Learning Disability England support our campaign

As Learning Disability England members reps, we support the ‘right to maintain contact’ campaign – Covid reminded us all how important family, friends and human contact are. We support the campaign for it to be a right for someone living in a service setting to keep in close contact with at least one person.

Wherever you are living, whatever the paid support you have, we believe this regular contact with someone you choose should be an ordinary basic expectation of life. The minimum for every service to support, that can only be taken away when it is really proved excluding that person is the only option – and that someone else is then nominated as the Care Supporter.

There is something else that we think is important for many people with learning disabilities.

We often hear that people still are not in control of the decisions in their lives. We feel that this right to a Care Supporter must be based on the person being supported to decide who it is they want to maintain contact with.

Too often we know that service providers make assumptions about people’s ability to decide and make decisions for them. This campaign is about securing a right for the person using services - to put them in control of who they want support from.

There are lots of tools to support decision making and we want this right to be put into people’s full control - so it’s the right Care Supporter for them.

As Learning Disability England members reps we support this campaign and will ask other members if they will add their support and speak up.

It is almost unbelievable to us that we find ourselves campaigning for people to maintain contact with one other person. It feels a long way from Good Lives but we must keep expecting more.

We hope members will speak up too on this right, putting people with learning disabilities in control.

Jack, Scott, Kate & Tim

Members Representative Body, Learning Disability England