Are young people with learning disabilities being treated correctly?- Competition Entry

13 May Are young people with learning disabilities being treated correctly?- Competition Entry

I chose to enter the Mencap Journalism Awards for my competition. This is a charity who supports people with learning disabilities and they wanted a journalist to produce a piece of work outlining learning disabilities as a whole. I chose to take the angle on how people with learning disabilities are treated/if they are treated correctly and interlinking it with bullying and hearing from people’s personal experiences. I wanted to show an audience more into the life of somebody with a disability and how difficult it can be. I produced a 1500 written piece and 4 separate audio interviews. One with a teaching assistant at a learning disability school and 3 with family members and people who have experienced a form of bullying due to their learning disability. As the requirements on the website were 800-1000 word written piece OR a multimedia piece. I wanted to do both to fulfil my best potential in my course.

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Is the younger generation who are suffering from a learning disability being treated right? A report by a leading health inequality expert, Professor Sir Michael Marmot, says young people with learning disabilities die 15-20 years earlier than the average person down to poor housing, low incomes, social isolation, and bullying.

It’s been estimated that 1,200 people who have learning disabilities have a shorter life expectancy due to a higher risk of mental health problems says a report from the Institute of Health Equity at the University College in London.

Is there more that could be done to stop this from happening? To stop the younger generation from feeling secluded from society and to help prevent discrimination from happening. Professor Marmot said: “A staggering 40% of people with learning difficulties aren’t even diagnosed in childhood. This is an avoidable sign of a society failing to be fair and supportive to its most vulnerable members. We need to change this. The time to act is now.”

In order for these vulnerable people to start being treated correctly. It’s our responsibility as a society to take action in order to prevent this. Professor Marmot wrote a list of things which we can do to help.

• Improve their childhood experiences by helping them form close relationships from a young age. This would help reduce mental health and bad behavior.
• Help prevent poverty and improve home living to help with a healthier lifestyle and be more socially included.
• Encourage and help with employability programs allowing young people with learning disabilities to get a job from a younger age, improving mental and physical health. Currently, the number of people with learning disabilities in work paid at minimum wage or higher in the UK, varying from 0.3% to 22.1%.
• Improve social situations and reducing bullying, allowing everyone to be treated equally.

Glenwood School, a Community Special School located in Thundersly, Essex caters for up to 210 learners between 3-19. It’s school for learners with profound and multiple learning difficulties. 60% have autism and approximately 30% have physical and sensory impairments.

Michelle, an assistant who works at the school, teaches and helps the students and allows them to have the tools and competencies that they need to enjoy life at a later stage. She sees how the students cope in their day to day lives, any obstacles they have to overcome and if they struggle in social situations. She can see how they are treated from all walks of life and if they are getting the same treatment as any other person.

Children that suffer from learning disabilities have a hard journey ahead of them. If the disability they suffer from isn’t looked at as important then it’s likely they will start to struggle with school life as well as social aspects. Saying this, the people around them need to take this into consideration and identify the problem and help to make the best steps in assisting the disability and help them to achieve their goals.Life can be difficult and sometimes cruel for children, let alone children with disabilities which is why people like Michelle are here to help.

Michelle says: “it’s up to us as teachers and carers to have the understanding and knowledge to identify what the problems are with the children and to make sure they get the support and attention they need in order to help them deal with any struggles they have”.

The hardest part of the process is identifying that somebody has a learning disability at a young age and being able to treat them in a certain way. It’s a struggle to see the signs in children that they have a learning disability if the signs are particularly noticeable. The signs in learning disability behavior can be seen as just childish behavior if the parent/carer aren’t aware of the signs of a disability.

The earlier the child gets diagnosed the better they will learn to cope and live with it. If the disability gets ignored from the early stages, they will find many challenges will occur when they grow up.

When it comes to the link with learning disabilities and bullying, we often question if we as a society are doing everything we can to prevent these children from being bullied. It’s been a massive subject of campaigns yet with all this work going into it, is anything actually being done to change it. Not even just children, adults with learning disabilities and autism, are too the victims of bullying.

Tayla McDonald, sister of 14-year-old James, shares her story. “My brother suffers from Aspergers Syndrome. He struggles quite a bit in school, other kids aren’t very nice to him. He came home once with scratches all over him and bruises up and down his arms. He was jumped from behind and beaten up by a group of boys in his year and stole money from him”. Sister Tayla shared pictures of his injuries and said her autistic brother was an “easy victim”.

Chris Summers, a 32-year-old graphic designer struggled throughout his childhood from dyslexia and says he was treated differently not only by his teachers and peers but also by his father. “School was pretty difficult, just cause I found it difficult to do the work. Dyslexia was kind of a bit new and people didn’t really know about it so they just thought I was behind. My dad was mega strict and he didn’t understand me. They sent me to private school and you’d have to read in front of the class and I just couldn’t do it. The teacher ridiculed me and in the end, she made me go stand in the corner cause I couldn’t get past the first line. Some kids would make fun of you, I suppose that’s why I enjoy making stuff”.

Ryan Wiggins, a 15-year-old boy from Watford, became very well known for the video he made for the autism charity, Anna Kennedy Online. Ryan suffers from Asperger’s syndrome and he received an award earlier this year for being brave enough to speak about his experiences in living with this disability. The young boy who was severely bullied and told to kill himself created a short video that touched the hearts of many. In the black and white footage, it follows Ryan through his typical day giving an insight into the difficulties he has to face on a daily basis.

Ryan’s Mother said that while she thinks schools go on about anti-bullying policies and express how important it is to treat everybody equally, when they are actually confronted with a bullying-related problem it’s a different story.

With Ryan’s Mother expressing her experiences with school’s and how they deal with bullying, Michelle, who works at the Glenwood School says she thinks her students are in a safer environment at a school which is for students only with learning disabilities.

“In our school, we give each individual pupil 100% attention and support so if there’s anything they need we are there to help them through each day. With other school’s and mixing them in with students who don’t suffer from learning disabilities, of course, there’s always that risk of bullying, but also they may not receive the help and support they need due to teachers needing to focus their attention on other student’s as well. With our school, we are mixing them together with students who are going through a similar journey so it’s nice for them and not as much pressure for them to fit in with a crowd”.

She continues: “I’m in touch with teachers who work in schools like King John and Deanes which are both big secondary schools in the Benfleet area. In their training, they aren’t getting much training in dealing with disabilities. Not covering on the topic long enough, would spend an hour on it, if that”.

In 1999 Mencap published a report on hate crime called ‘Living in Fear’. In the report, it showed that 9 in 10 people with a learning disability were bullied, almost half of those people were bullied verbally and a quarter was physically bullied and many of those were bullied on a weekly basis.

Grace Estall, a 21-year-old girl, who’s cousin, Jess, suffers from down-syndrome. She speaks about her time during secondary school and the treatment she got. She went to the King John School in Thundersly, Essex, with it being a huge school averaging 2138 students mixed with other students who don’t suffer from learning disabilities, did she receive the same treatment as any other student.

She says: “She got a lot of help from carers at her school and had a support worker with her at all times. Jess didn’t struggle with severe bullying, I think it was more the case of being quite alone. She often would walk around on her own and she learned how to enjoy her own company in the end. She continues to say the support from the teachers could’ve been better in regards to helping her get into a friendship group and it was hard for her family to see her not getting involved with a friendship group.

With thousands of children being bullied each year, is there more the schools and us as a society can do to help prevent bullying from happening?