Conversation with former President of Inclusion Europe, Maureen Piggot.
Listen to the podcast episode here.
[00:00:42] Maureen’s youth and her beginnings in working with people with disabilities
Maureen was born in South Africa from Irish parents. At seventeen, she moved to Southern California to spend a student exchange year there. In the family where she was placed, there was a young boy with a severe disability who she entertained as much as she could. When Maureen went back to South Africa she graduated in psychology and then left again to move back in Souther California. Once she got there, she found out that Drew, the boy with the disabilities, lived in a foster family from Mondays to Fridays and came home only on the weekends.
[00:07:51] Maureen’s work with Mencap
In 1988 Maureen worked in Northern Ireland in a social education center as a manager. While she was working there, she saw the job advert but didn’t apply because of her commitment to the center she was working in. In the end, on the very last day of the application process, she sent her own application and finally got the job.
During her experience in Mencap, Maureen had the chance of meeting a lot of parents of children with disabilities, some of whom were reluctant to leave their children in a center like that because they didn’t trust anybody to look after their children.
[00:13:13] Disability awareness in 1988 and today
Maureen talks about an episode she remembers when she was working with Mencap and she met the parents of a newborn baby girl with Down syndrome who didn’t want to bring her down because of that. When the physiotherapist came and made sure the baby had a very core strength the parents were very happy, as that was the first positive thing they had been told since the baby was born. That was the point where the parents understood that there was help available.
[00:16:23] The parents movement and the Disability Discrimination Act
The parents movement was born out of the outrage of their children not being recognized and denied access to things other children took for granted. This movement was very important to fill gaps in the awareness of disability.
In the UK there is the Disability Discrimination Act, which isn’t as good as they wanted it to be, but it was inevitably a great goal to reach. It involved many people on the red postcard campaign, which gained a big success also thanks to the mobilization of the whole disability movement. The campaign was made of preprinted postcards that a person could address a member of the parliament with their own message on it. It was a real success, and in a short time all the post boxes were filled with those postcards, but the government banned the campaign considering it political and put some laws on the NGOs, while some politicians gave their support to that.
[00:19:40] The importance of self-advocacy
Giving people with disabilities the possibility to speak for themselves is a great opportunity for them to earn their proper recognition in the world. They get seen, heard and they have their place in the community, as happened to some people who became movie stars and won an Oscar and to some other people who were put in the place of the trustee of an organization.
In her interview, Maureen spoke about the occasion given to these self-advocates to candidate themselves at the conference of Mencap, underlining again the need for venues accessible to people with physical disabilities. She also mentioned the importance of the support persons for the self-advocates, who help them with various issues, such as the translation of a language, for example.
[00:36:41] The importance of self-advocacy and deinstitutionalization
EDF supports a lot people with disabilities to be more integrated in society, giving them adequate support to make them comfortable in the everyday life. But the EDF is a valuable resource also for the creation of organizations, because in many countries the legal capacity laws or the fund cuts prevent them from doing it. So many organizations can’t fund themselves in other ways and end up losing their self-advocacy. That’s why self-advocacy needs to be always nourished and protected, same as the deinstitutionalization: people with disabilities are happier when they’re out of the institutions. Talking about money, on the other hand, funding an institution costs a lot.
[00:55:03] Maureen’s experience in Inclusion International
As Inclusion Europe is a part of Inclusion International, collaboration is vital. Communicating and learning from each other is the best way to share ideas and hear and see what other people are doing. It’s only by working across the boundaries and seeing, hearing and learning from the people who lived such experiences that can truly make a difference.