New MN campaign around children with special needs

[RowanMumsnet]

Hello

Following on from this, um, lively thread from a couple of weeks back, we wanted to follow up on kungfupannda's excellent suggestion of an MNHQ-backed awareness-raising campaign aimed at - in kungfupannda's words - 'making it absolutely, uncompromisingly clear that in order to fully include children with severe disabilities, people might have to accept a bit of disruption once in a while.'

We were thinking about something along the lines of our We Believe You campaign on rape myths; that is to say, an ongoing awareness-raising project aimed at the general public, rather than a short-term campaign with specific policy requests attached. We would be thinking about pages on Mumsnet itself featuring the experiences of our posters, activity on our Bloggers Network, ye olde Twitter hashtagge, and any press coverage we can grab.

The suggestion on the thread was for the campaign to be called 'Tolerance is...', but we at MNHQ are a little unsure about the word 'tolerance' (which can suggest barely-contained irritation, rather than the kind of empathetic understanding and generosity of spirit we'd all like to see). So we were wondering whether something along the lines of 'This is my child' would work better?

Please feel free to use this thread to give us any feedback and ideas, and generally let us know what you think.

Thanks
MNHQ

[mymatemax]

"get to know me, my name is ..."

[Grey24]

I'm just so glad MN is setting up a campaign/info thing about SN - people might actually take notice of it and be interested by it because it's being done by Mumsnet, which would be so helpful and such a relief - it could make a real difference. Thank you.

[Cornycremegg]

I think you need to get people to question/look at the assumptions they make.

Most people will probably believe that they are 'inclusive whilst rolling their eyes at the screaming child that can't sit still in the restaurant.

[BerthaTheBogCleaner]

there are x% people with sn in the population - CaFamily says 1 in 20 children, and about 20% of the total population.

I've been googling stats. I found one that says 17% of people have some kind of disability, but only 17% of them were born with it. Could be you next ...

[PeneloPeePitstop]

#it'snotcontagious #fightthefear #justlikeyou

[ouryve]

I do like the suggestions of #SeeMe.

It's punchy and it's a command. It's a command firstly to stop ignoring people with disabilities and secondly, to take notice of who they are. And it's a good, short twitter hashtag, because I do find long hashtags both difficult to type correctly and such a waste of characters.

[ouryve]

Actually, maybe it's too punchy. It's rather heavily used.
twitter.com/search/realtime?q=%23seeme&src=typd

[BerthaTheBogCleaner]

zzzzz - yes, I only posted the 1 in 20 figure cos I was quite shocked! And I do think people feel that disability is something that happens to other people and therefore doesn't need paying attention to.

[WilsonFrickett]

See Me already exists.

[ouryve]

What ever tags we come up with, we're going to have to use our twitter and google fu to make sure we don't settle on something that has either been used already or is simply going to get lost in the noise.

[WilsonFrickett]

Doesn't additional needs make it back about the disabled person? They have extra needs, need extra stuff, need extra support. Whereas I thought the original point was making it absolutely, uncompromisingly clear that in order to fully include children with severe disabilities, people might have to accept a bit of disruption once in a while.

The action has to be on the audience to do something within their own behaviour, I think.

[threesocksmorgan]

I will ask again, why just children?
does disability go away at 18?

[ArbitraryUsername]

Just a thought... If there's going to be a campaign for disabled children/young people (or just disabled people), might it not be a good idea to ask them what they would like (rather than asking their parents)? And to get them involved in it all in a meaningful way...

[AuntStressie]

How about 'Don't dis me' as in disability,disorder etc.