Easy Read
Last year, as Speaking Up and Advocacy Partners, we: worked with 10,139 people had 113 services, in 36 areas gave out 453 of our easyread SEN resources had 534 paid staff and volunteers working with you supported 2,155 young people to speak up for themselves and others. London London
Lots of things in England are changing. People are getting personal budgets. The Government does not have enough money to give to everyone that needs support. So we need to be making sure that the people who really need help get it. To make sure that we could help as many people as possible, Speaking Up and Advocacy Partners became one organisation. With more people working for the organisation, we have more experience and we know more things. We can tell each other how to do things better and this will make us better. We can also save money by working together..
In December 2010 we became VoiceAbility. Our focus is on: strengthening voice championing rights changing lives Even now, after we became one organisation, there is still a lot left to do. There are lots of people who don t get their voices heard. We want to make real changes to people s lives, to services and to government policies. When Advocacy Partners and Speaking Up joined together, a lot of people were involved. It was a lot of hard work. We want to thank the trustees of both Advocacy Partners and Speaking Up for their help. We have made a great start and we look forward to working with you in the future.
Fishing If you have a fish, you can eat for a day. If you know how to catch a fish, you can eat forever. This is kind of how we think about speaking up for ourselves. If we know how to speak up then we can always make sure that people listen to us. We work with thousands of people across the country. We want as many of these people to be able to speak up for themselves. We run self advocacy groups People learn to speak up for themselves. And for each other. This builds a support group. If you feel confident, you can change your life and speak up for yourself and for other people. Lee lives with his mum in Sheffield. He liked to watch TV, play video games and visit his Nan. After working with us Lee started travelling on the bus, tram and train. Lee got more confident and now goes to the shops on his own. He also travels to see friends. Lee has also got a job working in a charity shop.
Rights and Realities Everyone has rights. We help people understand their rights and have control over their lives. There are things about life that aren t always fair. Most people don t think they are being unfair. But a lot of people don t really think about it.
What did we do about it? Got a changing places toilet Helped people to vote Made stay safe cards Told people about Hate Crime Got free rail travel for support workers Malcolm was ill and had to go to hospital. He had a mental health problem and was told to stay in hospital. The law says you can only be told to stay in hospital for 28 days. Malcolm was there longer than this. He wanted to leave and they wouldn t let him. This was illegal. We worked with Malcolm to get the hospital to let him go home. Malcolm was very happy with the result and phoned to thank VoiceAbility for their help.
Bahadar Hearing, not just listening Community Advocacy In the last year we worked with thousands of people. Some were old, some were young. Lots had a learning disability or a mental health problem. Bahadar is 37 and didn t have a say in his life. Bahadar wanted to do more with his days. He wanted to join a group and meet people. Bahadar worked with an advocate and his family. He now has a paid job one day a week. Nobody was being listened to. We are very good at getting people listened to. We also make sure that the person we work with is included in all decisions. He joined a local project to learn new skills. Bahadar got more confident so he can now speak up for himself.
Tommy has a restraining order from his Beth family. This means he must not go near his family. is 16 and looks after her mum Tommy keeps breaking his restraining order who is so ill. has been to prison. Beth has her own needs as well. She got scared Tommy didn t understand the restraining about order what so kept would going happen back home. He didn t have any other home to her to if go her to. mum had to go into hospital. Tommy worked with VoiceAbility to get a safe place to live when he got out of prison. VoiceAbility s advocates met with Beth. Beth just wanted to know that she He was able to speak in court about his would home. be OK. Our Advocates worked with Beth and her mum to The judge let Tommy leave prison but said he had to go to make an emergency plan the place that we had found him. that worked for them. Tommy is now out of prison. His family Now visit him Beth regularly and her in mum his new home. feel happy about the future.
Statutory Advocacy VoiceAbility works with people who have to stay in hospital under the Mental Health Act. They also work with people who are not able to make decisions for themselves. So how do we help? Independent Mental Health Advocacy (IMHA) VoiceAbility s Independent Mental Health Advocates work with people who have mental health illnesses. They are not allowed to go home and have to stay in hospital until they are better. We have worked with lots of people around England. Many people just want to know what their choices are. They want to know that someone is listening to what they want. Most people don t want to be told what to do. They want to decide what they want.
Independent Mental Capacity Advocacy (IMCA) Some people are not able to choose where they live or how to get medical help. They can t tell us what they want. So we try to understand what they might want. We talk to lots of people and ask lots of questions. Then we tell the decision maker what we think the person might want. Phillippa needed to have her wisdom tooth taken out. She had to go to hospital but was scared. She had no friends or family so we were asked to help. We asked Phillippa s doctor to help her understand what was happening. He helped her to feel less scared about the operation. Phillippa had the operation and now she is well again.
Innovate to Educate Learning a new skill. Getting a job. Going out with friends. These are normal wishes but some people cannot make these wishes come true. We are working to change that. Next Steps We work with people to give them confidence and positive skills. This means they can go to college, get training or get work. Last year Next Steps worked with lots of people. We helped other people get work or go to college. Tackling Hate Crime Hate Crime VoiceAbility s Surrey team run our Hate Crime project. It is run by people who have learning disabilities. They have told people what hate crime is. They also talk about how you can stay safe. They are going to do a film about hate crime.
Promote the Vote Only a small number of people with learning disabilities can vote. This is because the voting system is not clear. Our group of young people with learning Disabilities help make voting easier. The team made an award-winning website to make voting clearer. The website is www.promotethevote.co.uk. This project works with young people. Some of them have disabilities and some of them don t. Our team made a film about what they wanted to do. They want to get a job and be a part of the community. The film is on our website www.voiceability.org.
Taking control Social care is changing. In the past councils would make decisions for people. But people should be able to make their own choices. Everyone should be able to do new things and learn what they do and don t like. More people have a personal budget. But the future is still not clear. VoiceAbility s advocates can work with people to plan what they want to spend their money on. Margaret lived on her own. In the morning someone would help Margaret. But Sometimes this was too early and sometimes they didn t come at all. We worked with Margaret to help her get better support. Margaret used pictures to help her tell people what she wanted Margaret talked to four support workers and decided which one she wanted. Margaret now has support at times that work for her. She has also learnt bus routes so she can travel by bus on her own. Margaret s confidence has grown.
The Board Game Personal Budgets, Self Directed Support, Personalisation. These words are used when to talk about giving people control of their lives and their own money. We made a board game called My Life, My Budget. It helps people to understand what money can be used for. The board game is used by lots of people. It helps them to get their personal budgets.
Lived experiences Parliament VoiceAbility has 5 Parliaments. They are for adults and young people in England. They are run by people with learning disabilities. These people are called MPs as they are members of Parliament. The MPs talk to other people with learning disabilities to find out what issues they have. They then try to find answers for the problems.
Consultancy &Training VoiceAbility have consultants and trainers with learning disabilities. They share their skills and ideas with other people. Last year they trained lots of people in England. These were people with learning disabilities as well as professionals. They have trained nurses, police and teachers. Jamie wanted to be a youth MP. He spent a year going to Youth Parliament meetings. This helped his confidence to grow. Jamie and Gemma, another youth MP, ran a training day for 300 police officers. The training day was a big success. Jamie said: Being a Youth MP was really good. It has made me more confident. Speaking up in front of loads of people at Parliaments and the Learning Disability Awareness Training which I did with Gemma, made me not shy.
A welcome thorn in the side We work with the people who use our services. We help them to speak up for themselves and to have a voice. We also work closely with professionals who run the services. We tell them what we think needs to change so that their services are better. We also work with people who use our services to tell professionals what needs to change. Quality Checkers Our Quality checkers have learning disabilities. They check the quality of care in care homes. Last year they checked 70 care homes and interviewed over 200 people. They wrote the results in a report. The reports have been used by the people who run the services. They have made changes to make the services better.
Fully Inc Fully Inc is a team of young people with learning disabilities. They work with organisations in the community. They ask why some people cannot get services. They support organisations to have a Youth Champion. This is someone who makes sure that young people can get their service. The Fully Inc team goes to meetings to tell other professionals how they can get young people involved in services. They are trying to get young people included in services like policing, health and transport Helping in Hillingdon Hillingdon is in London. We spoke to over 100 children and young people with disabilities in schools. We put what these children told us into a report. We gave this report to the council in Hillingdon. They are going to change things so young people are better off.
The people who work for us We work with people all over England. VoiceAbility staff all work very hard to help people speak up for themselves. Here are some of VoiceAbility s people: Stephen Hill - Trainer We all help each other and we make a very good team. That means we can help other people who need it most. Michelle Mansfield Trainer I like making sure people get heard. I like working with the rest of the team and I like a challenge. Gloria Ferris - Trustee: I enjoy being a Trustee. I got involved because I was an advocate for my friend Muriel. I have a disability and I have been an advocate. So I can talk to the Board about what they should be doing. I am a friendly person and enjoy visiting projects and talking to staff and other people who use our services.
Our future We are unsure about the future. But people still need our help and our services. There will also be less money for services in the future.
Some things that we want to do next year: Reach more people Reaching more people We want to work with as many people as we can in the future. We will do this better by working with other organisations as partners. Do more for less Doing more for less People who use our services want to get the most out of the services. The people who give us money for services want value for their money too. VoiceAbility needs to give people more services for less money. Have new ideas Consolidating and innovating In the future we will do more of what we have been doing this year. We will carry on doing this around the country. We will also come up with new and different ideas for services.
Thanks Thank you to everyone who used our services over the past year. Your feedback helps us to keep getting better. We also want to thank the organisations who have helped us over the past year.
VoiceAbility would like to say a big thank you to all our staff, volunteers and trustees for your work during this very busy year.