Adults with learning disabilities should be treated with equality not single out. I myself is an adult with learning disabilities and other disabilities.

In February 2017 after months of negotiations trying to avoid compulsory redundancies triggered by deep budget cuts, EHRC management sent e-mails to 8 workers work addresses informing them they were being made redundant whilst they were taking part in a lawful one day protest strike. The EHRC still has over 47 equivalent vacancies these displaced workers could easily fill, but has so far refused to do so. What is so shocking is this employer also happens to be the UK's UN recognised guardian of our Human Rights! With Brexit uncertainty and challenges to Human Rights law being suggested, we need a strengthened fully resourced EHRC to defend the most vulnerable from discrimination and attack.

The children that attend the Tree Club have complex needs that include communication difficulties, requirement of personal care, sensory and processing difficulties, and challenging behaviour. To support them and to meet the requirements of regulatory bodies such as the Care Inspectorate we provide a high staffing ratio and in depth training. This is a significant cost to the organisation that simply can’t be met by parent fees. Our children have very few opportunities to access mainstream clubs and activities, if any. The Tree Club aims to bridge this gap. We endeavour to meet all our children/young people’s individual care plans. These plans detail the requirements for each young person to meet their full potential in relation to social and well-being targets. The Tree Club monitors and develops these plans, and supports each child’s individual outcomes, through carefully thought-out accessible activities, which focus on peer interaction, enhancing abilities and most important of all – providing fun play. The Tree Club allows parents and carers to access quality and affordable after school care, matching the similar mainstream provision, that is unfortunately inaccessible for our children. We also provide holiday schemes, allowing carers greater choices to be able to either access or support their ability to work, or support respite and/or quality time for our young people’s siblings. We offer this respite which for most of our service users’ families is impossible to source elsewhere. This service provides a break from caring, an opportunity to recharge their batteries and a support network to discuss issues and behaviour techniques and coping strategies and reduces the social isolation they face.

Currently in England,Scotland and Northern Ireland to apply for a Blue Badge you have to have a walking difficulty or be registered blind unlike Wales.The lack of such an entitlement in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland is blatantly discriminatory and contravenes Article 20 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities UNCRPD, the right to personal mobility. The current situation exposes people with a cognitive impairment and their carers to real risks, excludes them from many activities, and threatens progress on the Government’s commitment to dementia friendly communities. A carer would have to let a person living with dementia get out of the car while they park and risk them becoming distracted and wandering away before they get out of the car and getting lost, this happened in a local supermarket car park and the person living with dementia was missing for 2 hours and needed a police search to find them

This surgery is used by over 5000 people, other surgeries are also full to capacity. Forcing them to take on the extra patients caused by the closure of folkestone east family practice will have a detrimental affect on the healthcare the residents of folkestone recieve. Closing this surgery may even lead to people not seeking a gp due to being unable to travel far

Glasgow City Council has announced that it is cutting all funding to the Housing Support Budget. This means that our vulnerable elderly residents of Glasgow will be without the vital warden support which they currently receive. The warden is a life line for people who have very little or no family and support, enabling them to live not only as independent a life as they possibly can, but simply to live! Without this support, many people would sit lonely for days, weeks or months with absolutely no contact. Our elderly residents will end up completely neglected as GP's do not routinely check on their older patients and are stretched to the limits themselves. Imagine sitting all alone, no one bothering with you or even knowing you exist. Just think how frightened you would feel if this was you, just waiting to die because no one cares. How dare the Council treat our Elderly people like this! Please sign this petition and help save our wardens and show our older people you care about them. Thanks for your support.

Despite significant ‘improvements’ to Needham Market Railway Station in recent years (costing over £700,000) access to the Ipswich-bound platform remains by steep underground stairway only – a physical challenge for passengers with limited mobility, with buggies, bikes, or heavy suitcases, and an impossibility for wheelchair users. Additionally, the new ramp from the car park to the Cambridge-bound platform is well above the maximum 1 in 12 gradient required to comply with Building Regulations, creating further significant problems for wheel chair users. Needham Market is a growing town with large new estates planned for hundreds of homes over the next few years. Abellio East Anglia Limited (trading as Greater Anglia) claims to be committed to complying with its obligations under the Equality Act 2010, and pledges to make its services accessible to all. Abellio has a ten year contract to run our trains and stations and so has no excuse not to make full access an urgent priority. Please sign our petition and support this local campaign. Thank you!

Children with autism are 7 times more likely to be excluded from school. They can be very vulnerable in incidents and often are unaware of potential dangers. As it is a spectrum some people with autism may find it more challenging to express themselves or be able to communicate their needs. It is important to get a standardised approach to raising awareness of autism to support people with autism and their families.

More than 50,000 people have had specially adapted vehicles taken away from them since changes to disability benefits in 2013. Vehicles are being taken away from people with disabilities without any warning whatsoever The Motability scheme entitles disabled people to lease specially adapted new vehicles and powered wheelchairs. As a Motability vehicle user my self I am terrified that this will be taken away from me , then i would not be driven to my many medical appointments. In fact I would be devastated as I have a life limiting condition, am a wheelchair user and blind. if this was to happen, my life would change dramatically I would have no quality of life and I would be isolated from everything including my own family. Peter Bone MP for Wellingborough Northamptonshire has spoken about this and is a campaigner. DWP need to review this urgently as it affects so many people's lives. The assessment needs to be looked at from a person to person illness to illness point of view rather than trying to just do a one size fits all.We do not all fit into the same box. Every disabled person with a vehicle deserves to keep their vehicle to enable them to live there lives as normal as possible and have as much independence as possible. Motability need to stop taking these adapted vehicles away as they are required by each and every disabled individual who needs a wheelchair accessible vehicle. https://youtu.be/wjEb3R7ey3E You may also be interested in the petition below which is also related to disabled people: https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/allow-wheelchair-accessible-vehicles-into-rubbish-and-recycling-centres

***5000 signatures forces the Council to discuss the issue at a Council Meeting. Please only sign this petition if you live, work or use LD services in Somerset*** The transfer of Somerset’s Learning Disability Service from Somerset County Council to Discovery was promised as a means of ensuring sustainable care for people with a learning disability, with ‘no savings targets’. It is now clear, however, that to make the £4m saving predicted Discovery plan to make staff redundant, reduce the terms and conditions of those left, and possibly close day centres. By starving funding for adult social care Somerset County Council have handed Discovery the task of implementing cuts that will hit the care provided to vulnerable people. Cuts will lower morale, risk high staff turnover, and leave staff vacancies unfilled. Service users and their families were promised a sustainable service focused on the continuity of care delivered by experienced, knowledgeable and familiar staff. The cuts proposed will be highly detrimental to the delivery of personalised quality care. We are therefore calling on Somerset County Council to give LD Services the funding that it needs to ensure continued high quality care for vulnerable adults in Somerset. If the current cuts are progressed this will not be achieved.

autistic people are a huge contribution to our society, in many ways they are superior to so-called normal people and they deserve our respect. Many of our brightest minds and our greatest achievers are autistic and autistic people need to be protected

An undiagnosed person with a hidden difference such as dyslexia or other commonly experienced a sense of not really knowing who you are.If nobody tells the person that there is a reason for their difficulties, there is a tendency to label themselves as dumb, thick and stupid. The difficulties can become harder to manage in secondary school and when children begin to fail they can become very vulnerable and on edge. These feelings can stay throughout life. The frustration of prolonged failure on a range of curriculum subjects at school, resulting in feelings of insecurity and lack of confidence, can have profound effects upon social status, friendship patterns, and acceptance and adjustment in new settings. Aggressive and antisocial behaviour may result from these tensions. Stress and insecurity can lead to a prominence of information processing difficulties. When dealing with problems, may adopt strategies of avoidance and self blaming. To the person who experiences them, these emotions often feel bewildering and shaming. Inevitably the emotional consequences are lack of confidence, frustration, even depression. Feeling of been let down by other people who should have recognised the difficulties or be more sympathetic to them; that they have consequently lost opportunities for study having a diagnoses this could of been avoid with a simple diagnosis which is important it allow a child / adult to understand where the difficulties lie and if there are any further difficulties overlapping and this is necessary for the correct accommodation. Despite everything we know about dyslexia through research, many children are denied screening. And many more, once diagnosed,are denied the services that should accompany such a diagnosis." School’s reason for denial . • Wrongly points to the limited resources (financial or expertise) of the child’s school. But that is not the entire picture. Putting aside appropriate resource challenges, the educational change necessary to support this vulnerable group of students often transcends financial issues. In fact, some (not all) of the most significant changes are actually free and actually only require instructional and attitudinal shifts. No wonder no one wants to diagnose children when there is a shortage of individuals trained to Provide with necessary instruction. • Lack intervention causes depression anxiety and suicide. • Lack of of proper intervention can affect future Job prospects, and behaviour which can lead to the prison pipeline. We want to enable those with children / adults to reach their potential to develop in the work force. Parents often delay getting their kids the help they need because the school denies screening for diverse reasons . Unfortunately, if they get it the “wait and hope” approach is rarely effective and has a costly impact on children: Navigating the public school bureaucracy to secure special attention often takes months or years. Meanwhile, children are falling further behind during the critical early-education period. Public school teachers, principals and staff are well-intentioned, but the system is broken. Most schools don’t have the resources . Waiting for the school to test and treat your dyslexic child is a “race to the bottom” and an enormous disservice to your language-challenged child. By the time your child is far enough behind to qualify for a public school evaluation, you have a bigger problem on your hands. What was a manageable academic challenge for your 1st grader can turn into a significant emotional and social problem by the 3rd grade. You are likely to hear your child say things like “I’m never going to get this,” “All my friends read better than I do,” “I hate this,” “School is not for me,” “I’m stupid.” Children with Dyslexia Despraxia Abergers.... do not “catch up” without specialized and explicit instruction. Such children don’t “just need a little extra practice” or a tutor; they need a specific type of teaching designed for the unique learning patterns of the brain. Some students often treat every word as a sight word and memorize it, instead of using the word’s structure to decode and understand it. Later in life , demands, this memorization strategy will fail them. While you are hoping for dyslexia help from the school, your child is losing ground—falling behind with reading and writing skills that are fundamental to all learning. Many school teachers and administrators wish they could provide more help for struggling, but they lack resources and training to do so. Few parents understand what they are getting themselves into if they try to navigate the school system as an academic lifeline for their struggling student. Many with hidden disabilities may not recognise their difficulties as Dyslexia Dyspraxia Asbergers or other.... . Even if they understand the nature of their difficulties, they may not know how to present these in a way that allows other people to help them. In the end, the anxiety about the difficulties is as much the problem as the actual difficulties themselves and a vicious circle of anxiety and inefficiencies evolves from which there seems no escape.A lack of school, job or social success is likely to add to this emotional burden . A diagnosis is an understanding of the difficulties, by and large, brings a sense of relief even wellbeing , as all the bewildering inefficiencies can be brought into a consistent picture and this helps to explain problems in a clear and confident way. key to Dyslexia Dyspraxia and Asbergers ..... is Early intervention know one should go unnoticed. http://www.counselling-directory.org.uk/counsellor-articles/dyslexia-counselling-addressing-the-emotional-repercussions-12385 Help make change for an child or an adult! Thank you. Sign the Petition so that all children /adults are identified and supported . Thank you.