Parents of disabled children have told us heartbreaking stories of being pushed to the limit by the lack of support. All around the country people have been moved by this issue and more than 22,000 people contacted their MP calling on them to take action.
MPs respond
So what happened in this important debate?
There was great news that MPs from both Labour and the Conservative Party supported Scope’s two key amendments to improve the Bill. The first change we wanted would force councils to ensure that the local services we all rely on day to day are inclusive and accessible for disabled children and children with special educational needs. Our second amendment would enable parents to properly hold local authorities to account – to give them a voice ensuring the support they need is available in their local area.
Many MPs spoke passionately about the battles that parents face in getting support. They recognised the need to ensure that disabled children and their families are at the heart of decision-making when local authorities are developing services.
A once in a generation chance
The Children and Families Bill is a vital chance for the Government to address the struggles these families are facing. In the debate Graham Stuart MP rightly said that this is “a flagship bill” with the potential to change the lives of children with Special Educational Needs – just as the 1995 Disability Discrimination Act transformed support for millions of disabled people.
Conservative MP Robert Buckland spoke of the struggles that families face to get the support they need, largely due to the “assumption… that disabled children and young people…will not want to access mainstream services”. He also emphasised that there must be a complete “transformation” of local support for disabled children to make them more inclusive.
It was also particularly encouraging to hear the Chair of the Education Select Committee, Graham Stuart MP, pushing that he wanted the “power and role of parents enhanced by this legislation, not diminished”.
And the Children’s Minister Edward Timpson responded directly to our campaign.
He made a point of saying he understood how important local services are for disabled children and their families and mentioned our campaign specifically.
He hasn’t made a firm commitment yet, but said he’s hoping to ensure that the regulations accompanying the Bill include a duty – to ensure that councils promote services which are “responsive to the needs” of the local community, such as listening to children with Special Educational Needs and their families.
This could be a huge step forward but there is still a lot more to do.
Will they deliver on their promise?
The Government has made some welcome changes in the Bill, particularly support for children with the most complex needs. But for the nine out of 10 children with Special Educational Needs who do not qualify for a statement (or Education, Health and Care Plan under the new reforms), their future still remains uncertain.
And despite a small number of committed MPs working hard to improve the Bill in Parliament, wider interest from MPs has been disappointingly low – despite the importance of this issue.
The Government promised parents a transformation in the way support is provided for families with children with Special Educational Needs. But the reforms currently in the Bill are not good enough. The Bill will now be passed to the House of Lords. Parents deserve better local support and Scope will be doing all it can to ensure Peers in the House of Lords improve the Bill so it meets the high expectations families have.
These are the best digital campaigns for social change ever. Full stop. No question.
Or are they? Who are we to say which are the best? Well, we have twice been named Third Sector Digital Campaign of the Week in the past year (though er, there must have been 52 claims to that fame!) Certainly it’s a hard task deciding which campaigns are best, in part because there’s no simple measure of what a good campaign is, especially in digital.
“Not a digital campaign at all” you cry! Maybe so, but 200 years ago it spawned some of the most popular online campaigning tactics we all know and love (or hate) today.
Would petitions be so popular and the likes of Change.org, Avaaz and 38 Degrees exist if activists hadn’t ridden on horseback round the country collecting signatures and presenting them to Parliament? (Ah, the good old days: Parliament had to stop its business for them to read out the names every time a petition appeared!)
And much more. Yah boo to many campaigns of today, digital and otherwise.
Strengths: Many.
Weaknesses: Computers and the internet hadn’t been invented yet, but they didn’t let that stop them. Modern-day slavery is sadly still around today, although they made a massive change at the time.
2. Book burning, anyone?
Have you ever tried inviting people to a ‘book burning party’? If you do (like these people), you’ll get a pretty strong reaction.
This was the inspired, creative, not-uncontroversial campaign to save a library and raise taxes (maybe we should have made them number one just for getting public support for higher taxes!). Watch the video or read what happened to get the full lowdown.
Strengths: Cheap (a few lawn signs – everything else digital). Creative. Quickly changed public opinion. Clear outcome: a vote.
Weaknesses: Is it a one-hit wonder? Will these kinds of shock tactics build a longer term movement?
3. Twitter freedom of speech is brilliant/terrible/dead
Cast your mind back to 2009. Three thousand miles away 30,000 people in Ivory Coast, one of the poorest countries in the world, claim to have been injured by Trafigura, a company dumping toxic sludge. The company’s being hit by one of the biggest lawsuits in history… But no-one even knows about it, because they go to court and get an injunction and stop the press reporting on it, PLUS a ‘super-injunction’ stopping them even talking about the fact they’re being stopped from reporting on it.
Modern madness, right? So what happened? A combination of a brave MP, journalists – and tweeters. Twitter played a big role in lifting the lid on what was happening, revealing the scandal, injunctions-be-damned, just one example of how valuable a free Twitter is.
Strengths: A free Twitter means people power can beat legal, corporate and political power. That can be an amazing and wonderful thing.
Weaknesses: The halo of Twitter free speech is looking both tarnished and threatened. Also, exactly which people have the people power on Twitter? It’s still a case of having the skills, education, time and internet access to use them, a challenge for campaigners who want to genuinely empower.
4. Your knife or your life
The Met are not known for innovative attitude- and behaviour-change campaigning, but they did this - dramatic, engaging, it’s hooked in more than a million people.
The campaign is a series of YouTube videos where you see what’s happening through the eyes of a teenager and you click on-screen to choose what happens next. Every choice you make has a consequence… It’s hard to describe what it feels like being stabbed to death on screen.
A controversial choice because: does it even work? That’s really the question – and we don’t know the answer. And how do you even measure the success of something that’s so ambitiously trying to change attitudes and behaviour change, which are notoriously hard to assess? We love the ambition, creativity and execution though.
Strengths: Like all good communications it’s story-based. It’s also visceral, heart-stopping, simple and original. It goes to where many young people are at: on YouTube.
Weaknesses: We haven’t seen any evaluation of what it actually changed – are fewer young people carrying knives as a result or is this just a cool set of videos? We’d love to know.
5. We Are Spartacus (we are not big charities)
While many disability charities (including us) were struggling to mount big public campaigns to oppose welfare reforms that were unfair to disabled people, an unexpected one took off.
Forget Kirk Douglas (or the remake), We Are Spartacus is a group of disabled people starting a grassroots online campaign, not content with what was happening and intent on getting their views to the Government in a big way. They used free blogs, Freedom of Information requests and crowdsourced responses, they pushed and pushed – and broke through into the Twittersphere, galvanizing many people and helped to influence what was happening in Parliament.
Some disability charities (including us) struggled to know quite how to engage with We Are Spartacus at first and we’re still learning – because although we often have the same goals, at times we work so differently.
But this one is controversial above all because it poses some tough questions for us and every other big charity out there: if they can do this with next to no resources, why aren’t we achieving a whole lot more with our digital campaigning?
Awkwardness and challenges can be good though. Right?!
Strengths: Without money or a traditional organisation, they’ve helped to reshape disabled people’s online campaigning.
Weaknesses: Disabled adults in the UK are three times more likely NOT to have access to the internet as other people, so there’s still a big challenge to engage disabled people in digital campaigning.
Who didn’t make the cut?
Any top five is of course going to miss out some big-hitters. Controversially, here are some that didn’t make it in:
Kony 2012 We also couldn’t bear to include Kony because it so often gets missed that the Kony campaign started in the real world through lots of hard work building support on student campuses, before it went digital. Amongst other criticisms we have, it was the wrong campaign goal (do we really need more military action) and what about the views of the people whose own lives were affected??
Avaaz, 38 Degrees, Change.org… We’re interested in what the big online campaigning sites are doing and hope to work with them more. But the tough part we have to do is start campaigns from scratch, which are often about lots of hard graft and creativity rather than a quick win. So, sorry guys: not for this list.
Thunderclap It’s an interesting idea and we’ve certainly tried it out. We haven’t heard of it actually changing much though, and we’re concerned that campaigning organisations (including us) could use it as a substitute for creating real social media conversations that genuinely get loads of people talking and tweeting. Have you heard different? Check it out here if Thunderclapping’s new to you.
The Arab Spring and many other campaigns elsewhere in the world So much has been written about the role of social media in the Arab Spring but we feel we just don’t know enough to include it here. Also: there are probably many other exciting digital campaigns in parts of the world we’re not well enough connected to to know about.
And more… Hope you enjoyed our (hopefully) thought-provoking list. What would you add?! And if you’re interested enough to read this far, would you like to apply for our exciting digital campaigning role or could you share it with your networks? Thanks!
As the numbers of views of the Britain Cares campaign film tick past the 100,000 mark, the photo actions grow each day and the I Care actions get ever more creative, you may wonder if the Britain Cares team could sit back and take a breather.
For the past two weeks, Scope shoppers have been invited to choose a postcard and send it to their MP. There are six card designs, each representing a different area of life that social care makes possible for some disabled people, ranging from the essentials like getting washed and dressed to being able to leave the house to meet family or go to work. Things that many of us may take for granted, until we consider life without them.
Leslee Welman, manager of Exmouth’s Scope shop, has been busy speaking to customers about the Britain Cares campaign and collecting hundreds of signed postcards. She told us how brilliant it has been to see such a lot of support for the campaign from her customers:
“It’s been really positive so far. It’s wonderful to see our customers so passionate about this issue and able to take action by signing a campaign card. They’re really keen to do anything they can to support the campaign, and of course Scope. I’ve spoken to many of my customers who are personally affected by changes to social care and therefore this is really important to them.”
All the signed cards are now on their way to Westminster, to call on MPs to take action and ensure that social care is funded in the upcoming Spending Review and that disabled people get the right support to live their lives.
If you are one of the thousands of people who have already signed a Britain Cares card in a Scope shop – thank you for your support. Please stay involved, and visit www.britaincares.co.uk for the many ways you can continue to show you care.
Guest post from Caroline Hawkings who is a Senior Public Policy Advisor for Social Care at disability charity Scope.
When the draft Care and Support Bill was published last July, there was much to be pleased about. For example, for the first time social care law is modernised into one statute. Importantly, there is an overarching principle to promote ‘well-being’, rights of carers are strengthened and there are new duties on local authorities to provide information and advice.
Since July, Scope, along with other charities in the Care and Support Alliance, has been working hard with policy makers at the Department of Health to make changes to the draft Bill, such as pushing for specific provisions for advocacy. The crucial question is will this Bill be a new improved version, or will it merely be tinkering at the edges? We will have to wait and see, but on the key question of eligibility for social care, we won’t have any immediate answers.
Disabled people have repeatedly told us that whether or not they qualify for local authority funded care and support is their overriding concern. The Bill will establish a national eligibility threshold – a national minimum level at which local authorities must provide care and support. This should help to end the current variations between one local authority and another. However, there’s a danger that this threshold, which will be set through regulations, will be set too high. In future, care and support is likely to be available only for people whose needs are ‘substantial’ or ‘critical’, potentially denying social care to thousands of others whose independence will be severely curtailed.
Social care in crisis
We know that local councils have had to cut back on funding for social care, partly by reducing the numbers of disabled people who receive it. The Other Care Crisis (PDF), a joint report from Scope and four other disability charities using research from the London School of Economics estimates that 70,000 disabled people are already struggling to get by without social care and a further 30,000 more will be at risk of losing their support if the Government’s proposals go ahead as planned.
In a Scope survey, featured in the report, four in ten disabled people said that their basic needs, like washing once a day, getting dressed and getting out of the house, were not being met. We heard from people like Joshua who now has to ask strangers for help to put his shoes back on when they fall off and Michelle who often goes without having a shower because she just doesn’t have the energy to manage.
Britain Cares about social care
This is why Scope has launched the Britain Cares campaign to end this scandal. We – along with other charities, groups and thousands of people are calling on the Government to put in place enough funding so that disabled people can get the essential support they need. Crucially, the budget for social care will be decided in the forthcoming Spending Review in June and this is when the regulations setting out national threshold are due to be published.
So, it’s not only May that will be significant in the life of the new Care and Support Bill, but also 26 June when the Spending Review is announced. Although we hope that the new Bill will contain considerable improvements to the first draft, it will be far from ‘job done’. Over the next few weeks, through our campaigning and discussions with parliamentarians and civil servants, we’l l be redoubling our efforts to ensure that disabled people have the vital support they need to live their lives.
Guest post from Megan Cleaver who is the Parliamentary Officer at Scope.
The Children and Families Bill, which sets out the biggest changes to support for children with special educational needs (SEN), has reached a critical stage and is currently being debated by a committee of MPs in the House of Commons where they have the opportunity to put down amendments in order to improve the Bill.
Committee stage
In the Committee, MPs from both the Labour and Conservative Parties have supported a number of Scope’s key asks as part of our Keep Us Close campaignto improve the support available for families with disabled children and children with SEN and stop the battles they face in accessing this support.
The Shadow Minister for Children, Sharon Hodgson, herself a mother of a disabled child, spoke passionately about the challenges that families face and made explicit reference to Scope’s ‘Keep Us Close’ report detailing the lack support available to families in their local area. Sharon sought changes to the Bill which would ensure that positive family relationships and the participation of children and young people and their families in local community activities are actively promoted; and that services are located nearer to where families live. This would send a strong message to local authorities that improving the quality of life for families is, and should be, a priority and ensure that support for children with SEN is available in their local community.
While the Children’s Minister Edward Timpson praised Sharon for her ‘insightful and excellent analysis’ of the weaknesses of the current SEN system, unfortunately the Government did not accept this amendment.
In order to ensure parents get the support they need in their local area, Scope is also calling for systems to be put in place so that families are able to hold local authorities to account if they cannot get the support they need. This is supported by Conservative MPs Caroline Nokes and Robert Buckland who both spoke powerfully about the importance of this change given the battles families face to get even the most basic support- leading them to feel powerless and overwhelmed by the need to wrestle their way through seemingly endless bureaucratic hurdles.
The ‘Local Offer’
Scope’s amendment would ensure that if a ‘Local Offer’ (which sets out the support available in each area) is deemed not good enough; a local authority has a duty to revise it until it meets the needs of local families and young people.
This would create a situation where local authorities are working together with families, school governors, children’s centres, nurseries- all with the common aim of making support the best it can be.
So far the Government have been unwilling to introduce this mechanism to strengthen the hand of parents; we feel this is of such importance for parents with disabled children and children with SEN that we will continue to work with MPs so that much needed accountability is introduced into the system.
These are the biggest reforms to SEN provision in 30 years and Scope, with your help as part of our Keep Us Close campaign, we will keep on fighting to make them the best they can be and ensure that disabled children are given the support they deserve.
“I’m a social worker and I’m trying to start up a community farming business.”
So much of the media and political rhetoric around cuts to support for disabled people focuses on the alleged fraudsters, people who are said to have no ambition but to live off the state. It was such a different story outside the High Court in snowy London today.
“I’ve recently travelled to Spain, Portugal and Thailand and I run my own small travel agency. I can only do it because of the Independent Living Fund.”
These are what I heard from just two of the people I met today. Their stories are of people living their lives, no matter that they have severe impairments. The support of the Independent Living Fund and social care allow them to do that – and it’s brilliant. Talking to them, it was clear they live fuller lives than many non-disabled people I know. They’re people with big dreams and independent lives, as we’d all aspire to be.
But that’s all in jeopardy. Soon, for some of the people who need this support, just being able to leave their house could be a distant dream.
“What kind of country are we? What kind of country do we want to be? Closing the ILF would isolate many disabled people, making them invisible. This is unacceptable in Britain in the 21st century.”
“This is not just about us now, it’s about the future too.”
These were the words of two of the eloquent and moving speakers, spelling out what it would mean to lose the support of the ILF. I believe passionately that we in Britain do care about being a fair society where everyone should be free to lead their life. But the danger now is that we backtrack 30 years to a horrendous vision someone today described as “a ‘feed and clean’ culture in which disabled people are forced to lie in bed in incontinence pads and eat sandwiches”.
Read some of the stories that people have shared recently about what the ILF means to their life and you can’t help but feel the importance of the ILF and social care.
Freedom. Independence. Dignity. These can feel like grand, empty words — until you hear the heartbreak of the everyday realities when care and support is taken away. Having to go for days without a shower; having to make your six-year-old son care for you; simply not being able to get out of your house and do what you want to do, as Scope and four other charities detailed recently. You and I wouldn’t stand for it: no-one should have to.
It’s no wonder pressure is growing on the Government to deal with the crisis in social care for disabled people. As one activist wrote today, “even in these difficult times, can the Coalition rise to this vital challenge, or will the life chances of disabled people be destroyed for a generation?”
Edward Timpson, the Children and Families Minister, has announced that he will strengthen the special educational needs (SEN) provisions in the Children and Families Bill by placing an additional duty on the new clinical commissioning groups (CCGs). This will force them to guarantee health care services agreed as part of the new Education, Health and Care Plans (EHC Plan).
So does this mean that parents will no longer need to battle to get the health support their child needs?
Not exactly – although it is certainly a big step towards removing some of the battles that parents tell us they face in getting the right support for their child. It should mean that any child or young person who has an EHC Plan will be guaranteed access to health services such as speech and language therapy if it will help with their education and it is included in their Plan.
But, as is always the case, it is the detail that is important. We have yet to see exactly how this new duty will be included, but as this part of the Children and Families Bill remains education focused, the duty will only be enforceable if health care is needed to support learning. So the battles over deciding such things as whether help to eat lunch, or occupational health to improve posture are health or educational needs will remain.
Currently 87% of children with SEN do not have a Statement. They are unlikely to be eligible for the new EHC Plans. A quarter of disabled children have health or social care needs but do not have special educational needs. They will not be eligible for an EHC Plan either. So how will the duty on CCGs help this group – which contains the vast majority of children, young people and their families, all of whom will be reliant on universal services for support?
Parents have told us that they battle to get specialist services, or a Statement for their child because local provision such as childcare, leisure facilities or schools do not meet their needs.Or because it is the only way they can access health care such as physiotherapy. Neither the new duty on CCGs, or any of the existing ones in the Bill will change that – the Local Offer is simply a directory of services that a local authority ‘expects to be available’ in the local area. It is the equivalent of a SEN Yellow Pages. It will not guarantee help for families.
In other words, the battles that most parents face now will remain, even with the additional duty on health.
Scope is working hard to improve the Local Offer through our Keep Us Close campaign. We want all disabled children, young people and their families to benefit from the Children and Families Bill. We are asking the government to ensure that local authorities promote provision of inclusive and accessible universal services that all families can use. We are also fighting for enforceable duties on local agencies to improve the Local Offer where it is just not good enough and where families still battle to get the support they need.
This is one of those good times when I can tell you your voice is starting to get through to the politicians on something so important.
For the first time earlier this week, MPs debated the Children and Families Bill – what could be the biggest change to support for disabled children in 30 years. Their families are tearing their hair out because they can’t get the support they need in their local area, that’s why over the past few months we’ve been asking for your help as part of the Keep Us Close campaign.
And what you did is starting to work.
Two-thirds of MPs who spoke in the debate talked about disabled children. Nearly half of these raised the issue of local support, some mentioning our campaign specifically. It’s brilliant and it gives us hope to see all these MPs speaking up for disabled children and their families.
So much of this progress is because of you and more than 20,000 others around the country who’ve spoken up: parents of disabled children, children themselves, friends and relatives, and so many others who care. Whoever you are, thanks so much for taking on this cause.
Our campaign isn’t over and we’ll need to keep pushing. Sadly, although we have a number of MPs behind us, the Government isn’t doing enough yet. We’ll continue to work with MPs as the Children and Families Bill goes through Parliament and I might need to ask you to do more over the next few weeks or months.
For now, I thought you might like to hear a few highlights of what they said in Parliament – please see below.
Paul Maynard, MP for Blackpool North and Cleveleys, who has cerebral palsy:
“I know from my own life story how important it is to get this right. I was one of the children whose parents had to fight to get me into a special school, and then fight again to get me back into a mainstream school a few years later… When I was in the mainstream school, my parents had to fight to get the speech therapy I needed to make the most of being in that mainstream school.
It was with some distress and dismay that when I first got elected, I found that the first three cases of my very first constituency surgery were all about parents fighting for their children to get the special educational help they needed from their schools. Thirty years on, nothing much seemed to have changed.”
Angela Smith, MP for Penistone and Stockbridge:
“At the heart of the struggle faced by families with disabled children and those with Special Educational Needs is the unacceptable lack of support for these families close to home… This situation is getting worse, not better, with local authorities now facing cuts of up to 30% of their budgets.
Many councils are therefore being forced to cut services for disabled people, making an already bad situation worse. For example, more than half of councils have cut spending on respite breaks for families, and 77% of local authorities are either making cuts or efficiency savings in services for people with a learning disability.”
Sir Tony Baldry, MP for North Oxfordshire:
“As a Member of Parliament for three decades, I have too often met parents who have felt that they have had to battle for the support they need. They have been passed from pillar to post, and bureaucracy and frustration have faced them at every step.”
David Blunkett, MP for Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough:
“Above all, the emphasis should be not just on education and skills but on skills for life that enable people to live independently on equal terms and to be self-reliant… we must ensure that the child’s needs are paramount.”
Peter Aldous, MP for Waveney:
“The Bill is to be welcomed, because while there are examples of good practice, the current system is not fit for purpose. I have been advised of examples where young, vulnerable people and their families have been let down; there are cases in which children have been excluded from activities, such as sports days and swimming, and in which schools have failed to provide support for a child until a medical diagnosis has been received, despite accepting that the child was struggling to access the curriculum.”
Sarah Champion, MP for Rotherham:
“The care system is often disjointed and baffling. Families routinely deal with more than 30 professionals from education, social care, health and other services. It was standard for families to tell me how frustrated they were that they had to say the same thing over and again to different professionals because the information was not shared between departments, let alone between other agencies.
Communication between agencies is generally inadequate, leaving families burdened with the stress of having to navigate their way through an uncoordinated system. All that happens at a time when many families are overwhelmed by their child’s situation. Unfortunately, that experience is common among families of all disabled children. As one constituent said: ‘Unless you shout and fight you don’t get anything. And, to be honest, I’d rather be spending that time with my child instead of battling the system that should be helping us.’
On Monday, for the first time MPs are debating the Children and Families Bill – this is the biggest chance to improve support for disabled children in 30 years. For the 700,000 disabled children across the country, it could be a day full of anticipation.
But the reality for these children is that the Bill is bitterly disappointing. The proposed changes will make little difference to thousands of families, or ease the pressure on parents seeking support for their disabled children.
I spoke to Heidi last week, whose daughter has Down’s Syndrome. Like many parents, she feels let down by such a wasted opportunity. She said the Government don’t understand just how “time-intensive and emotionally draining” it is to be the parent of a disabled child.
“You feel like you’re continually battling to get services and support, just to try and get your child to be part of society.”
Heidi worries that her daughter is very socially isolated. Even the support she does get, like speech and language therapy, is under threat. Heidi has to fight to ensure her daughter keeps even this basic support. And shockingly, therapists are put under pressure by local councils to tell parents that their children don’t need their support.
We know Heidi is not alone. Every day, we speak to parents who tell us of an on-going battle and the constant feeling that their child’s needs are less important than council budgets. Sharon, whose son has Asperger’s, feels the current system is “impossibly difficult”.
For Mums like Heidi and Sharon, and their children, we must make the Government see how important support for disabled children is.
Michael Gove MP is the Secretary of State for Education, it’s his responsibility and he can’t ignore families with disabled children any more – so let’s get his attention!
Join us and tweet using the hashtag #GoveUsABreak. Share a personal experience if you have one, or just say how you feel about families with disabled children being neglected, and encourage your friends to do the same.
Here are a couple of examples:
‘You win one battle, then onto the next. It’s never-ending.’ Disabled children’s families need Children&FamiliesBill to do more #GoveUsABreak
I’m stunned at how tough it can be for parents of disabled children. Why doesn’t the Children&Families Bill do more? #GoveUsABreak
We must tell Michael Gove to do something now for families with disabled children. Join us and together we can show the Government that they must give families with disabled children a break.
If you’re not already part of our Thunderclap action - please join now! On Monday we can make sure MPs know how valuable local support is for disabled children.
“What on earth are all these?!” As I piled up five large cardboard boxes filled with almost 300 memory boxes on the counter of the Westminster post room, the disgruntled security guard seemed quite confused. I could have given him the long answer: “This is a collection of over 700 fond family memories, shared by Scope supporters. They’ve written to us, to share memories of sunny holidays and close Christmases, because they believe in the importance of family time together. We have sorted these, and wrapped them beautifully in memory boxes. They want their MP to unwrap this box, read their memories, and remember how much family time together matters, before they go to make important decisions on the Children and Families Bill. Really, what’s in these boxes, is pretty amazing.”
In the end, I decided to just tell him they were simply ‘message to MPs’ – he appeared to be in a bit of a rush. He accepted this, and all the boxes, and now they are on their journey through the corridors of Westminster to land on MPs’ desks.
I really believe that when MPs open their memory boxes, after some curiosity, they’ll be pleasantly surprised. We have been quite touched by the small insights into the family lives of Scope supporters. It’s difficult to not feel that family really is central to many people’s lives after reading the collection of memories that have arrived. When MPs read about their constituents’ day trips to the zoo, their sandwiches on the beach, or their first Christmas with their grandchildren, I hope they too will be reminded that the closeness of family is something to treasure – and is so important for families with disabled children.
It’s now down to them to take this feeling, and turn it into action when the Children and Families Bill goes through the next stages in the coming weeks. For Scope campaigners, it’s good to know what we hope will act as the final reminder, is safely on the way.
Thank you to everyone who has contributed by sharing their family memory, your support has been overwhelming. We’ll keep you updated on the progress of the Children and Families Bill, and the Keep Us Close campaign.
