Kelly Stuart 20/11/2018 Joe's Soapbox

I am delighted with our 2018 conference.

It was our first ever conference in North Wales.

One hundred people attended both days.

On day one we had a conference.

On day two we had our festival, AdFest.

On day one we held four workshops.

They were:

• What’s in a name?
• Measure the Mountain
• Golden Thread of Advocacy
• UN Convention on the Human Rights of Disabled People.

The ‘what’s in a name?’ workshop looked at the label ‘learning disability’

And whether it was still the right word to use.

This was because we feel it is right to review it every few years.

And because some people think it is an offensive term.

Because they say it is not a ‘Social Model’ term.

Our members had different opinions about this.

Most agreed with learning disability.

Some did not like ‘learning disability’

Some members came up with different ideas for words to describe us. They were:

• Progressive learning
• Learning difficulty
• Learning condition

But most people thought that this was too big a subject to cover in the conference.

They think much more consultation should take place.

We hope to be part of that work.

Ffion Bethell of Caerphilly People First said ‘’

All Wales People First will fight hard to make sure that no language is changed unless people with learning disabilities agree to it.

NOTHING ABOUT US WITHOUT US!

The workshop was facilitated by Louise Price and Tracey Drew.

Measure the Mountain is a project looking to share stories from people with learning disabilities to see how well the Social Services and Well Being Wales Act is working for people with learning disabilities.

Our members shared lots of stories.

They thought Measure the Mountain was a good idea.

But they didn’t think it was accessible for people with learning disabilities.

We will feed this back to Measure the Mountain.

The workshop was facilitated by Hannah Thomas and Katie Cooke of Measure the Mountain.

The Golden thread of Advocacy project looked at self-advocacy for people with learning disabilities.

And how it fits in with the self-advocacy picture.

We feel that self-advocacy for people with learning disabilities is different for people with other types of disability.

And we were concerned in case this had not been fed into the Golden Thread of Advocacy.

This workshop gave our members a chance to do that.

The workshop was facilitated by Hannah Thomas and Paul Swann of Age Cymru.

The final workshop was about the UN Convention on Human Rights of Disabled People.