Each month a group of self-advocates meet together in a forum. The forum is for people with Learning Disabilities. The minutes of our forums are put into easy read and sent to the Mental Health and Learning Disabilities Partnership Board. York Advocacy were given a Celebrating Participation in Healthcare Grant from NHS England. We used the grant to create a comic which showed some of the work that self-advocates had done with health services. They created characters based on themselves and decided on the story lines. We hope you enjoy reading the stories and meeting the health action superheroes and villains trying to prevent self-advocates having a voice! Our first story is called Da-Electric This is about a self-advocate who attends a GP appointment with their support worker. At the appointment the GP speaks to the support worker and not the self-advocate. Later in the forum self-advocates are asked by the Community Team for People with Learning Disabilities if they would like to help interview people for a new job they had.
Self-advocates were happy to interview but on the way were taken away by the Da-Electric! Self-advocates had to plan a daring rescue so they could get to the interview on time. Our next story is called Jargon. It s about the Joint Strategic Needs Assessment. JSNA for short. Self-advocates did some work on the JSNA with the Mental Health and Learning Disabilities Partnership Board. The story is about how the Jargon monster wants to get rid of easy-read making it harder for self-advocates to have a voice and be involved in planning services. Our superheroes have to work together to stop the Jargon monster. Our final story is called Information Raider. York asked self-advocates to share their experiences of being discharged from hospital. This information was going to be put in a report for the Health and Wellbeing Board. Before the report could be sent it was stolen by the Information Raider and self-advocates had to get it back to Healthwatch! If you would like us to show you how self - advocates created the storyboard and comic please email us at office@yorkadvocacy.org.uk.
A BIG THANK YOU! A message from Lee Greenfield (Service Manager, York Advocacy). Thank you to NHS England for awarding the Participation in Healthcare Grant to York Mind who deliver York Advocacy and for their support with this project. Many people have been involved in creating this comic. I d like to thank self-advocates who give their time and voice in the forums and those who attended the workshops. They created their characters and chose the stories that they wanted to tell. To all of the staff in York Advocacy, Jamie and Darrin who supported self-advocates in the comic workshops, and Kayti who took the ideas and stories and put them into storyboards ready to be illustrated. A big thank you to Andy our illustrator for his time and commitment to this project. Andy met with self-advocates and turned their ideas and characters into super action heroes and villains and created a fantastic comic. Thank you to all of the speakers and guests who work in local services and who have attended the forum and supported selfadvocates to have a voice. We hope you have enjoyed reading this comic as much as we all enjoyed making it!
Self - Advocates Duncan Mace Louise Hicken Heather Martin Anthony Long Robert Hudson Stephanie Arksey Robin Plumley Darren Waterworth Tim Crossley David Cartwright Katie Douglas Helen Harrison Nicholas Ramsey Gunn Leanne Metcalfe Michelle Ward Sam Hind Rachel Griffiths York Advocacy (York Mind) Jamie Edwards Darrin Thomson Kayti Ball About the artist And Sian Balsom, Healthwatch York Sarah Walker, Clinical Team Manager Learning Disabilities Team, Systems House City of York Council Mental Health and Learning Disability Partnership Board Andy Hurst is a local York illustrator. Inspired by the comic artists Darwyn Cooke and Bruce Timm, h is art style is reminiscent of the Golden Age of comic books with a modern twist. A ndy has enjoyed drawing this comic and has loved working directly with th e Self Advocates and the York Mind Team in its creation. You can see more of his work on his website; www.andyhurst.co.u k
C opyright January 2016. York Mind. All rights reserved.