VoiceAbility’s Use Your Power campaign reaches Labour UK party conference
VoiceAbility’s Use Your Power campaign reached the Labour UK party conference last week, with the government pledging to “stop the unnecessary incarceration” of people with a learning disability and autistic people.
The Voluntary Organisations Disability Group (VODG) coalition event was about reducing the number of people with a learning disability and autistic people who are detained in England’s mental health hospitals.
It opened with one of the films from our Use Your Power campaign — featuring Bethany and her dad Jeremy.
Everyone attending the event was visibly moved by the family’s story, including the new Thurrock MP Jen Craft — who has a child with Down syndrome.
Jeremy told of how Bethany spent 3 years in a seclusion cell in a mental health hospital — “just a room 12 feet by 18 feet, nothing but a mattress on the floor”.
Our busiest advocacy service in Bedfordshire is our independent mental capacity advocacy. This is needed as a result of the person being deemed to lack capacity in relation to a decision about them. To support the person to be involved in the decision and challenge that decision when needed, and to uphold their rights,” she said.
It was brutal.
The event closed with another Use Your Power campaign film as Jeremy explained that “community provision does not exist” and that the means to preventing people with a learning disability and autistic people being admitted to mental health hospitals was “firstly getting early diagnosis”.
It’s then about getting support for people, while they are in the community
As quoted in a Sunday Express article about the event, Rt Hon Sir Stephen Timms MP, responding for the government as Minister for Social Security and Disability, said:
Action is needed — there is clear cross-government agreement that the situation needs to change. Many people are being wrongly detained.
“My colleagues in the Department of Health will help ensure people get the support they need in the community to stop the unnecessary incarceration of people with autism and learning difficulties as part of their commitment to reforms in the Mental Health Bill announced in the King’s Speech.”
Rt Hon Sir Stephen Timms MP (left) speaking at the VODG event. Photo: VODG
VoiceAbility’s Public Affairs Lead Stephen Hinchley, who helped support the event, challenged the Minister that, although Mental Health Act reforms were welcome, they would not be enough to “turn the situation around”.
What was needed, he said, was direct intervention by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care — as outlined in our Use Your Power petition.
The Minister agreed to work with Jen Craft MP to gather and listen to more views on how progress could be made. VoiceAbility will be working with VODG to follow up on this opportunity.