:
The images here are from the Make With Me campaign, learning disability charity Mencap’s new make and bake appeal. The campaign encourages people to get creative with fundraising parties to show their support and raise money for the UK’s 1.5m learning disabled people.
For more inspiring pics and creative ideas check the campaign’s Facebook page along with some images on the online gallery, including a Bob the Builder in gingerbread..(this might have to become something of a pictorial theme for The Social Issue).
Freelance journalist and editor Kate MurrayIt was when the care home manager started to talk about staff training that the alarm bells sounded for me. Not because I didn’t want the people who would be caring for my mother to be well trained – far from it. It was his reasons for ensuring all his staff had a certificate to their name that I found so worrying. “It’s a competitive business,” he told my brother and me. “Our people have to have those qualifications. That’s what other places have and we can’t afford to fall behind.”
I found his unashamed concern for his bottom line shocking. But I could also see why he was so keen to bring the business in. At some £550 a week for a place in an establishment like his – although he was prepared to haggle to get us to sign on the dotted line – there are serious amounts of cash at play.
Not surprisingly, we didn’t go for the care home in question, plumping instead for an even more expensive option where we felt happier with the atmosphere and the care on offer. But my experience of choosing a care home, which came just before Andrew Dilnot released his recommendations on paying for care, showed me that money talks – even when it should be the standard of care that we should really be concerned about.
When his report was published, Dilnot rightly pointed out that the issue of funding adult social care had been ignored for too long. He proposed that the costs an individual has to pay for his or her care should be capped at £35,000. Many have agreed, arguing that it’s unfair that people who’ve saved all their lives, or worked hard to pay for a home, should be forced to lose most of what they had hoped to pass on to their families.
But for me, it’s not inheritance rights that matter. It’s simply that as things stand, where so many people self-fund their care, we’ve created a market that has spiralled out of control. While the state has stood by, determining that only the worst-off will have their costs made for, care for the elderly has become essentially a private matter.
It’s a world in which staff costs are pushed down so hard that frankly it’s no surprise quality can be so poor. One in which the push for growth can become so all-consuming that, as with Southern Cross, it leads to failure. And one where the prices are so sky high that care home managers seem to believe that relatives will want to haggle over prices rather than talk about how they maintain their elderly residents’ dignity and quality of life.
Establishing a system such as Dilnot recommends, in which people knew how much they would have to pay for their care in later life, would not just allow families to plan for their old age. It would also allow us to concentrate on the things that really matter: good quality care, with respect for the individual.
Care for those who need it should not be about having to worry about the invoice at the end of the month.
Hardly earth shattering news that teenagers like playing music, chatting at coffee shops, learning to cook (if their parents are lucky) and hanging out with their mates – but how often do you see learning disabled teens doing the same things?
Young people with learning disabilities can face massive barriers when it comes to enjoying the same things as their mainstream peers – often because of prejudice rather than because of a physically inability to cope with the task involved.
I’ve had the misfortune to experience this prejudice with my sister, as have the family of 12-year-old Gregor Morris – forced to leave a West End show for laughing too loudly (it was Wicked for crying out loud – not Chekov).
Which is why we need more of the kind of ad campaign that Mencap’s just launched. The learning disability charity filmed Ellen Goodey, Ben Morse, Kirstie Andrews, Matthew McCarthy and Dharmesh Ladd carrying out everyday tasks like any other young people.
Now I can’t stand reality TV, but frankly, I’ve never been more pleased to watch a bunch of young unknowns doing extremely ordinary things.
Ben Morse at the keyboards in the Mencap ad
Mencap’s new ad, says Mark Goldring, the charity’s chief executive, is a step towards a more inclusive society: “We need to see more positive role models of people like Ellen, Ben, Kirstie, Matthew and Dharmesh on our TVs and in public life to help remove the stigmas associated with disability.”
Matthew McCarthy cooks in the Mencap film
The national TV, radio and print advertising campaign aims to raise £300,000 – the short film explains that if you buy any Procter and Gamble products available at Co-operative Food and Co-operative Pharmacy stores, you help raise funds for Mencap and sister charity ENABLE Scotland as part of The Co-operative’s Charity of the Year Partnership. The promotion will run for six weeks nationwide, with Procter and Gamble donating 3p on each product sold from over 20 of their brands. So now (can’t resist this…) you can wash, and go raise awareness.
Mencap's Ellen Goodey stars in the new ad
Money raised will go towards launching a programme called Inspire Me, aimed at working with young people with a learning disability aged 16-25, their parents, carers, and local communities, to overcome the exclusion and prejudice by providing activities and training, together with volunteering and employment opportunities.
You can watch the ad here:
Ben, one of the stars of the new ad campaign, also features in this previous Mencap film where he and his mother explain how he’s been verbally abused, spat on, pelted with stones and “too scared to leave the house” because of bullying. As his mother, Charlotte says, you can’t wrap a child with learning disabilities in cotton wool “because they’re not learning any of those things they need to learn to be indepdendent”. No better words to show why the campaign is worth supporting.
I featured a bold production about special needs at north London’s New End Theatre on this blog recently, and now the same venue is presenting another performance focusing on challenging issues (all pics by Francis Loney).
Where’s Your Mama Gone? is a play about fostering, the vulnerability of children in care and the impact of the care system on the lives of the young. The show ran in Leeds before moving to London. The siblings in the play are in care in West Yorkshire after losing their mother to a serial killer – playwright Brian Daniels was a trainee teacher in the city in 1970s Yorkshire when Peter Sutcliffe was at large and he has drawn on the experience in his writing. Daniels was inspired by Richard McCann’s novel, Just a Boy; McCann’s mother Wilma was Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe’s first recorded murder victim in 1975.
The theatre in Hampstead, London, has made over a hundred free tickets available to disadvantaged children in the area for the drama which also highlights issues around such as alcoholism, drug use and questions of identity and heritage.
Daniels wanted to explore issues of care in Camden, home to the New End, Hampstead, whre only 59% of children in care passed a GCSE subject in 2009, compared with 78% nationally. Local foster children also had the highest rate of substance abuse in inner London, with almost one in five reported as having a problem with alcohol or drugs.
The playwright says: “The play was written to offer hope to young people living in care and to draw attention to the vast difficulties they face. Many of the youngsters that we have invited down will not have had the chance to experience live theatre and I urge other venues to set aside some tickets as well.”
The theatre is also launching a drive to attract wider audiences, including a pioneering “pay what you can” optional pricing system will operate for the entire run of the play. The suggested ticket price is £15, but theatregoers will be free to choose how much they pay at the box office in an effort to attract audiences that would otherwise not attend.
Where’s Your Mama Gone? runs until Sunday 28th August 2011. Tickets are available from the theatre.
Festival-goers' abandoned tents at Wakestock, Wales, pic credit: Graham Williams
It’s summer festival season, and the scene above will be a familiar sight to music lovers and festival organisers around the country. But what do you do the morning after the night before – apart from chuck thousands of abandoned tents and other camping debris into landfull? Well if you work in housing in North Wales, you launch an innovative little scheme to re-distribute tents and other camping kit like clothing and sleeping bags to hostels and drop in centres across the region.
Staff and service users from North Wales Housing’s homeless hostel in Bangor, St Mary’s, have made good use of a stash of abandoned camping equipment after the Wakestock festival in Cardigan Bay, North Wales, earlier this month.
North Wales Housing staff pose with their haul of shelters
The equipment by the housing association staff and hostel users includes some 79 pop up tents, 38 normal tents, 47 sleeping bags, 54 inflatable beds, 51 camping chairs, 45 roll mats including thermo rests, 17 pairs of wellies and eight new pillows. All items will be redistributed to rough sleepers and at other local hostels and day centres.
Kerry Jones of St Mary’s Hostel says: “As the months get colder, the need for shelter, warm clothing and blankets escalates and we struggle to be able to provide everyone with the support that they need. This collection will help not only our service users but many other nearby homeless facilities.”
Housing staff ferry the tents and equipment back to the hostel
I recently blogged about Create! Art for Autism, a national art competition run by Beechwood College, a specialist residential college in Wales. The aim of the project was to show that art can not only encourage learning and instill lifelong skills but boost quality of life and future prospects.
The awards ceremony took place at the weekend – more than 350 entries were received from 52 different schools from all over the UK, and as far away as India and Croatia – and a couple of the very worthy winners are here:
Angel, by Sam Fitzgerlad, Create! Art for Autism winner (pic credit: Huw Evans Agency)
The Digital Category was won by Sam Fitzgerald, above. Angel, the work by the 18-year-old from St Cenydd School in Caerphilly, was praised by judges as having a haunting and metaphysical quality.
Esther Whitney, Aged 24 from Birmingham City University won the 3D Category prize for her sculpture, A Thimble Full. Esther’s work was inspired by her difficulties with social interaction, with the thimbles representing that a thimble full of relationships can be enough for young people with an autistic spectrum disorder. The award was presented by Lucinda Bredin, Editor at Bonhams Magazine and member of the judging panel, who complimented Esther and the other finalists on the “detail, depth and complexity of their work.”
A Thimble Full by Esther Whitney, winner, Create Art for Autism
The prize for the Teacher’s Choice Award was presented by Darren Jackson, Principal of Beechwood College to Alexander Fox-Robinson, aged 15 from Pembroke School, Pembroke for his pencil drawing, The Blitz, which featured in my previous blogpost on the competition.
The Blitz, by Alex Fox-Robinson
The finalists’ work is on display at The Old Library, Cardiff until Sunday August 7 and will move to London early in the autumn. For more information contact Create! Art for Autism. The amazing amount of entries to the competition shows the vital nature of platforms to showcase the talent of young people like Sam and Esther and the organisers say that next year’s competition will include even more categories.
Some of us count the calories when it comes to food, but how many of us count the kilowatts too? Watch the quirky video above – there’s animation and a jolly opening piano melody too – and check out how Brighton-based Rob Smith, a resident of housing association Affinity Sutton, has developed a carbon calculator for the home.
For seven years, Smith has used an online programme to work out the carbon footprint of everything he uses in the home, so that he can find ways to keep reducing it. Beans on toast, he says, comes in at an energy efficient 95w to prepare, while oven-baked fish and chips come in at 200w. Watch Rob work out why the Champions League takes up less energy than the Europa, and how he’s developing his own, open-source programme, which anyone can use to help them make informed decisions about their carbon lifestyle.
Smith’s story will grace the big screen tomorrow evening at a special screening at the Shortwave Cinema, Bermondsey Square, London. He is among five finalists in a national competition run by Affinity Sutton to encourage residents to share their experiences of how they make a positive contribution to the environment.
The five finalists worked with a specialist social enterprise company to create the films which are being put to the public vote on Twitter and via the Affinity Sutton website. The winner will receive an all expenses paid trip to The Eden Project.
Smith adds: “Over the last few years I have been measuring my energy use and then trying to reduce it. But I found that the calculators online were mostly based on estimates. I wanted to develop one to measure absolutely everything you buy, eat and use. I think a lot of people will find it interesting because it provides a more accurate way of measuring your carbon footprint.”
Other green residents include Jeannie and Eddie, from East Grinstead. After approching their housing officer to see if they could plant some bulbs in some disused space, they launched the Salad Project. Over the last year the residents have planted potatoes, runner beans, French beans, and some herbs. An old dustbin was turned into a water butt by a resident, and there is now a composter for food waste.
Power-saving Phil, from Manchester
Then there’s Phil, from Manchester, who uses a “smart plug” to monitor how much energy appliances are using and Tony, Steph and Brian, from Middlesbrough, who launched a recycling facility on their estate. Christine, Ian and Tom, from Stoke, meanwhile, turned a derelict piece of land into a community garden with wildlife area and community classroom facility.
The new recycling station on a Middlesbrough estate
Photographer David Constantine – he’s the creator of the arresting and uplifting image above, Bengali Welcome, above – has a theory as to why his subjects relax once they’re in front of his lens; his wheelchair breaks the ice.
Constantine’s work is being shown as part of the inaugural Bloomsbury Art Fair that opens today at the Goodenough College, Mecklenburgh Square, London. As well as works by popular artists Banksy and Damien Hirst, there are pieces for sale by new and emerging artists. The three-day charitiable event raises money for spinal injury-related charities.
Constantine, for example, began taking pictures as a teenager and sold his bike to buy his first camera. While on a working holiday in Australia in 1982 he broke his neck in a diving accident and became quadriplegic. Paralysed from the shoulders down, he gave up photography for a year. But while he wasn’t able to pick up his camera, he continued to “see” images. As he writes on his website: “During that year I realised that I was still ‘seeing’ pictures, choosing images in my head even to the point of deciding on film types and composition I would use for a particular shot. The only thing I lacked was the physical ability to use a camera. I realised that this was a ridiculous reason for giving up and all it need take was some adaptations to my camera and wheelchair to enable me to take pictures.”
Exactly a year to the day of his injury he began the process of taking pictures again. He travels with his work for Motivation, the international disability charity he co-founded, and his main subjects are people in their own environments. As he says, “the disadvantages I foresaw with my photography after becoming a wheelchair user have turned into advantages.” He has developed different skills and enhanced others: “I am so conspicuous that it has made me bolder, I am happy to go and ask someone for their picture. If I can’t communicate verbally I make it very obvious that I would like to take their picture, people make it quite clear whether they are happy for me to photograph them or not.”
Love, by Sophie Morgan
Among the participating artists is Sophie Morgan, who was runner up to Britain’s Missing Top Models. Morgan had a car accident in 2003 that left her paralysed and in a wheelchair for life. Her beautiful piece, Love, is above.
Morgan’s website declares that she is (in this order) an “Artist, Portraitist, Writer, Arts Psychoth
If a week’s a long time in politics, it’s enough to induce amnesia in the fourth estate. The changing headlines over the last week – they began with the Dilnot Commission, moved onto phone hacking and returned to social care with the break up of Southern Cross care homes – prove that today’s news really is tomorrow’s fish and chip paper. Find the rest of my post over on the Voluntary Organisations Disability Group (VODG) blog.
As councils tighten eligibility criteria for housing at the same time as benefit cuts hit, charities warn of an increase in homelessness. With the trend growing for councils to overhaul their allocation policies, there are fresh concerns about people being forced into the unaffordable private rented sector or pushed out into cheaper suburbs. Read my Guardian piece here.
