My Life Day to Day

A Conference for people with learning disabilities to talk about how services can include people from different ethnic communities.

The Leicester Advocacy project aims is to support people who have a learning disability to advocate for themselves and work with local services to improve services. The project facilitates different self advocacy groups one of which is the “We Think” group. We Think is part of the Leicester City Learning Disability Partnership Board and works with other groups from the board to try and improve services.

We think and the Leicester Advocacy project hold 2 conferences a year. The conferences are about the changes in services and making sure people with learning disabilities have a say in the changes. This year we decided to find out about how services could be made more accessible for people from the ethnic minority community. We Think decided the conference should be for everyone and about everyone so that we could all learn from each other. We had a conference on the 18th August 2004 called MY LIFE DAY TO DAY (Finding out how people from different cultures and religions live their life).

Although Leicester is a very multicultural society the day was short and we could not talk about everyone and therefore We Think decided to have four workshops in the morning looking at a persons life. The workshops were My Life day to Day as a Muslim, My Life Day to Day as a Sikh, My Life Day to Day as a Hindu and My Life Day to Day as a White person. In the afternoon everyone could talk about theirown lives and put forward their comments about how services could make sure that people form different ethnic communities could be included.

Here’s what some people at the conference said ….

• We want to be able to choose what language we speak.
• We want staff to understand our religion and beliefs
• Not everyone can read information should be put on tape
• Everyone should celebrate each others festival, it build friendships
• I would like to pray more when I am at college or Daycentre
• Muslims don’t pray together, should be separate place for men and women
• Sikh and Muslims use running water to wash, staff should have understanding of their religious needs.
• Want support worker who are same sex for personal care and prefer someone from same background or culture
• There should be a space for people to go to if they are fasting, so they are with people who know us and why we are fasting.

At this conference we were fortunate to have food that was either Halaal or vegetarian and therefore Muslims and people who eat meat could do so. We also had a variety of food from West Indian, Indian and English food. Everyone tried at least one thing new, and everyone agreed it would be nice to have a chance to try different foods at day centres or college.

A report of the conference and presentation about the day has been done to the Leicester City Partnership Board, and we hope that this will enable social services to plan better services for people with a learning disability living in Leicester, and promote good practice in the future. The Advocacy Project worked closely with a number of different organisations and individuals to help plan the conference, it must be said that without their support the conference would not have been the success it was. We worked with:

Ansaar - A charity which provides day care for people with a learning disability in the community.
The Sikh Centre – A community centre that runs groups for different people including people with a learning disability.
Minakshee Patel - BME Development Worker at Voluntary Action Leicester.
Rakhee Palmer – Social Care and Health. Rakhee was writing a support pack to help people from Ethnic Minority Communities do their person centred plans.

For a full copy of the conference report or for more information please contact:

Louisa Whait, Advocacy Co ordinator or Hawa Makani, Community Advocacy Support Worker on 0116 2422742 or write to us at Leicester Advocacy Project, Mencap Regional Office, Kimberley House, 3rd Floor, Vaughan Way, Leicester, LE1 4SG
Email: Louisa.Whait@mencap.org.uk