Join our volunteering event

[Sarah_Mencap]

It's Volunteers' Week so we'd love to hear any stories, or questions, you have about volunteering.

healthunlocked.com/mencap/p...

Our Volunteering team will be around to answer queries and share some inspiring stories with you during the week.

I can't wait to hear from you all.

Sarah

[ulrichburke]

or sure I've got a question about volunteering. I've got disabilities, Asperger's, Cerebral Palsy, Hydrocephalus and Dyspraxia. All of which worry other people far more than they've ever worried me. Thing IS - and you can look at any disability site you like to bear this one out - if you're the one WITH the disability, all the able-bodieds assume you're useless. It gives them, I feel, a comforting sense of superiority to think they're the ones Being Nice to *text edited by community moderator* the person with a disability! It's a total glass ceiling - above it, able-bodieds doing all the volunteering, below it, disabled people being volunteered for.

All of which is VERY disempowering, on the lines of 'Give a man a fish and you feed him. Teach a man to fish....!'

I've been trying to get jobs, voluntary or otherwise - usually voluntary because the 'paid' ones would've put me worse off than on benefits in real terms despite my having a bunch of good quals. everyone told me I couldn't get - for twenty years and more. I've been turned down every single time thus far. Why? Because I'm the one with the disabilities, so I'm the one volunteered FOR, NOT one of the ones doing the volunteering. It's almost the last bastion of prejudice, this, so taken for granted it's not even mentioned in the papers. I mean, if you turned someone down for a job because he's got dark skin it would make the papers SOMEWHERE. Turn someone down because they've got disabilities - provable because the guy who they gave the job to in the end had fewer qualifications but no disabilities - and everyone takes that as normal. Can I prove this?

For sure I can. Look at the pictures on any disability charity website. Every one - the Benevolent Able-Bodied Person looking after the *text edited by community moderator* person with a disability out of the Kindness of their Hearts. Do you ever see one of a disabled person helping look after another disabled person? When was the last time you went into a charity shop and saw a disabled person actually allowed to be a helper there?

If you remember seeing one, it's because it was such a rarity it's stuck in your mind, trust me. We just don't get given the shots. And we sit and let things get done for us because we've learned its utterly futile to do anything else - the able-bodied helper's going to do it their way through hell and high water, it's not a way we can do things, so even though we know there's other ways that suit us, we also know there's no way the helper's going to let us do them. It's too slow for the helper, (s)he wants to be done and gone so we sit like dolls, let them do their thing and they assume we can't do anything else.

It's the same in day centres. I actually used to work in a day centre and I got boiling water chucked all over me by a customer who didn't approve of a disabled guy working behind the counter. Had permanent ulcers on my legs ever since - and never had another voluntary job. Reasons? If they know about that incident it's 'for your own safety, dear'. If they don't, it's 'Sorry, you've not got the Right References.'

Course I haven't. Nobody's been giving me anything so how am I supposed to get them?

I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one out there in this position. You able-bodieds mean well but you DO like to be the Only Ones Who Can Do Stuff. Unless we're named Stephen Hawkins (or Einstein, he had Asperger's!) you don't want anything to burst your bubble of godliness. Honestly, I really think it would be easier for Barack Obama to join the KKK than for a disabled person to get a vol. job sometimes.

So how about, just for a change, making your Volunteer Week blurbs INCLUSIVE of disabled people, instead of just pointing out what could be done FOR disabled people? How about TEACHING us to fish, not just GIVING us fish? You can't even Google getting a voluntary job if you're disabled. Try it. I bet every answer Google gives you is heavily biased towards an able-bodied person helping out a disabled person, not about a disabled person actually getting to DO stuff. Heck, there's outings and stuff around here I can't get to go on because I don't have a carer to go with me. I don't NEED a flamin' carer but they still won't let me join in with them! They say it's on 'health and safety grounds.' And who wrote those health and safety rules? Right - able-bodied people!!

So us *text edited by community moderator* disabled people sit in the ghettos you vouchsafe us, surrounded by able-bodied people with Deeply Caring Smiles on their faces, doing everything the able-bodied way and feeling So Sorry for Us because we can't do it that way. What ever the 'it' is. We know there's ways we could do things. We've just given up trying to get through to you - either that or we've just given up. We've learned the hard way there's precious little chance of getting to the topside of the glass ceiling so we just sit in apathy till you've finished with us then do the few things you allow us to do for ourselves and wait the day out.

Do us a favour. Give us a shot. And if we get it wrong first time, don't do the able-bodied thing of using that as proof we shouldn't have been allowed to try it at all. We're not used to being given chances, we need to have our confidence boosted and the fear of you lot taken away. (If an able-bodied person gets something wrong first time, it's a learning curve. If a *text edited by community moderator* person with a disability gets something wrong first time, it's proof they shouldn't have been allowed to do it.)

Can you use this week to genuinely INCLUDE us, not as an excuse to exclude us even more?

Yours hopefully

Chris.