Inclusion Now Volume 3

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A voice for the Inclusion Movement in the UK

Including Rosie

Volume 3

Winter 2002

2

Editorial

Contents Editorial

2

Including Rosie

3

SEN & Disability Act

4

Letters

6

All Our Children Belong

7

Thinking About Empowerment 8

Young People Empowered

10

School as an International Community

12

Breathing Hope

14

CASTLE

16

Communication Aids

17

Stuck in Neutral Review

18

Who We Are

20

Inclusion Now is also available on tape, disc and via email. Contact the Alliance for Inclusive Education for details (address on back page)

A

s we go to press the Government are busy rushing their Education Bill through Parliament. Their big idea is to introduce diversity into secondary education with more specialist schools, more faith schools and a different curriculum for 14-1 19 year olds. Respect for diversity is not created by creating diverse institutions, but by including everyone in the local community in local comprehensive schools capable of giving the support to all students to reach their potential. Schools and colleges must start by valuing everyone in their community, identifying all the barriers to everyone’s participation and finding solutions to these barriers. This means restructuring teaching and learning to meet diversity. More specialist schools and faith schools can only serve to create more barriers. Our fear is that the Bill will encourage racism and exclusion and may well prevent the sort of initiatives described in our article on page 12.

Inclusion Now is helping to organise a summer school in Nottingham on 15th - 18th July. Make sure you book your place on the enclosed flyer!

The SEN Code of Practice and Part I of the SENDA are being implemented from January 1st followed by Part II in September 2002. These give a real opportunity for schools and colleges to anticipate discriminatory policies, practices and procedures and start developing an education which does not discriminate against disabled pupils and students. Every school and college needs training and should book their training through DEE. However at Inclusion Now we recognise that these new laws are inadequate, with too many get out clauses, and will eventually need replacing by an Act based on the social model.

We campaign for maximum inclusion under SENDA whilst campaigning for better and stronger legislation.

Richard Rieser Chair of the Alliance Director of Disability Equality in Education

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INCLUDING ROSIE AT QUEENSWELL JUNIOR SCHOOL

M

y daughter Rosie was born a wonderful, bright, sociable, humorous, inquisitive little girl. She is also a child with high-level support needs. When she was very young I took her to the Hornsey Centre in North London where she received one-to-one support. Her therapist advised me to keep her with a lively peer group and from that time I have been determined that Rosie should receive a mainstream education.

The first mainstream school I tried was quite positive but said that Rosie could only come when she had the right equipment, including a powered wheelchair and a communication system. Rosie’s first statement did not name this primary school but instead recommended a full time trial place at a special school in order to be assessed for therapy and appropriate aids. My big mistake was agreeing to this.

Once in the special school everyone argued against my desire for her to be transferred to the mainstream.

I lost my first tribunal on the grounds that Rosie’s inclusion would be an ‘inefficient use of resources’.

They told me instead that the special school was relocating to a shared site with a mainstream school into which Rosie could be integrated as appropriate. I had no choice but to agree to this.

When I asked how much time Rosie was spending in the mainstream school they said an hour a week. As I continued to question this, they upped it to two, and then when literacy hour was introduced it went up to five. They said they only had two Learning Support Assistants to seven children in the special school and this was all the time they could be spared. My request for Rosie to have her own assistant was considered unreasonably demanding. Rosie was also only receiving three 15-minute sessions a week on a computer, which is her only means of communicating or doing her work. People and professionals who believe that the needs of disabled children are and can be met in special schools could not be more mistaken, it is a fallacy.

Still determined, I approached my local junior school and, at last, enough of the staff were supportive of me and Rosie that the head teacher agreed to accept us

into her school. A full-time assistant was recruited and spent three weeks working with Rosie in her special school.

The LEA are also honouring Rosie’s statement for the first time by paying independent therapists I recommended and trust.

photo and cover photo taken by Rosie’s teacher Mr Bruce at Queenswell School

They all began together at the new school last term and, despite many hiccups yet to be solved, our dream is beginning to come true. The other children in the school are thrilled to be at school with Rosie. I could never have dreamed of children and staff being so sweet and so thoughtful. Mums are saying that she is all they talk about when they come home. She has gone to her first party. Her dad takes her to school in the car in the morning but we come home on an ordinary ‘low floor’ bus in the afternoon with all the other mums, dads and children. Sometimes we get off the bus and pop in to play with Rosie’s cousins who live near us. At weekends and evenings Rosie does not have to be lonely any more because she has friends we can call up and invite round.

Rosie is finding it a bit difficult adjusting to the much higher expectations of her in mainstream school. She does tire more quickly than other kids because she has to put a lot of physical effort and concentration into everything she does, but one thing Rosie always has is a great deal of energy for play and now she has the opportunities and is learning the language of her peers, what is cool and what’s wicked.

I would of course like to thank the new mainstream school, kids and staff, for giving Rosie this opportunity in education and in life, and hope that they realise how very important it is to us all.

Anna Jeronymides

SEN and Disability Act Post 16, Definition and Justice

by Richard Rieser In the last issue we outlined the historic and far reaching changes that the bringing of education under the Disability Discrimination Act will have for schools. In this issue we examine the implications for post-schools education, think about some of the problems of definition and think about some good practice responses.

Chapter 2 of Part II of the SEN and Disability Act 2001 covers post school provision including Sixth Form Colleges, Further Education Colleges, Universities and all Institutes of Higher Education, Adult and Community Education and Youth Services.

The Act comes in to force from September 2002 and: makes it unlawful to discriminate against disabled students and prospective students in admissions, in education and associated services and in exclusions; sets out a duty on colleges and universities not to treat disabled students less favourably than non-disabled students; sets out a duty on colleges and universities to take reasonable steps to ensure that they don’t put disabled students at a substantial disadvantage; provides for remedy through the County Court/ Sheriff Court in Scotland, with a remit to hear disability discrimination cases and to award financial compensation and make orders to change practice; requires the post-16 sector to make physical changes to their premises to improve access and to provide extra support and services for disabled pupils on an anticipatory basis;

requires, from September 2003, the post 16 sector to provide aids and services for disabled students; requires, from September 2005, the altering or removal of features in Post-16 education where disabled students are placed at a substantial disadvantage.

In a number of ways the legislation is clearer than for schools. Because there is no clear entitlement to Special Educational Needs support in the Post Schools sector the provision to make aids and services available to disabled students will have a bigger impact than in schools where the new duties have to intermesh with the existing SEN provision.

2002/3

2003/4

Further Education

£20m

£46m

Higher Education

£15m

£41m

Adult & £11m Community

£24m

Youth Service

£8m

£7m

In addition the direct duty to remove or alter features such as stairs, narrow doors or inaccessible libraries, laboratories and lecture theatres will have a big impact on the physical environment on campus. Separate money has been made available as a grant of £172m for 2002-04 for the Access works.

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L

s r . e .. t t e

D

ear

I would like to congratulate you on the first volume of ‘Inclusion Now’ which I received recently after a plea for information re disability issues from Parents for Inclusion.

I am a Senior Lecturer in Early Years Education Studies at Newman College, Birmingham and had requested suggestions for embedding disability issues in two new course modules: ‘Agencies working with young children’ and ‘Working with children and families’. All the students are part-time and work in a variety of settings,(these include special schools and inclusive mainstream schools.)

The course lasts for six years and earns them a BA Single Honours Degree.

D

ear

“Your magazine is wonderful and really gives my husband and I a boost and encouragement to strive for what we feel is right.

Thank you!”

Mrs Alison Henker

A VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR TO EVERYBODY. WE LOOK FORWARD TO WORKING TOGETHER IN

2002

I have written to a range of organisations and disability groups and been overwhelmed with the range of materials available. Now I have to make big decisions about what to order!

I did decide to purchase a copy of the Comic Relief Video ‘Altogether Better’ as I wanted something to use with students at summer school this week. I had been asked to do a slot on disability awareness as many of them had little knowledge of the issues.

I used a section of the video with a small group of students who found it very inspiring and informativethey will probably all order it for their workplace!

I do however find it rather alarming that they had such a low level of awareness beforehand, particularly as all of them have worked as staff or volunteers in settings for between 3-20 years. I have very real concerns about the lack of disability training that is accessed especially as the new SEN and Disability Act sets such store on successful inclusion.

It is so crucial that all adults working in an inclusive context should have an understanding of the social model of disability.

I will do my bit to explore possibilities of conveying information to a wider audience throughout the course. I would really appreciate any ideas you might offer - don’t be surprised to hear from me again!

Well done again Best Wishes Karen Argent

The Editorial Team welcomes letters from readers but please keep them short - we may edit letters

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BLACK PARENTS UNITE P arents for Inclusion has its office in Lambeth, an area rich in black and ethnic minorities and also the second most segregated LEA in England and Wales.

It was very clear that the high proportion of young black people in special schools and EBD units in Lambeth is the result of a double oppression: institutionalised racism and disablism. A group of black parents met regularly to work out what to do about this. They had a day using the PATH* planning tool which led to Parents for Inclusion getting a grant from the Health Action Zone – Lambeth to fund a project for six months. This was to research and develop a proposal for a full-time development worker to address this issue. The group continued to meet for the six months during which time the coordinator, Maureen Johnson, organised a wonderful race equality day for all staff at Parents for Inclusion. She also organised a workshop for parents called ‘All Our Children Belong - A workshop for black

and minority ethnic parents of disabled children celebrating diversity’.

The theme of the workshop was celebration – celebrating their children, celebrating themselves, celebrating their achievements and making plans for the future. These included:

★ To bring in more people, to

network and to improve communication with the black community ★ To write up their stories for Inclusion Now magazine ★ To help parents listen to their children more ★ To design and produce their own publicity materials ★ To connect with DEE’s black and ethnic minority trainers and to get more Disability Equality Training in their schools ★ To train the professionals who serve them ★ To organise inclusive after school clubs and holiday play centres ★ To fundraise for a development worker for Parents for Inclusion (Parents for Inclusion is now fundraising for this post)

*PATH stands for Planning Alternative Tomorrows with Hope. It is a structured day led by two trained facilitators to help groups dream together and to make more detailed plans to move towards their goals.

“I celebrate life, my life, all life and triumph over all barriers”

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“I celebrate the joy my child brings into my life, her beauty, affection and caring”

“ Why Inclusion? What else should I seek? A separate existence in any sense different or apart from our family is not something any of us would automatically choose. That choice was made for us. We agreed to a separate school to her siblings, and away from home, as it was cruel to keep her at home all day, every day and no provision was made for her in our area.

The consequences however have been devastating for our family. It has been impossible to have joint family activities without elaborate and extensive preparations, which may even then clash with her school arrangements. We rarely get to meet with her friends or their families, therefore home visits and overnight stays are out of the question. Her siblings are not conversant with her communication, social and access needs and either leave her out of activities or politely attempt to include her as one might a stranger”

Quote from a parent taken from the ‘Black and Minority Ethnic Parents Group Report’ to be published by Parents for Inclusion in 2002.

“I celebrate who my children are, including and because of their disabilities”

“I celebrate the strength to fight for our children’s rights”

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Thinking About..

W

e all talk about the need to empower young people, but what does that word mean? Is it something that can be taught like history? Is it some sort of psychological medicine that can cure crushed spirits and create an extrovert from a wallflower?

My belief is that we are born powerful. I think the task is not to give people power, but to stop taking it away. I have been thinking about how I set about trying to protect my own disabled child from losing hers and suggest that there are three essential components to empowerment.

The first is self-confidence.

How did I attempt to nurture self-confidence in that tiny ‘brittle’ baby I brought home from Hospital on a foam mattress? Looking back I can see that it was a full time job.

Gentle touches, body massages, smiling, looking at her with a delighted (not worried) expression, responding to her signals, allowing her to teach me what she needed. (This was quite easy as I knew nothing about babies). I chose friends who would be equally delighted

EMPOWER MENT

with her to be my helpers in those early days. I avoided talking negatively about her in her earshot even when she was too young to understand speech. I shared any worries and frustrations in another room. I did not even let doctors describe her in anything other than positive language to her face. They were surprisingly good about this, but how much this was because I had the same impairment I will never know.

I had noticed how adults unawarely laugh at young children, and humiliate them when they get things wrong or say ‘funny’ things. I always tried not to do this, and to stop others doing it because I was sure that this is one of the ways we become unsure of ourselves and afraid to be ourselves.

I had also noticed how adults lie to young children by giving them silly explanations or halftruths when they ask questions. (I have a burning memory from my childhood of a parent leaving her two year old in hospital by telling her she was going to get her a

drink of orange, walking out of the ward and going home. The child was still standing in her cot crying inconsolably two hours later, staring at the door, waiting for her Mummy with her drink. I vowed then that I would never do anything like that. How could that child trust adults ever again?)

Praise not punishment, a thousand pieces of positive feedback, clear explanations of boundaries and expectations, all this creates a person who feels loved and alright about themselves.

There is no substitute other than at least one adult in a parental role who can bestow this daily upon a child. No one does well without it and it is why I am against institutional provision for children, disabled or not.

The second component is information.

We in the inclusion movement spend much of our time explaining that impairment is not a cause of unhappiness in itself. It is the way people are treated that is the problem we all

9 need to address. To hold out to a disabled child that they are not the problem, that they don’t need to be cured to be valuable, and that they have much to offer the world is essential if that child is to keep their self-confidence in the face of the oppression which will inevitably come their way. This information can be taught in courses,

workshops, through the media and by friends and advocates.

It is a form of political education which has helped many disabled people to make sense if things.

directorship, and come back for more.

As well as this vital human resource, we soon started the long miserable battles for material resources – wheelchairs, transport, bath hoists, and for facilitators at school and at home. Here my empowerment was so important as we were forced to engage in bureaucratic battles of marathon proportions. Yet without these resources even the most selfconfident and well informed disabled people like us, are trapped and powerless. With the right resources our lives can be transformed.

The last component is resources. My daughter’s first resources were my friends. I truly believe that it was those people who came and allowed themselves to be her arms and legs whilst she steered them around our flat by voice control, going to things she wanted to explore – taps, ornaments, food, toys, water, which led her to believe that she could rely on other human beings to co-operate with her ideas and bring SELF-CONFIDENCE them to + fruition. I INFORMATION am sure + this has RESOURCES helped her = hugely with the task of directing her p e r s o n a l assistants and other people whose help she has needed.

Later she invented Our fight for inclusion is a fight mental scripts for for empowered parents, endless pretend empowered teachers and games in which empowered young people. everyone had a part. I What an attractive goal to was always amazed have! at how other children would submit to this Micheline Mason

EMPOWERMENT

Young YOUNG PEOPLE EMPOWERED EMPOWER 2001 I have been using personal assistants socially since I was 11 years old. (I am lucky to have funds from a medical negligence claim.) During my teens (I am now 17) personal assistance from people my own age has been essential in enabling me to lead a very normal (and at times abnormal!) life.

Without Katie Caryer (17) assistants, I would be bored out of my pants (and probably labelled EBD) and my mum would have conked out by now. I took one of my PAs, Anna Morgan, with me on a residential course run by and for communication aid users.

While there, we thought it would be a good idea to run something similar for young people wanting to learn Anna Morgan (22) about using and being a personal assistant.

Over the next few months, we kept thinking and talking about it and the idea became something we really wanted to do.

We needed two things to make it happen - more people to help and money. So we enlisted a group of friends (disabled and non-disabled; we were determined it would be an inclusive course) and a mentor and applied for a “Give it a Go” Lucia Bellini (17) Millennium grant via Scope. I had become very friendly with Lucia Bellini at Chicken Shed Theatre and she had taught me an awful lot about access and inclusion for her particular impairment (she is blind). She is also passionate and fiery about inclusion, like me, so was an obvious person to ask to help. We asked Anna Spivack, who

by Katie Caryer

had vast experience as the sibling of two autistic brothers and as a playworker at our local inclusive play centre. Also involved was my very dear friend Becca Young who had Anna Spivack (22) befriended and stuck by me through my awful experience at mainstream secondary school. She had often acted as my PA on a voluntary Becca Young (16) basis and had acquired an impairment herself, so was ideal for the course. We asked Nick French, who was then working for Circles Network, to be our mentor. Besides all his experience in work around inclusion, he was the ripe old age of 29 and could act as “responsible adult” if, in our Nick French enthusiasm, we got carried away. As the Millennium Awards were only granted to disabled people, Lucia and I made the application, greatly assisted by Vicky Keeping and Caz Greenwell of Scope (who also happened to be the mum of my friend Wendy who came on the weekend as my personal PA - that’s networking for you folks!). We began meeting up regularly on Sunday evenings and I have to admit we were all a bit gobsmacked when we finally heard we had been awarded an £8,000 grant. In fact, sheer panic set in - we really had to do it!

Two of my hobbies are computer graphics and writing, so I enjoyed producing a poster and leaflet for the course and writing a press release

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Voices (which our local paper managed to screw up by adding the headline “Youngsters’ Scheme to Help the Disabled” ugh!). We mailed the poster all over the place and were thrilled when the first application came via email. Despite our initial fears that noone would apply, we ended up with 10 disabled young people and 10 non-disabled young people, together with our “management team” and a group of back-up paid PAs. We booked the Youth Hostel in Rotherhithe (the only wheelchair accessible one in London) for 3 days and 2 nights in August. We were determined that the weekend would be inclusive and were particularly pleased that two young men with learning difficulties and a wheelchair user applied to come on the course to learn how to be a PA. No stereotypes on our course!

We then had to plan the activities and workshops, all the time trying to ensure that they were inclusive, accessible to everyone and, most of all, fun. We wanted the two groups of people to enjoy each other’s company. The workshops we ran included Disability Equality, hiring, firing and use of PAs, protection from abuse, Direct Payments etc. We also had trips out using public transport and generally having a good time together. Sian Vasey from National Centre for Independent Living also came to talk to us and gave us some really useful publications and advice. We decided to give everyone who came a certificate, writing each one separately detailing what they had achieved, as everyone did achieve something whatever their ability.

Judging from the feedback forms, the weekend was a success!

Of course, there were some minor (and major) hiccups. One of our paid PAs managed to lose a whole group of people on a “short cut” back from the cinema and poor Gemma, who was so looking forward to the weekend, was rushed off to hospital with a major seizure (not totally unexpected) and I, in

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my usual style, lost it a few times under all the stress and blew my top! However, some of the quotes were: “Social inclusion in action” “Andy came as Peter’s nanny, went home as his mate” “I’ve never been anywhere else which I would call total inclusion” “We made pigs fly” “Learned well, played hard, had fun!”

“Before this, learning has never been so fun!”

The young people who came were a fantastic group of people and everyone got on well. I can honestly say that whether or not you were disabled made no difference whatsoever, we were all young people enjoying ourselves and learning new things. Some of the trainee PAs had never spent time with disabled people before and we had no trouble accommodating the wide range of impairments, including severe learning difficulties, physical and sensory impairments. We even managed a bit of matchmaking and two of the young people are now “an item”.

Lucia, I and the rest of the team feel really proud of ourselves and are already planning Empower 2002!

Who would have thought two 17 year old crips could pull it off!

For further information on Empower 2002, contact Lucia Bellini or Katie Caryer on: Empower2001@hotmail.com 21a Muswell Road, London N10 2BJ 020 8444 2866 (phone & fax) PS to Polly Toynbee. aborted before birth!

What a good job we weren’t

(Polly Toynbee angered many disabled people and their allies when she wrote a controversial article in August 2001, ‘Rights are for the Living’, saying: “For a woman to choose not to have a disabled child but to have another one instead is entirely rational”.)

12 If anything good is to come from the events on September 11th, it is to make us all realise how dangerous it is for we humans to know so little about each other.

Inclusion means refusing to stay ignorant about people whose lives are different to our own, even if that learning includes painful truths about ourselves and our pasts.

The following two articles begin to look at how we can respond to this challenge.

C

hris Searle was a headteacher for five years at an inner city school in Sheffield called Earl Marshal School. It was just before the 1993 Education Act the introduction of the National Curriculum. During this time the school published a series of anthologies written by the young people about their lives and their community*.

Inclusion Now interviewed Chris Searle about his work and his vision for our education system.

SCHOOL AS AN

INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY

Q: Who is school for?

“In the hearts of our inner cities are classrooms of A: School is for everyone who the world, and the world beats in our classrooms” works within it. It is for Chris Searle, from ‘Living Community, Living School’ students, to validate their lives, open up meaning, see what their struggles and their families struggles important things in their lives. They initiated all have been, and to equip them for the future. It is sorts of fundraising projects for flood victims, for teachers to exercise their imaginative and refugees and involved themselves in other pedagogical skills, to allow them to learn from internationalist issues which were important to students and their families, and to create a them. The English children got involved in all dialogue in the classroom. It is to empower them that. We did ‘herstory’ projects in which the girls, and their communities. their mothers and grandmothers told their stories. Young people learnt so much about the world in great detail through their classmates Q: When you were a headteacher in Sheffield, and their families. For example, during the Gulf how did you put these beliefs into action?

A: I believe students should feel that school War,Yemeni parents came in and gave in-service training to our teachers so they could help belongs to them. They should be directly involved in control through democratic forums. conduct informed debates about the reality of the Arab world. We did oral history projects and But it was more than this. We found all kinds of ways for the students to show and be proud of wrote and published the anthologies. They loved it. their own cultures and languages and the

13 Q: How did the white English young people feel about this?

A: They were completely involved. They told about their parents and grandparents and documented a living working class history. What we found was all the similarities between workers round the world and women round the world.

Q: Do you think it helped to challenge racism?

A: It did because it created an internationalist culture where the young people were comparing and contrasting instead of competing. We created our own curriculum through the publications.

Q: They must have felt very proud of that?

A: They were, and so were their families.

Q: Were you able to turn that into recognised academic achievements?

A: We could then. We brought it into the GCSE Mode 3 humanities curriculum and the English curriculum and it was accredited as parts of their courses. It is very difficult to gain examination status for this kind of work any more. Racism can flourish again partly because the National Curriculum is culturally exclusive.

Q: One of the reasons we believe in inclusion rather than integration is that integration for disabled children does nothing to teach young people about our struggles and histories as disabled people. What do you think about this?

A: It think it would be a deeply motivating project in schools to explore the history of disabled people all over the world and to tell of their struggles as a people.

Q: What do you feel about what is currently happening in the education system?

A: Well I have just written a new book called ‘An Exclusive Education’** which sums up my impressions of the current school system. I know from teaching teachers at Goldsmiths College that young creative teachers are getting fed up and leaving education. Young people too, are often compelled to learn facts which bear no relationship to their experiences or cultures or

anything which holds their lives together. More and more, they are losing interest in learning, becoming alienated.

Q: What should we be doing about it?

A: Teachers and young people in schools must keep challenging the system. They must keep in mind who school is for and what really matters. I would like to see a culture of defiance in schools where they take on the fight for a creative, internationalist curriculum against those who are stifling it. Teachers should struggle for and alongside their students. *See ‘Valley of Words’ published by Earl Marshal School and ‘Living Community, Living School’ published by Tufnel Press **‘An Exclusive Education’ by Chris Searle is published by Lawrence and Wishart

My Two Countries I was born in Britain In the town of Sheffield.

Sheffield is the city where I learned Everything I know, Sheffield is the city for me.

Her cold air is in me, no matter where I go My mind, my heart won’t leave the place, The place is so dear to me.

I would love to go to Yemen The country of my ancestors, To breathe the sweet, warm air And taste the freshly picked fruit.

I am so proud to be a Yemeni, I won’t change that for the whole wide world!

I want to be part of building a better And brighter future for the whole world In which the people Great and small Rich and poor Black and white Live in a happy and healthy world.

But deep, deep down inside Sheffield is the place I long to stay!

Nadia Saleh, Valley of Words

We discovered what a mixed bunch we were - there was my daughter Zahrah, 14 years old and half Jamaican and half Indian, there was me, Indian, there were the two Somalian young girls and then Parvez who was half Persian and half English.

BREATHING HOPE T

he walkway was a neat design of this much space for horses and walkers and, with a bold white line demarcation, a smaller space for cyclists and rollerbladers who were criss-crossing each other at what appeared to be at dangerously high speed. The 20 degrees Celsius for the middle of October certainly made this walk in Hyde Park quite unusual, the sudden warmth arriving after a spell of cold, wet weather when all you wanted to do was sit at home with a hot cuppa.

Today it felt as if you’d had your birthday and enjoyed it all, only to discover another gift arriving unexpectedly. So my footsteps had that little lilt to them. The wheelchair before me rolled on effortlessly, now and then being manoeuvred by Parvez, the temporary Care Assistant.

The two Somalian girls in our group looked around 16, dressed in loose

black clothes, not fully Muslim or fully western, something in between. They had watched me negotiate my daughter’s wheelchair out of the 328 bus at the end of Kensington High Street. I was protecting my furled placard stuck onto two bamboo sticks and complaining to Parvez on how we were never meant to come this way, how rude the 139 driver had been at West Hampstead by refusing to board us and humiliating my daughter in front of all the other passengers and for my impulsive decision to take the next bus, which just happened to be the 328.

That’s when the girls had stopped gazing and come rushing towards me from the pavement which was teaming with shoppers and asked excitedly “Are you going to the march? Which way is it?” “Just come with us” I had said, happy for the extra company. It was their first march and their anticipation was infectious.

We joked and laughed and just as we were beginning to build up a bit of sweat, we saw them.

Crowds of them. In unison, we stopped chattering. I felt as if my lungs were suddenly being filled with a different air, something more heady and powerful.

Immediately before us was a wave of placards jostling in the teeming crowd. For a while we couldn’t see the people carrying the placards because they were obscured by the concrete enforcements to the underpass but as they turned the corner leading towards Piccadilly, they were clearly visible. A pumping mass of human energy most in casual trousers and T-shirt but some dressed in fancy wear – party dresses or white boiler suits, chanting, whistling, shouting, megaphones, a cacophony of sounds, and beyond it all, the droning sound of a helicopter circling above.

‘Stop the War’ ‘No to Revenge Attacks’ ‘Socialist Workers Alliance’ ‘Stop this bloody war’ ‘Peace Now’ hounded the placards in bold letters.

“My goodness how did they all get placards?” I thought because I had carefully brought my own and unfurled it. ‘Not In My Name’ it read, the placard I had saved from the march outside Downing Street which I had attended the day after the USA had started bombing Afghanistan. I had watched the recent events through television, like millions around the world: the attack on the twin

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towers in New York, the connections made with Bin Laden and the angry Taliban groups, the preparations for retaliation and then the flames erupting in Afghanistan. My heart had sunk, knowing even then that I was witness to an event that would forever turn world history - a potent cocktail of hate and rage, terror and sorrow, an intoxicating mix of the most powerful nation in the world pitted against a poor nation with an enraged and infested leadership, the inbetween nations like Pakistan sitting nervously on the side and then us, ordinary people, powerless spectators in this ghastly fiasco. The death knells rung in my head – the 50,000 killed in Vietnam by the CIA, the 17,500 killed in Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982, the deaths in Chile and Nicaragua, the one million killed in Indonesia in the mid 1960s, half a million dead children in Iraq, the

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continuing arms trade, the 6,000 dead in New York, hundreds dying in the Afghan War grandiosely named Operation Enduring Freedom . . .

put Zahrah’s shoe back on, the part of the crowd we had joined overtook us and with it were swallowed our two Somalian companions. “Never mind” I said, “they were so excited, we wouldn’t have been able to stop them”.

I knew I couldn’t watch it any more, I had to be here.

Somewhere.

Somewhere that breathed hope.

I wouldn’t care where.

I breathed the air - it smelt of resistance and subdued solidarity as the drums rolled behind us and hundreds of feet shuffled before us, adjusting to the ebb and flow of the human traffic. Despite the noise, it was a quiet, caring humanity surrounding us. It felt safe. Safe to be here. Away from the political war mongering, away from journalists and newscasters on TV churning out soundbites, away from desperate leaders engaging in desperate acts. Some day perhaps we will make more sense of this mayhem, this turning point in our history. But for now, it just felt good to belong in this shuffling small space, amongst a crowd of absolute strangers.

When I looked up, there were throngs of people, tens and thousands of them, as far as your eye could see, which was to the end of Piccadilly circus by which time we had found a crossing, near the Ritz to be exact, when we could join the protestors. We were welcomed in, people clearing a space so that the wheelchair could be accommodated. As I paused to

★

Preethi Manuel

It’s only a pencil

Here I am looking at something that holds my whole life.

If I let it go my whole life will be gone.

Not only my life, but my family’s as well.

But who cares? After all, it’s only a pencil.

It’s only a pencil, but look what I can do with it.

I can write a letter for help with it.

I can learn at school with it.

I can teach my family with it – If only we had more pencils and less guns.

★

Joe Carlisle

Living Community, Living School

★

16

O

ne of the founder members of the Alliance for Inclusive Education now runs an organisation for schools and LEAs to help them include children with highlevel support needs.

Marion Stanton is a trained teacher who became a parent of a child with highlevel support needs. Believing deeply in inclusion she fought for her son to be educated in the mainstream.

Witnessing the fear this challenge created in mainstream teachers, Marion decided to develop a specialism in teaching such children. At first she got paid by working privately for parents whose children were at home, or who needed an advisory teacher to support an inclusive placement.

Eventually there were enough clients that she was able to start her own organisation, CASTLE: Communicative and Supportive Teaching / Learning Environment. As CASTLE became established it became easier for Marion to fund CASTLE services through LEAs and schools rather than individual parents.

CASTLE offers help to mainstream schools in learning how to include a particular child with ‘severe’ or ‘complex’ impairments. They can: Help assess a child’s communication needs and help obtain the right technology.

Train the child and staff in their use.

Advise on access to the curriculum and how to develop learning and thinking skills.

Train children and supporters in Facilitated Communication and each year run a conference led by Rosemary Crossley, the initiator of this method.

Help schools to use the ‘Index for Inclusion’, a long-term tool for change. “Without this kind of support, schools are tempted to miss out the whole thing about changing the school culture, one of the most important bits”, Marion said.

As well as assessments and training, CASTLE also provides on going support to schools. Her services are now so in demand that Marion employs 4 teachers who she has trained to do the work. This number is rapidly growing and a Northern branch is being set up with the support of RADAR and the Bolton Institute. CASTLE still works for individual families, offering advocacy, free of charge, to parents to help them access the services they need.

Marion & Rose

Working alongside Marion at CASTLE is Rose Parnis. Rose runs a Youth Club in

17 Islington, the focus of which is young people who are disabled or in danger of social exclusion.

Young people come from the local estate, from Pupil Referral Units and from Marion’s list of young people she assists. Fun is the point of the Youth Club, and a chance for all the young people to work collaboratively on projects they really enjoy such as DJ workshops, Animation, making sound tracks and computer graphics. Rose has just got a ‘soundbeam’, a piece of equipment that enables young people with very little controlled movement to make a controlled input to electronic music.

Experimenting with what is possible is one of the strengths of CASTLE.

£

The relationships between the young people are great and for the disabled young people who have not experienced life-long inclusion, it is an opportunity to really be part of mainstream youth culture. Marion and Rose are determined to show that inclusion is possible for all. What they are discovering at the CASTLE Youth Club they wish to see influence all mainstream youth services.

If you wish to contact CASTLE email: marion@hyndman.demon.co.uk or write to: CASTLE, Scholefield Road, London N19 3ES Tel and Fax: 020 7686 2405

More Money for Communication Aids for Disabled Children

£10 million has been secured by the DfES for a project designed to help provide communication aids for disabled children. The two main aims of the project are: ● To use information and communication technology (ICT) to help pupils with communication difficulties to increase their access to the curriculum ● To use ICT to help ease the transition of such pupils to employment or further / higher education thereby helping to ensure equality of opportunity

One Voice is a voluntary organisation seeking to build a network of information and support so that families can support each other to obtain and learn to use a communication aid.

The project will be managed by BECTA on behalf of the DfES. Some organisations may be offered a seat on the steering group or other forms of involvement.

If you are interested, contact: Tamsin Crothers, Secretary, One Voice, 255 Bolton Road, Aspull, Wigan WN2 1QR

BOOK ALERT STUCK

IN

NEUTRAL

by Terry Trueman, Hodder Children’s Books.

Review by Lois Keith

E

arlier this year, I received a preview copy of a book from the editor of Books for Keeps, an excellent monthly magazine about children’s literature. I think I must be their unofficial ‘disability correspondent’, they often send new titles with a ‘disability theme’ my way. Some fall into old bad habits of using a disabled character to play ‘second fiddle’ (e.g. Bobby, disturbed by his parents divorce/ in trouble with the law/coping with death in the family etc. meets a disabled character called Billy and after a while, knowing Billy turns Bobby into a better person). Some writers are well meaning but lazy in their research (e.g. Samantha is an independent wheelchair user, capable of careering round the streets and rescuing her brother from a dangerous gang but is incapable of pushing herself to the lift and has to wait for the school bully at the end of

(these are usually written by the publisher) tells us that ‘Stuck in Neutral’ is ‘a truly unique journey into the mind of a truly unique character.’ My own response was to find this book so unpleasant and disturbing that I rang the editor with the warning that although I had submitted my review, he may well prefer not to publish it. I knew that my view was likely to be a minority one. In my published review in Books for Keeps, “the ‘unresolved element’ at the end of I wrote. ‘No doubt other this story is whether or not the father is reviewers will call this a brave and moving account going to murder his disabled son, whose or something similar but I life the reader is asked to believe, is so would be very reluctant to damaged by his impairment that it might put this book into the hands of young readers well not be worth living” just as I would not give them a racist book or one lessons). But some new books for children which told the story of how terrible it is to have interesting young disabled characters grow up gay or lesbian.’ and imaginative story lines.

However, even I was unprepared for the Then I received Stuck in Neutral. following response. Choosing Stuck in The quote from ‘Amazon Editorial Neutral as her Book of the Month, Lyn Reviews on the back cover Gardner (The Guardian, Off the Shelf,

18

This magazine is produced collaboratively by: Disability Equality in Education delivers Inset Training on Disability Equality and Inclusion to schools and training and consultancy to Local Education Authorities. Training is provided by disabled people who are skilled presenters and trainers. The training network is supported by the Director, Richard Rieser, and the Regional Co-ordinator, Sue Rickell.

DEE: Unit GL, Leroy House, 436 Essex Road, London N1 3QP. Tel: 020 7359 2855 Fax: 020 7354 3372 Email: info@diseed.org.uk Website: www.diseed.org.uk Funders: Platinum Trust, DfES, Barrow Cadbury Trust, Comic Relief

Parents for Inclusion is a national organisation of parents of disabled young people. Pi runs a telephone helpline, and holds workshops for parents and professionals. Working at grassroot level Pi supports parents in 23 schools in S. W. London through the setting up of inclusion groups. This model is to be developed regionally.

Pi: Unit 2, 70 South Lambeth Road, London SW8 1RL. Tel: 020 7735 7735 Fax: 020 7735 3828 Email: info@parentsforinclusion.org Website: www.parentsforinclusion.org Helpline: 020 7582 5008 Tues, Wed, and Thurs: 10 -12am & 1 - 3pm.

Calls are taken by trained and experienced parents.

Funders: Barrow Cadbury Trust, Bridge House Estates Trust, Carnegie UK Trust, DfES, Health Action Zone, Lloyds TSB, Platinum Trust,

The Alliance for Inclusive Education is a national campaigning organisation led by disabled people. The Alliance works to change laws, practices and procedures which discriminate against disabled young people and prevent inclusion. The Alliance works together with allies to build a social climate in which everyone has a valued place.

ALLFIE: Unit 2, 70 South Lambeth Road, London SW8 1RL Tel: 020 7735 5277 Fax: 020 7735 3828 Email: info@allfie.org.uk Website: www.allfie.org.uk Funders: Barrow Cadbury Trust, Platinum Trust, Comic Relief

DISABLED PEOPLE, PARENTS OF DISABLED YOUNG PEOPLE AND ALLIES, WORKING TOGETHER We are working together to educate, facilitate and empower everyone who wants to be part of the growing inclusion movement. Together we want to bring down the barriers so all young people can learn, make friends and have a voice in ordinary school and throughout life. For each and every young person, this is an essential human right.

“ALL OUR CHILDREN BELONG TOGETHER�