It’s the small things which make the difference

In campaigning you have to look for what the fundamentals are that will make a difference to people’s lives. A campaign I was involved with on inclusion in schools started with school toilets and led to £1 billion pounds invested in school access.

The campaign’s starting point was while researching another issue which observed how many schools had toilets that were inaccessible. At the time there had been a major move to get more disabled children into mainstream schools and everyone worried about making the curriculum more accessible, training teachers in more inclusive policies, admission procedures and so on. All important and good things to be doing, but everyone had ignored the basics. We realised that if children could not use the toilets then the rest was all in vain. Social inclusion could all rest on the capacity to pee like everyone else!

Of course it was not the only thing that was wrong - steps where they did not need to be, old schools with a lack of access to classrooms, narrow corridors were also a problem. We started small as this was long before disability access was required in schools. Working with a teachers’ union we got evidence together and, using the emblematic example of school loos that could not be used, started to lobby for a change. The net result of much low level work was the establishment of a challenge fund called the Schools Access Initiative. At first it matched parents own contributions to fixing the problems - big society long before its latest incarnation - with small amounts of money. Parents rolled up at the weekend and with bags of cement bought with the fund put in ramps, rebuilt toilets and made playgrounds accessible. As understanding and support grew so did the size of the budget, and the need for parents to get the shovels out diminished. The Schools Access Fund was finally incorporated into general funding, but only recently and not before over a billion pounds had been spent on ensuring disabled children had the best possible physical access.

Yes we had the research, proper evaluation and focused influencing which found unlikely allies in Government at the time. However, I will always remain convinced that it was both the simplicity of the issue and the basic human detail that exemplified a bigger truth that won the leverage and support we needed. So in campaigning it’s often worth starting with the fundamentals that exemplify what is happening to people as the basis for building ideas that might bring about fundamental change. As one notable campaigner put it at the time, equality can be measured in inches - how far you have to drop the curb to make it accessible to a wheelchair.

Why did I think of this now? Only because of my sadness to see in the papers this week stories of disabled people reporting that they were finding life harder than before as attitudes harden in a recession and media campaigns about disabled benefit scroungers rub off into bullying behaviour and discrimination on the streets. Not surprising as we know that disabled people are one of the first to suffer in a downturn.

Today it’s walking, or wheeling, down the street that’s the fundamental we need to look at. When disabled people are scared to do that we know we have a long way to go. It turns out that equality is not just measured in inches but in the space between what we say we care about and what we do. Most people say they don’t discriminate, yet over half of disabled people found that they faced discrimination and over a third said that it had got worse in the last year. See a recent Scope report for more details.

Many would have been the first to benefit from some of those access measures that should have improved their chances of jobs. Also that familiarity with disabled children would breed understanding, not contempt when they became adults.

So the bricks and mortar improved but the attitude change was brittle and vulnerable to the fluctuating economic climate. A shut mind is as difficult to open as a shut door if you’re in wheelchair it seems. If you cannot go down a street unmolested as a disabled person this is one fundamental that needs to change.