What is SHOUT all About?

NOW.....It sometimes happens that the people who spend our taxes on delivering the services we need get a bit confused. It sometimes happens that they believe there is not enough of our money to provide these services to important groups of people.

It sometimes also happens that, in their confusion, they forget about disabled children and children who have been failed by our 'one-size-fits-all' education system. It can even sometimes happen that the very people who are struggling and the very people who have been failed by the system can then get blamed or labelled as hopeless cases or even discriminated against because the services they need have not been provided.

That is VERY SILLY!

All this confusion usually results from decisons that have been taken on the basis of wildly inaccurate or often incomplete information about what disabled children and their families need. NOW...It sometimes also happens that our public servants get to believe that they can CUT or restrict service because they have been able to massage the statistics about 'evidence' of need. It sometimes happens that we let them get away with this because we feel powerless to stop them.

This is equally VERY SILLY!

So what can be done? Empowerment can often be achieved quite simply sometimes.

Because sometimes all we need to do is to make sure that our public servants have some better quality and some more accurate 'evidence' of need than the rubbish they have been relying on for their decison making. The remedy then is a simple and an easy one. All we need to do is help them get this information. Of course it sometimes happens that they might try to ignore what we are telling them. When this is the case I would suggest that all we need to do is repeatedly feed them with more and more accurate information and....We also need to learn to SHOUT A BIT LOUDER!

You see, unfortunately, it sometimes can happen that they sometimes pretend they can't hear us. Now....If they continue to ignore the 'evidence' of need then maybe we will have to learn how to SHOUT REALLY LOUD using publicity and the media. Because it also sometimes happens that public servants can lose their jobs if VERY embarrassing facts get SHOUTED in the media. In fact, several Home Office ministers recently have been shuffled off and the present minister seems to be in HOT WATER right now for that very reason. Information is power.....And parents need to learn how to use it effectively to get the help their families need. If you want to learn how to collect and how to present information powerfully and effectively then get in touch with PAT because this is what we are doing right now.

The future for parents and our families does NOT have to repeat all the mistakes of the past! The future doesn't even have to resemble the past in any way at all. YES......We all know that we can't change the past but we CAN certainly shape the future. We are extremely fortunate because we now live in an information age and there has never ever in all our history been a better time than right now to shape the future. There is so much information and it is so readily available that it has almost become impossible to keep embarrassing facts a secret any more. We just need to use the information that's out there to demonstrate the 'evidence' of need and we need to SHOUT really loud!

This is the world's 5th largest economy. Child poverty in a country like ours is an absolute DISGRACE and the failure to nurture and look after our children properly is nothing less than CRIMINAL NEGLIGENCE. We wouldn't get away with treating our animals as shabbily as the way that disabled children are treated. The decisons to CUT and to restrict services to children are nothing less than SHAMEFUL! The truth is that there is plenty of money, BUT it is not being spent the way that we want. It is not being used to do GOOD things and too much of it is being used to do BAD things.

WE can change that. We can transform the situation for parents and for our children.

READY?....ONE...TWO...THREE....SHOUT! I can't HEAR you!

"...they forget about disabled children..."

"...politics is simply the art of the possible...it is POSSIBLE!..."

8 out of 10 families with disabled children say that they are at breaking point!

Only 6% of families get support from social services!

Disabled children are 7 times more likely to be excluded from school!

"...they sometimes pretend they can't hear us..."

"...we CAN certainly shape the future..."

"...we can transform the situation for parents and for our children..."

"...the future doesn't have to resemble the past ..."