A CARE worker has celebrated a major career milestone in the midst of the pandemic — and she’s described how COVID-19 has made people realise the significance of this “little-known domain of everyday life”.
Kay Robinson, from Launceston, has spent the past quarter of a century helping to change the lives of local people with learning disabilities, including supporting some of the same individuals for the entire 25 years.
In 1995, when Kay started out as a learning disability support worker, Britpop was at the peak of its powers, and season one of Friends had just aired.
After 12 years with NHS Cornwall’s supported living programme, Kay went on in 2007 to join the national learning disability charity United Response, which has its base in Callington. She remains there today, now in the role of senior service manager for Cornwall.
The year 1995 also marked a landmark piece of new legislation designed to positively shape the future of people with learning disabilities right across the UK. The Learning Disability Discrimination Act (LDDA) set out to give people with disabilities the same basic rights as others and to help them contribute to their society. Once introduced, it became illegal to discriminate against people with disabilities in relation to matters such as employment, education and transport.
Kay’s career has run directly alongside the introduction and implementation of the LDDA all those years ago. Are things very different for the people she has supported since 1995?
“So much has changed for the better but clearly much still needs to be done,” she says.
Some people didn’t even know that there were people with learning disabilities living in their community when I first started out.
“My joining United Response in 2007 coincided with a massive effort towards helping local people with learning disabilities reclaim their independence and place in society.
“United Response was instrumental in bringing an innovative, person-centred approach into Cornwall,” she continues.
“It transformed the way support work was planned and delivered for a group of local people who were previously barely part of their communities at all. Many had spent most of their lives either trapped in long-stay care institutions or being forced to do things they didn’t want to do – and the worst part was nobody knowing any different.”
Forced fun on mass group trips to theme parks and crammed Butlins-bound minibuses were replaced by activities people said they wanted to do, journeys they wanted to make and individuals with whom they could create connections and lasting memories — this, says Kay, is what true independent living really means.
“Our mission is to help people with learning disabilities live their lives to the full — and this must be driven by an ability to make choices independently, not being told what to do or where to go,” she said.
The day-to-day business of providing and receiving care transformed almost overnight for staff and those they supported.
“We quickly made tailored support plans for every individual, thorough needs assessments, bespoke training for staff and a genuine commitment to giving people with learning disabilities the most appropriate and beneficial help possible,” recalls Kay.
“But we also worked really hard at involving the families of the people we supported, having conversations to really get to know their child and building up close relationships that are still strong today.
“I now consider many of these family members as personal friends and it helps a great deal having that extended advocacy network — we all want what’s best for their son or daughter.”
Kay believes there are still far too many challenges and barriers faced by people with learning disabilities, and their support workers, despite the introduction of the LDDA and more recently the Equality Act.
“We’ve found that public perceptions have always been hard to change.”
United Response’s ‘Am I Your Problem’ campaign in 2019 aimed to challenge the hidden discrimination and sometimes outright hostility faced by people with a learning disability or autism. Its research showed that one in four people with learning disabilities said they’d been victimised in shops or restaurants.
Kay’s experience sadly draws some parallels with this theme.
“For all the good changes there’s been since 1995, we’re still sometimes asked to leave pubs and restaurants,” she said.
“The people we support are not always given the respect they deserve, and that simply must change.”
In spite of this, Kay recognises the great strides the sector has made and is quietly optimistic for its future — despite facing uncharted territories last year.
“The COVID outbreak has been the single biggest challenge of our generation, bringing with it profound and new challenges for so many different groups of people and lines of work,” she said.
“But I think 2020 was also the year that made more people than ever realise just how social care is helping scores of people within local communities.
“This appalling pandemic has really made people sit up and take notice of what goes on in little-known domains of everyday life, not least the tireless and creative support of people with learning disabilities.”
“I hope, if little else, this helps to promote the fantastic quality of social care in the UK and encourages a new generation of people to join this truly inspiring sector — just like I did back in 1995.”