Independent Living for People with Learning Disabilities Gary Bourlet Co-Founder, Learning Disability England I’m Gary Bourlet and I’ve been a self-advocate for over 30 years. I am co-founder of Learning Disability England. LDE is a membership organisation that brings together people with learning disabilities, families, friends and professionals to create a loud voice on the things that matter to all of us.

Independent living is… Independent living is about choosing where you live, what kind of place you live in, who you live with and how you live. Lots of people with learning disabilities do not get to choose these things. For example, some people are forced to live with people they do not know or do not get on with. Having your own home, making your own decisions, leading your own life!

We want an ordinary life and something to get out of bed for. All people with learning disabilities want is a normal life like anyone else. We also want something to get out of bed for – it’s not enough to just have the things we need to survive. We want fun, friendships and relationships the same as everyone else.

Independent living is not… Some people think that independent living is about doing everything yourself but it’s not. It’s about having freedom and being able to choose the support you need. That might be help with things like washing or dressing or it might just be some extra help with paying bills. It’s about the right to choose who supports you and how. Everyone is different and should be able to choose the support that suits them. About doing everything yourself.

How do we campaign for independent living? So how do we campaign for independent living for people with learning disabilities? Learning Disability England is a campaigning organisation and we believe that we can only get good lives for people with learning disabilities by working together. That means people with learning disabilities working with families, friends and professionals. We all need to listen to each other and that way we can get more done. People are stronger together.

Learning from Australia We were inspired by a campaign called Every Australian Counts. Every Australian Counts brought disabled people, families and professionals together and they were able to make big changes. Because of their campaign there is now the National Disability Insurance Scheme in Australia. This is a big achievement. When we set up LDE we know we wanted to bring people together in the same way. Another important thing that we learned from Every Australian Counts was that disabled people need to lead the campaigns. In Australia it was disabled people themselves that spoke out in the media and went to meet politicians. We thought this was really important and so in Learning Disability England everyone speaks for themselves. We’ve had enough of professionals speaking on behalf of people with learning disabilities. We held an event recently to find out how the National Disability Insurance Scheme was working for people with learning disabilities. We heard about how people with learning disabilities are losing out because the Scheme wasn’t built with them in mind, but more for people with physical disabilities. For example, there wasn’t any easy read information about the Scheme. We thought the important lesson to learn here was to make sure you’re asking for the right things and that means thinking about the different needs of different groups of people. We must think about people with learning disabilities specifically and not just lump all disabled people together.

We know what true independent living looks like for people with learning disabilities and we know that the way to get there is by working together, with people with learning disabilities leading the way. Thank you.