Category Archives: Education

The learning disabled people locked away in lockdown

‘You don’t get kisses, Mummy, you don’t get hugs.’ Jack Cavanagh, on a beach in his younger days, has autism, a learning disability and epilepsy, and lives in secure care in south Wales.

After a year in secure care 105 miles from home, Jack Cavanagh, 17, who has autism, a learning disability and epilepsy, desperately misses his family. They used to see him every weekend, but with Covid restrictions have been unable to visit. As a result, they say, Jack has become more anxious and isolated and recently begged staff to “be” his mum or dad.

I spoke to several families including Jack’s, about how the use of restraint and isolation has increased during Covid. This group of people have been overlooked during the pandemic despite the fact they are more at risk thanks to the virus.

You can read my Guardian piece here.

The disability employment gap

“Not everyone with a learning disability wants to work in a supermarket, but jobs for learning-disabled people aren’t ever talked about in terms of professions. If they were, it could change how everyone sees us.”

Veteran campaigner Gary Bourlet, co-founder of Learning Disability England, says people should have not just a job but also a career. This, as he argues in my book Made Possible, stories of success by people with learning disabilities, would have a dramatic impact on public attitudes.

Meanwhile, as a young man, Michael Edwards quit the council-run day centre he attended because he was frustrated with the menial and mind-numbingly dull “work” he was given to do. The final straw was when Edwards discovered the centre staff had been mixing up the plastic components he had spent an entire morning sorting into boxes, just so he would have a job to do in the afternoon.

I wrote for Learning Disability Today about why learning disabled people have the right to meaningful paid work as much as anyone else.

These issues are even more pressing issue now that COVID-19 has intensified the inequalities faced by learning disabled people in everything from health and wellbeing to employment. We already know that successive welfare-to-work schemes have not really helped people with learning disabilities or been specifically aimed at them.

Read the rest of the piece here and find out more about my book here.

Made Possible: Shaun’s story

Human rights campaigner Shaun Webster, in Made Possible, stories of success by people with learning disabilities – in their own words

A complete joy working with campaigner Shaun Webster, who describes his life in my upcoming book ‘Made Possible, stories of success by people with learning disabilities.’

Shaun, who I filmed with pre-lockdown, explains what drives him and how he defied those who told him he’d never achieve anything.

Made Possible shows how and why people’s potential should be supported, and that we all benefit when this happens. It couldn’t be a more apt book for our current times.

Pre-order Made Possible from the usual booksellers like https://amzn.to/3fMJMXh or see if your local bookstore can order it for you. For updates, follow #MadePossible and @Saba_Salman on Twitter and Instagram and the Facebook.

coronavirus impact on deaf employees

Everyone struggles with working from home – from managing conference calls to difficulties with Zoom – but imagine what it must be like if you are deaf or have difficulty hearing.

New research by the charity Action on Hearing Loss found that three-quarters of people who live with deafness fear they will be less productive working from home.

My Guardian report explores the barriers and solutions for deaf employees and highlights the work at the Centre for Deaf Education at City Lit college.

City Lit student and deaf mental health worker Ilyaas Cader explains the impact of not being able to communicate in his first language (sign), and calls for greater use of sign language.

Read the piece here.

beautiful Minds

Featured image: Alice Hewson, youth worker and journalist, who is dyspraxic. Credit: Owen Richards for Positive News

Rather than simply accepting people with neurodiverse conditions like autism or dyslexia, what if we recognised their hidden talents?

Positive News has just posted my article about this issue. I heard from four neurodiverse on how the way their brains work has been key to their success.

As Alice, pictured above, says: “I’ve encountered difficulties that other people don’t have to deal with, and that’s made me incredibly caring. I can put myself in someone else’s situation. I respond in a very different way to people who aren’t neurodiverse.”

You can read the entire piece here

MAde possible: in hardback

Book news: the hardbacks of my upcoming book, Made Possible, are now at the offices of my publisher, Unbound.

Copies will soon be in the hands of all of the great people who backed these first editions and therefore helped bring this book into the world.

The paperback’s out in May and is now available to pre-order from the usual places, like Foyles, Waterstones, Blackwells and Amazon.

In a nutshell, the book is 200 pages that challenge assumptions and it’s packed with power, joy, potential, humanity, humour and much more.

You can find out more about the background to the book on my publisher’s website and in this Guardian piece.

uniting to fight loneliness

A new project unites people at opposite ends of the age spectrum – individuals who are among the most excluded groups in society (photo: Anchor Hanover).

Society is in the grip of a loneliness epidemic. Headlines regularly warn about the scale of this modern scourge, from describing how social isolation increases our risk of death, to lamenting Britain’s status as one of the most age-segregated countries in the world.

What command less column inches are the small-scale solutions. There is little consideration of how hyper-local schemes – when funded, publicised and replicated nationally – could tackle loneliness and shift perceptions about the most isolated people in the country.

I’ve just written about a new project that does just this, for Byline Times. Older people at The Beeches in Leatherhead, Surrey, a home run by housing and care charity Anchor, and pupils from Woodlands School meet weekly for singing sessions run by Intergenerational Music Making (IMM), a local community interest company.

Not only are the singers at opposing ends of the age spectrum (the youngest is five, the oldest is 90), they are from two of society’s most excluded groups: the adults have dementia or a disability or depression; the pupils have severe learning difficulties, complex needs or autism. 

Uniting two such disparate groups for an hour a week at the care home has had astonishing results.

It’s a small, simple yet strong solution to the society’s most pressing issue – division. You can read the whole piece here.

Different is good

I’m really pleased that my first piece of 2020 is for the much-needed Positive News magazine, on challenging stereotypes about neurodiversity.

It features amazing people talking about how thinking differently because of autism, dyslexia, dyspraxia and ADHD can contribute to success – and what we all miss out on by ignoring this.

The extract above features Alice Hewson, who is dyspraxic, describing the advantages of thinking differently (photograph by Owen Richards).

Regular readers will notice a link between the subject matter and my upcoming book, Made Possible

The print edition of the magazine is out now and the article will be online later this month (positive.news). Amid the current news agenda, it’s a welcome look at all things uplifting and positive.

simon baron-cohen interview

 Simon Baron-Cohen: ‘Brains come in types, and they’re all normal.’ Photograph: Graeme Robertson/The Guardian

I recently interviewed Simon Baron-Cohen, a world-leading expert on autism, for the Guardian.

His latest research reflects the huge gulf between advancements in awareness and research and real, practical improvements to people’s lives.

Such findings from the Cambridge professor and director of the university’s influential Autism Research Centre add more weight to existing evidence about the significant challenges facing autistic people. Diagnosis can take years; children face cuts to special educational needs provisionjust 16% of autistic people had jobs in 2016 (compared with 80% of non-autistic people); and they are among those locked up in secure hospital-style units instead of living in communities. The Autism Act a decade ago obliged the government to create a strategy to improve support, but legislation has fallen short of promises.

Baron-Cohen hopes his centre’s recent findings will encourage better practical help (a lifelong support worker, for example) “so there’s a pathway from discovery in the lab through to changing people’s lives”.  This is crucial because academics are often cricitised for failing to translate knowledge into practice. A 2013 report by the charity Research Autism questioned why studies to look at effective services or to fully involve autistic people. Baron-Cohen says: “The old style of doing research was, without [us] realising it, arrogant, in that the scientists thought up the questions and then did it. The new way is to involve people from the outset… to co-design the studies and check the relevance and wording.”

I also spoke to Baron-Cohen about criticism of and controversy about some of his theories. Notably, his “extreme male brain’ concept, outlined in his provocative book, The Essential Difference. This describes men’s brains being wired for systemising and women’s for empathising. This led to criticisms of “neurosexism” and gender stereotyping which could risk misdiagnosis or under-diagnosis of autistic women.

His theories have also been challenged by autistic people who argue that they fuel the myth that they cannot empathise. Autistic academic Damian Milton, a lecturer at the Tizard Centre, University of Kent, says: “Simon’s a nice guy and knowledgeable in a lot of areas, but the empathising and sympathising theory suggests a lack of cognitive empathy, which many people in the autistic community disagree with.” Milton’s double empathy theory is a critique of Baron-Cohen’s, describing a mutual empathy problem between autistic and non-autistic people.

In response, Baron-Cohen says that with empathy “we need to make sure it’s [moving] two ways”. He stresses that while autistic people may struggle to imagine others’ emotions, they feel emotion if others are upset (the distinction between cognitive and affective empathy).

He says of criticism: “Sometimes I have to spend a lot of time explaining what it is I’m not saying…people just take the headline and think I’m saying autistic people are macho and aggressive.” Baron-Cohen stresses that “equality between the sexes is very important”, adding that his research explores groups of males and females “on average”, adding “this is not about individuals”.

You can read the piece in the Guardian here.

Gallery: diversity and dance at London’s Southbank

Step Live performance, Southbank, London, July 2016

On Monday, the UK’s largest inclusive secondary school dance programme puts on its annual festival of youth dance at London’s Southbank. Over 700 young people from across London and Essex will be involved in the performance.

Step Into Dance is a partnership between grant-making organisation the Jack Petchey Foundation and the Royal Academy of Dance. The scheme runs extra-curricular classes and performance opportunities across London and Essex, enabling young dancers to develop their talent and mix with a diverse range of people.

The project reaches 200 mainstream and special needs schools a year and since its launch 10 years ago, has worked with hover 50,000 young people.

The gallery of images here show the project’s regional performance events and last year’s live festival.

 

Step Into Dance at the Quest Academy, Croydon. Photo: Alicia Clarke

 

Step Into Dance at the Quest Academy, Croydon.Photo: Alicia Clarke

 

Step Into Dance at the Quest Academy, Croydon.Photo: Alicia Clarke

 

Pupils at Park View School, Haringey, London.Photo: Alicia Clarke

 

Pupils at Park View School, Haringey, London.Photo: Alicia Clarke

 

Park View School, Haringey, London.Photo: Alicia Clarke

Step Live performance, Southbank, London, July 2016.Photo: Mark Lees