Monday 7 March 2011

Call-Out

Government funding to pay for many disabled people's support is being cut. For many disabled people this means having less choice and control over their support, and recieving less hours of support. For people working as support workers this means job losses, reductions in pay, and other changes to working conditions. But these cuts, along with the benefit changes, are just the most recent change to the way disabled people are supported by the state. As we oppose harmful government cuts let's also take this opportunity to think about what we want support to be like, to defend what we like about support as it is offered now, and make changes where we think it is needed.

This is a call-out for stories and reflections on support. If you have experience of support- whether as someone who has received support, someone who has worked to support someone, either paid or unpaid, as a friend or family member of someone who has received support, or as any combination of these- and would like to contribute to a blog about support please contact: spprtconversation@gmail.com .

We know that not everyone's experience of support is the same. But some of the experiences we might share are about how gender, race, class and sexuality affect support. All contributions are welcome, but our starting point is that of self-determination and respect for all disabled people. This blog is to try and further our understanding of support generally.  We will not publish details of individual people without their consent.

We hope that this blog will be a way of sharing our experiences and thoughts. We also hope that it is a way of starting a conversation about what support could be like. Please help shape this call-out and the project. Send any suggestions, comments or criticisms to spprtconversation@gmail.com.

We look forward to working on this together.