Monday 19 October to 25 October 2020 was Activism week and we focused on anything to do with campaigning.
Members of our campaigning team were around all week to answer questions and share top tips. We hope you found the week interesting and inspiring!
Please note, this event has finished. You can't post on this conversation. Please do have a read through all the wonderful posts but if you want to post about activism or campaigning please write a brand new post here - healthunlocked.com/mencap/w...
Best wishes
Sarah
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Next Monday 19th October is the start of Activism week and it is a great opportunity to focus on all types of campaigning that is happening nationally.
I’m Mike, Mencap’s Campaigns Officer for the south of England. I have worked in the campaigns team for over 10 years. During this time, I have been the Development Officer for the Changing Places toilets campaign and have been working on the Treat me well health campaign for the past 4 years.
We hosted our first ever Activism week between in 2018 as a way of celebrating all the brilliant activists out there doing great campaigning work across the country.
What Activism week is all about?
During the coming week, members of Mencap’s campaigns team will be available to answer questions and get involved in campaign and activism discussions online. We'd love to hear from you.
Have you campaigned about something?
What would you like to campaign about - what issues are important to you?
Would you like some tips about how to get started?
Introduction to the online community
If you would like to get involved the link is below to sign up and to join the Activism week event.
The campaigns team will be posting about some of the campaigns Mencap are working on, including #SocialCareCrisis and our health campaign “Treat me well” which is in its 4th year and currently focussing on young people with learning disabilities and autism.
We look forward to hearing from you throughout the week.
HI Everyone! just wanted to jump on this and say Hello to everyone.
I'm Stephen John - Regional campaign manager at Mencap. I have been at Mencap for 11 years now and have been managing the campaign officers since 2016. I felt it was important to maintain my grassroots base of campaigning and so I also cover the North of England in frontline, community campaigning.
Mike has posted lots of important questions and information about the event but if you have any campaign related questions outside of the event then please do get in touch! Treat me well is our signature campaign and is about hospital care but the team is working on lots of things at present. As well as the COVID19 work, the social care work and Treat me well, we are also working on a childrens campaign and are working with local charities to create some really useful information for parents of children with a learning disability and for hospital staff! keep an eye out for these!
Activism Week is here! We'd love to hear from you about anything do with getting things changed. This can be something local to you, or an issue you know affects people all over the country.
To get you started here is a great video from Harry about Clear Covid Communication - which is the theme this year.
There is also reminder here to take part in the Childrens’ Campaign Early Years Case Studies and Survey healthunlocked.com/mencap/p... This is aimed at parents with young children (0-5).
I've campaigned for improvements to a local road crossing near my house. I found my local councillor massively helpful.
One too from me is to find other like minded people. When it is just you it feels like you are just complaining. When there is a small group ( or a large group 😃) you have more impact.
Hi Freddie. Thanks for getting in touch. Great to hear about your campaigning and we fully agree that working with others really helps. Let us know what area you are from and we can link you up with the regional campaigns officer. Or go to the link below and look at the regional map.
I was part of a campaign group a few years ago as some people with a learning disability wanted to have a crossing from their house on one side of a very busy road to the pub and bus stop on the other side. We had the police to speed checks and worked out the average speed cars were going, we spoke to the elderly home near by and the local school also. We also filmed a member of the group who is a wheelchair user, trying to cross the road. It took 11 minutes as the road was so busy and no cars stopped to allow him to cross safely.
When people come together they can do great things. There is now a zebra crossing near their house and they feel much safer being independent as they don't have to worry about crossing a very busy, very fast and unsafe road.
Childrens’ Campaign Early Years Case Studies and Survey
There is still time to complete the Early Years survey and submit an interest in being a case study family for the Early Years campaign launching in December.
I have just read this. I signed the petition the other week too.
How is it best to campaign about social care? It is provided by the local authority – surely you should campaign at a local level. Can your local councillor help with that?
Hi Grace! Thanks for signing our petition, much appreciated, You're right that local authorities provide social care but the funding comes from central government. We're developing an e-action at the moment where people will be able to send a message to their MPs about this issue. We need urgent investment in social care by the government. I'll be posting more about this in the coming weeks, so stay tuned!
I love your TMW campaign. It is huge issue. How are you working with hospitals during the pandemic? Do you think this sort of thing is getting overlooked at the moment?
Can your MP help with this sort of campaigning? My MP is brilliant and I have contacted them directly in the past to ask for advice and help. I get a bit confused what you need to ask your MP for, and what your local councillor can help with. Some decisions are make by your local council, and some in Parliament, but it also depends who sets budgets. Do you have any guidance about this?
Re: hospitals. We have a lot of hospitals and healthcare workers signed up as Treat me well Champions and we've emailed then links to our Easy Read resources on Covid-19. We've made it really clear that hospitals should continue to make reasonable adjustments for people with a learning disability when in hospital - the Covid-19 crisis should not be used as an excuse not to give people with LD the support they need.
Re: MPs and councillors. Even I find the difference confusing! But Mencap have got an Easy Read document which talks about MPs and councillors which you might find helpful:
When deciding what to campaign on, we have to think really carefully about what the key issues are. For example, when people contact our helpline, what are the big problems they are seeking help with? We knew hospital care was a big issue and felt that rather than just produce a report and move on to the next thing, it would be better to focus on that as our main campaign issue for a few years. That way, we could put some solid work in to it, build strong local campaigning groups, and make a real long-term impact.
And with Covid-19, we're now hearing more and more from people who have had their social care cut - cuts to support workers, cuts to day services... So social care is also something we're solidly campaigning on.
But it's not just the Campaigns and Activism Team working on this. There's also our Policy Team, Parliamentary Team, Helpline Team, Media Team, Comms and Digital Team... There's lots of people working hard behind the scenes every day to campaign for better support and services for people with a learning disability.
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