Retraining our allies

No one gives up power without a fight. That’s why it’s time to ease those who control disabled people out of the driving seat and into a new role, says Andy Rickell

Choice and control in your own life are joyous human experiences. But everyone, disabled and non-disabled, finds retaining choice and control a constant battle.

Disabled people find such choice and control more problematic than most. Indeed, society systematically denies disabled people the choice and control that non-disabled people enjoy. This denial is itself disabling – hence the “social model” of disability, in which choice and control are given instead to others: parents, guardians, “carers”, service-providers, bureaucrats.

To experience equality, this choice and control must be properly placed in the hands of disabled people, supported as necessary. Which means that those who currently have it must return it; and there’s the rub. For, as I said, everyone learns to fight to keep what choice and control they have.

This includes those people who have choice and control over disabled people's lives. Tricky!

If we are asked to give up power, our natural reaction is to justify why we should keep it. In the case of disabled people, arguments are manufactured around their inability to understand the issues, communicate or implement their choices, or their being too young or too old, or being too dependent on others’ assistance or resources.

In particular, parents, who already realise that being a disabled child’s parent is itself disempowering and disabling, might doubly fight for what little choice and control society gives them over their child’s life.

We need to encourage this necessary power transfer with a new, positive way of thinking. The word “ally” best summarises a new, positive role for people involved in disabled people’s lives, where the parent, service-provider, professional, etc, supports the disabled person to maximise their choice and control and supports their putting their decisions into action. An “ally” is someone on your side, committed to your interests, who recognises and expands your autonomy.

Society, as I said, gives power over disabled people’s lives to others, so it does not automatically encourage or reward people and bodies who want to be “allies”. It should. We need to systematically support and train people committed to being “allies”, who can work in alliance with disabled people and disabled people’s organisations.

One example of a body that does support “allies” is Parents for Inclusion. Scope is also working towards being an effective corporate “ally” of disabled people and their organisations. One success on this journey is the building of the Disability LIB (Listen Include Build) alliance of Scope and six disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) which was awarded £4.2 million of Lottery funding for a capacity-building project for DPOs. The process of running this project, with Scope helping to lever DPOs into the driving seat, will provide a case study of how service-providers can be corporate “allies” to disabled people.

Contact me to find out more about being an “ally”.

• Andy Rickell is an executive director at Scope: andy.rickell@scope.org.uk