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

Can you see me?
1 in 7 children have special needs.
Sometimes you see the disability and not the child.
Sometimes you see the behaviour and not the disability.
Can you see me?

I prefer things like there are x% people with sn in the population, so if there aren't x% in your church, at your pool, in your cinema, in your office, in your child's class, at your party, you are part of the problem. We are the x% and we are here to stay.

anothe vote for this.

How about " I matter ". Taking the well used third person every ........... matters and putting the child where they belong at the fore in the first person seems pretty powerful, potentially, to me.

Great idea - as a parent of a DC with a very visible disability, I like the idea of the "this is me" campaign, as strangers rarely get past seeing her disability to see the amazing little girl that she is.

As an idea,I loved the created by US high school students to try and promote friendship between 'normal' and disabled pupils

I think if it is to be a campaign about disabled adults as well as children (or children and young adults?) then it would have to be as Arbitrary says, something which involves people with disabilities. However, I am assuming as it is Mumsnet, and specifically Mumsnet Special Needs Children, where this is being discussed - then it would be natural to assume that it is a campaign to discuss children with special needs (specific/additional/super powers....delete as applicable!)

I think it's generally best to ask (disabled) people of any age about what they'd want and to get them involved rather than to do it all on their behalf. I guess I just feel that if the whole point is inclusion then you have to start the campaign on a participatory basis. If the idea is that we (as a society) should see (and engage with) disabled children, then the campaign should absolutely include them in a non-tokenistic way.

There are lots of academics and activists who do a lot of work around disabled children and young people's participation in society who might be happy to work with MN on this kind of project if they were asked. There are people with experience of working and campaigning with people with a wide range of disabilities who might have ideas about how to make the campaign inclusive as well as about inclusion. And, of course, there are plenty of parents on MN who know how to find out their own children's views on matters that affect them.

Aaah, just seen this is in campaigns, and not special needs children - sorry.

I think it should definitely include the 'voices' of children/ people involved, but one of the reasons why I think a campaign like this is important ( and maybe differs from the comparisons to 'racial' issues that were mentioned earlier) is that people with like ds ( partly because he is only 2.7 and partly because he has no speech and limited understanding) need someone to speak out on their behalf.

Sorry, that should be, ' people like ds'

Well the bracketed disabled was mostly because the point is about people of any age. just in this case the people are those often called disabled, as opposed to, e.g. red haired people, or tall people. Although I agree that (with disabilities) would have been a perfectly sensible alternative. While writing it I was thinking more about trying to foreground the people bit (and failing, obviously).

I think my issue is that this sort of thing can so easily become a campaign on behalf of or in which parents speak for, and that doesn't seem to be quite the right thing (IMO). That doesn't mean that the kids should be running free on MN or anything; just that there are other ways that children and young people could be included rather than us all just deciding what kind of campaign we should have on their behalf. MN could ask for advice about how to do this (without tethering themselves to anyone else's agenda). And one source of such advice is all those parents who talk to or otherwise interact with their children every day. MN certainly has plenty of that kind of expertise on hand. I'm just a bit uncomfortable with the idea that it's sufficient for parents to speak for their children.

(I have a disability, fwiw. Although I feel like some kind of fraud for putting myself in that category, which in itself is indicative of the wider problem.)

Hazey: I think I just wouldn't want to under estimate any child just because they have 'SN'. I'm willing to bet that you are good at understanding what your DS communicates to you (in his own ways). I guess I don't want to think that his ways of communicating or being in the world are 'lesser'. They're just different.

And there are lots of children with SN who can articulate their views very effectively. (Something that I'm struggling to do).

And one source of such advice is all those parents who talk to or otherwise interact with their children every day. MN certainly has plenty of that kind of expertise on hand. I'm just a bit uncomfortable with the idea that it's sufficient for parents to speak for their children.

Sorry, I don't understand how you haven't just contradicted yourself, surely MN are doing exactly what you are suggesting - ie talking to the parents 'who talk to or otherwise interact with their children every day'?

Can ytou see me?- I wonder how someone with a VI woudl feel about that? If someone asks me that and I haven;t got my glasses on teh answer is no. mind I DO have AS and am very, very literal.

I love this littlelightofmine, and I love the bit about if not x% in your Church etc. We have a hobby where hardly anyone in 2000+ participants is black or has SN (my ds1 is an exception, I knjwo of a few others but they are not reated wonderfully). I'd quite like to shoce it up some of their behinds.

(I shoud point out hobby7 divided into teams or clubs and ours is fine and accepting, we chose carefully)

I don't think so (although I'm not sure I'm being at all clear). There's a difference between asking parents with plenty of experience about how to engage meaningfully with children with a range of different abilities, and just taking what they say about their children to be the same as what their children's position would be. It is good to both listen to what parents want and have children meaningfully involved (which may have to start by asking their parents how that might be done).

Still not making any sense, I bet. Explanatory powers elude me! Anyway, carry on with discussion that makes actual sense...

U#I have as, i HAVE DISCUSSED THIS WITH DS1 AND DH (dH AHS mh PROBLEMS, ALSO TECHINICALLY A DISABILITY).

i HAVE NOT DICUSSED WITH DS3 OR DS4 AS THEY DO NOT HAVE THE CAPACITY TO UNDERSTAND

Gosh sorry unintended caps, like I say poor eyesight

Sorry, wasn't trying to be offensive. (Really doing badly here).

Sorry crossposted

Well I spend quite a lot of my day struggling to understand what ds wants at the moment, because every sign is either -'duck' 'hand tap' (can mean anything) and 'taps top of head' (usually means Fireman Sam), but yes I probably understand ds more than anyone else. But when it comes to asking for things on his behalf, I have to use my voice and my anger to get it. I have just filled out the Pathfinder self assessment form, and every question is worded from ds's POV, eg - 'My hopes and dreams for the future are....', 'You can best support me by....' etc. At ds's age it is obviously my job to try and answer on ds's behalf as best I can.

As he gets older hopefully he will be able to communicate his needs better for himself. I think there are definitely older and other children who would be able to speak for themselves - I am thinking of one of the bus threads where Dawndonna's dd came on and wrote a post that floored everyone with it's eloquence and directness. However I guess she wouldn't have been on here without her mum being on here, they were a team.

Well, yes. I'm all for parents and children being teams. And absolutely happy for kids who wouldn't understand or get anything out of this sort of thing to just get on with stuff that does matter to them (because their agenda is certainly more important to their lives than mine).

Tbh those kind of forms are exactly the kind of tokenistic bollocks I'd want to avoid. Indeed for 2 year olds any official form worded as if it's actually written by them is generally just stupid.