Showing a public face

Ten years ago Natalie Salmon gave up a teaching career. Now Head of Equality and Diversity for a national nursing organisation, she believes passionately that disabled people should take high-profile public roles

You’d think that having spent the last ten years championing meaningful involvement of disabled people in public life, I’d be the first in line to get “involved” myself.

Wrong.

Despite the fact that I have had an impact in my work, I turned down an opportunity to apply for a position on a public sector steering board of disabled people.

My official excuse was that I was too busy at work. This was largely true but, in fact, the ghosts of the barriers I have encountered and the disappointments I have felt held me back.

At times I am still that 12-year-old, partially-sighted girl, wearing thicker than bullet-proof lenses in my glasses, who not only volunteered but was chosen along with about six others to take part in a school parliament event. The visiting MP – now a peer – took one glance at me, looked terrified, muttered “handicapped” and then ignored me. He gave everyone a role but me.

This ranks alongside the time a music teacher agreed with a boy in my class that: No, he wouldn’t want to sit next to the class spaz either and allowed him to move tables.

But I am not 12 any more and I have proved that I can be incredibly successful. I am now Head of Equality and Diversity at the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC), and conscious of the need to ensure that the disabled people who choose to contribute their skills and experiences to the work of the NMC find it both professionally and personally rewarding.

I think that as more disabled people hold strategic and managerial roles within the NMC and the public sector in general, we’ll at last start to see a difference in how people with disabilities are viewed and treated by society.

It is important that disabled people aren’t just involved but are setting the strategic agenda and driving the public sector from within. At that point involvement truly becomes meaningful and active.

I hope that the message we are promoting at the NMC – that we actively want disabled people to apply for our strategic roles to help safeguard the health and well-being of the public – will be the first step in achieving an organisation that truly involves disabled people in all that it does.

• To find out more about the NMC or to get involved in many of the roles available, visit www.nmcpeople.org