Meaningful Citizens – Our Stories of Barriers to Inclusion

We held a ‘Meaningful Lives – the cliff edge of risk‘ event in March 2024.  The community asked us to invite our NI Governments Departments together so we could talk to them.

A meaningful life as we all know, is participating in activities and opportunities with people that make us feel fulfilled.  These greatly benefit us in:

• relationship building;
• developing life skills and independence;
• improving our health and wellbeing;
• securing employment;
• and feeling like an equal citizen in society.

So as part of Learning Disability Week, we planned an event to help share the stories of Experts By Experience to showcase their right to being a meaningful citizen. The event was attended by Experts by Experience, Family Carers, Government Departments and Service Providers.

We talked about the barriers to inclusion and equality that people with a learning disability face and how this makes them feel.

These included no support to transition from school into work.  Not understanding how the ticket machines work to be able to use public transport. Or easy to understand (accessible) letters that people receive from the NHS.

We talked about Government Policies that could help.

We asked our Government Departments to sign a flip chart sheet as a commitment to continue working with us.

We were delighted that they all did willingly.