Craig Harts Presentation

What can we learn from history to help avoid more scandals and abuse? We can get people with Learning Difficulties more involved to understand what history is about but one example is about Central People First history project over 21 years. If we can then other people can do the same thing, we can encourage them to do this.

What has enabled people, including those with severe and profound difficulties and challenging behaviour to stay local? How you tackle a person with learning difficulties, have a behaviour problem, Self-Advocacy organisations can help them get them treated with respect.

What roles do families and allies play- advocates, friends, relatives- in making sure care remains good? Their experience they have had is important and what a person offers as an advocate to help support people with Learning Difficulties, to see if it matches their Needs.

What is the role of Advocacy, Self- Advocacy and circles of support? It is important to look at what good experiences and what bad experiences a person has had within a person’s circle, as this helps to do an action plan.

How far have changes in policy and regulatory regimes made a difference? Need to make sure to get people involved with this and need to think about the content to help them and it is also about how you make it happen and how you stick too them. If you want to make changes to these you need to work as a team to make these decisions.

The Contribution of Learning Disability professions such as psychiatrists, nursing and social work? One idea we have is that you have to be honest to make things happen, if not things will go back to square one. Things need to go forwards instead of back words. It is important to learn to respect in about how you work around a person and how you share information. We can give this information to other people so they can learn from this and learn to respect people.