Exploring Experiences of Advocacy by People with Learning Disabilities charts the course through which people with learning disabilities have become increasingly able to direct their own lives as fully active members of their communities.Accounts from the UK, Australia, Canada and Iceland consider both the individual pioneers of self advocacy and local and national groups that have been set up to work actively towards improved services for people with learning disabilities. The book also examines what self advocacy means for these people and provides an overview of how opportunities and services have changed for them over the decades.This is inspiring and encouraging reading for people with learning disabilities and provides useful information for those working with them or for them in community and government services.
Introduction. Duncan Mitchell. Part I. Personal Accounts of Advocacy and Resistance. 1. Advocacy as resistance: Speaking up as a way of fighting back,. Dorothy Atkinson, Mabel Cooper and Gloria Ferris. 2. Restriction and resistance: The experience of life on a locked ward for people with learning disabilities, Katherine Owen. 3. 'I would never walk, talk, sit or stand'! The girl on the tricycle, Marjorie Chappell and Duncan Mitchell. 4. Two pioneers of self-advocacy: Ray Loomis and Tom Houlihan, Paul Williams. 5. 'I've had enough of the everyday thing': Karen Spencer's life story, Karen Spencer with Jan Walmsley. 6. Resilience and resistance in the life histories of three women with learning difficulties in Iceland, Rannveig Traustadottir and Gudrun Stefansdottir. 7. Songs of resistance, Sue Ledger and Lyndsey Shufflebottom. Part II. Speaking for Ourselves: Accounts of Self Advocacy in Action. 8. My life my choices, Paul Savage, Tina Wilkinson and Carl Worth. 9. 'What they want - yes, but what we want - bugger us!' Andy Docherty, Elizabeth Harkness, Malcolm Eardley, Louise Townson and Rohhss Chapman. 10. The life of a group and a personal story: experiences from Huddersfield People First, Jeremy Hoy, Dries Cautrels and Dan Goodley. Part III. Alliances with Others. 11. Fires burning: advocacy, camping and children with learning disabilities in Ontario, Jessa Chupik. 12. Resistance in Mencap's history, Elizabeth Tilley. 13. One man's dream that continues to inspire others, Heather Cadbury. 14. Maureen Oswin and the 'forgotten children' of the long stay wards: research as resistance, Sheena Rolph and Dorothy Atkinson. 15. Tales from the Burdens, Peter Carpenter. 15. Taking a stand against the odds, Kelley Johnson. Part IV: Alternative Interpretations: Reflections on resistance. 16. Assistance and resistance: Making sense of inter-war caring strategies, Pamela Dale. 17. Stereotyped behaviour: Resistance by people with profound learning disabilities, Melanie Nind. Conclusion, Duncan Mitchell. References. Index.
