Page 15 - Community Living Magazine 34-2

image not photoshopped
progress

How far have we really come?

Jo Clare reflects back with fury and pride on several decades was not confined to vile political rhetoric.
spent working with people who have learning disabilities – and Finding the bodies of two decapitated cats
in our shed was a low point, as was an
looks forward to her ‘unrestrainedly vexatious’ future unprovoked violent racist and
homophobic attack on my women’s
football team in a Hackney pub.
am gutted. Far from being able to look At primary school, my son – later to be
back and say with satisfaction “Look diagnosed with ADHD – was at risk of
ho
I w far we have come”, I have just statementing and exclusion. Like a prowling
ended 37 years working alongside people lioness, I worked there as a primary helper,
with learning disabilities and autism amid determined to scare them off and keep
a catastrophic national descent from him in the mainstream. I roared. It worked.
progression and possibility to regression Nearly 40 years later, he has a home, a
and reversal. family and has just achieved his ideal job.
For the past 10 years, the UK has been His progress sounds linear and inevitable.
pedalling backwards so fast on human It wasn’t, it isn’t and it won’t be. This is
rights and social inclusion that the true for anyone who is not neurotypical or
strident hopefulness of Valuing People who has intellectual disabilities or mental
and Valuing People Now, which informed health challenges.
the start of my leadership at Three Cs and
was the blueprint for transformational Brilliant over brutish
culture change, is now barely an echo. It is telling that, on my last day as chief
Fuelled by populism and rampant executive at Three Cs, we published Less
individualism, abetted by algorithms and Jo Clare: “Progress on human rights is neither Than the Sum of the Parts, an out-and-out
big data analytics, progress has given way linear nor inevitable, and always against the odds” condemnation of the assessment and
to a deficit of positive public policy and a treatment unit and inpatient system for
surfeit of avoidable deaths and abuse In contrast, my beginnings appear endemic human rights abuses.
scandals which, untackled, show high misleadingly rosy. I first worked alongside It is also telling that I left behind an
tolerance for systemic mistreatment of people with learning difficulties as a organisation and a sector which, at its
children, young people and adults with volunteer literacy tutor at Elfrida Rathbone brilliant best, has ducked and dived its
learning disabilities and autism. in Islington back in the early 1980s. way through brutish and bruising times
To assuage my guilt at “how far we have Speaking out and inclusion were in the with its integrity intact, protecting people
not come”, I remind myself that culture is organisation’s DNA – passion for equality from the worst harm and promoting and
a deliberate act of leadership and the and social justice were in mine. I took it for celebrating good, ordinary lives.
awfulness of the past decade was granted that people had a right to homes, On my last day, people from 24
politically on purpose. relationships, skills, qualifications and jobs. households dialled in to my Zoom farewell
Elfrida sent me on a 12-week teaching party and enjoyed afternoon tea and cake,
Subterfuge of austerity course on computer-assisted learning. dancing spontaneously online. Such a
If austerity was the strategic subterfuge While most offices were still struggling with simple, ordinary thing would not have
for attacks on the most vulnerable, then typewriters, Tipp-Ex and photocopiers, I happened a decade ago. So I can say, even
60% cuts to local authority funding and was using a computer and a flatbed in adversity, how far we have come.
devastating welfare reform were its scanner to teach people with learning In the end, progress on human rights is
foot soldiers. difficulties to read and write. It ignited a neither linear nor inevitable, and always
Inevitably, health and social inequalities career-long interest in using innovation to against the odds. My tenure as an
were exposed and deepened by the push the boundaries for social inclusion. organisational leader has ended but my
Covid-19 crisis, leading to disproportionate It was not all rosy, though – most tenure as a human being has not. My
deaths and erosion of rights under the people with learning disabilities were personal and professional experiences
Human Rights Act, the Care Act, the Mental still institutionalised. have made me unapologetically fierce
Health Act and the Mental Capacity Act. As my volunteering turned into paid and combative.
At the terrifying height of the pandemic, work in schools, adult education and the Remember Desiderata’s “Avoid loud and
we had no surgical masks and the NHS voluntary and community sector, my aggressive persons, they are vexatious to
could not guarantee a service free personal life was being progressively the spirit”? Now, free to roar, I look
from eugenics. battered by Thatcher’s Britain. forward to being unrestrainedly vexatious
My family was called “pretended” (the
I cried when I wrote to paramedics law at the time banned councils and for some time to come. n
warning them of legal action if they used
Seán Kelly/Three Cs the Clinical Frailty Scale or Down’s schools from “promoting the teaching of Jo Clare retired as chief executive of support
the acceptability of homosexuality as a
organisation Three Cs (www.threecs.co.uk)
syndrome/autism labels to exclude
in 2020. She remains a member of the
pretended family relationship”) and I was
people we supported from life-saving
Community Living editorial board
hospital treatment.
www.cl-initiatives.co.uk treated as an enemy of the state. Hatred Community Living Vol 34 No 2 | Winter 2021 15