Sharing Power at People First

By Gina Barrett and Jennifer Taylor from People First Lambeth

Gina: ‘Having power gives me a good boost. In my life I haven’t had power. I learned it step by step, going to People First Lambeth and going to different meetings about powering people with learning difficulties to have power. Having power is taking charge of different things I want to do, having a say over what to do in my life and taking charge in my life’.

Jen: ‘We do a project called Supporting Each Other Equals Power. People First Self-advocacy helps people to sort out their problems like benefits and housing and to find work. Our bit is supporting people to go and do socialising that they want to do in the community, like our dance or afternoon tea and morning coffee. But if they want to go to the theatre or the art gallery or anything that suits them we support them to do that. Sometimes they come in and see us if they want to have a chat or do art with us. SCIE helped us to raise the money for the project. They are partners in the project as well’.

Gina: ‘Basically, they help us to run the project and look after the money’.

Gina: ‘We share power with different organisations when we do projects together. We work with lots of different organisations and we like to have equal control from the very beginning, from the start to the end’.

Jen: ‘That means we plan everything together and we make decisions together and decide what should go on in the project. We look at what’s working well and what’s not working well. We do writing the reports about what goes on in the projects. We decide how we should spend the money on the projects, like the financial side of it’.

Gina: ‘They can’t do it without us because we know what it’s like to be a person with learning difficulties. We know better than people without learning difficulties what we need, what we want, what’s wrong with services, when we’re treated bad and what services are good for us.

Gina: ‘So it’s very important that people do listen to us, what we’ve got to say, and treat us with respect as a person and don’t look down on us, like some people do, who think they know it all, but they don’t.