Exploring Voice and Choice - Voting

On the 7 May 2015 people across the United Kingdom will be voting in a General Election. At Alternative Futures Group we have been thinking about the importance of voting, and how voting is such a fundamental part of citizenship. Thanks to the work of campaigns and awareness raising by organisations like Mencap, United Response, Dimensions and Scope we know that the numbers of people with learning disabilities who voted in the last election was around 10% of those people eligible. Like many organisations, we have invested in trying to find ways to ensure that people we support have a voice and that the support that we provide is person centred, ambitious and facilitates citizenship. This year, it seems more important than ever to be looking at how we can best support people to have a voice, and what good support looks like in supporting people to vote.

Our first action has been to link up with Dimensions, as part of the Love Your Vote campaign (www.dimensions-uk.org.uk/get-involved/love-your-vote-get-involved/) . Dimensions has teamed up with the Parliamentary Outreach Service, whose role is to help people understand more about what Parliament does. Dimensions then arranged for our regional Parliamentary Outreach Officer, Gary, to set some dates for events. Our commitment has been to book the venues, publicise the workshops, and support people to come along. Each workshop has been developed with people with learning disabilities, so the materials are accessible and the whole session takes just two hours. At our first workshops, we also invited along colleagues from the local self-advocacy forum, and this was a great opportunity to learn more about what they do, and for us all to link up.

Our next step is linking up with Mencap as part of the Hear My Voice campaign (https://www.hear-my-voice.org.uk/ ), which is also delivering workshops about the process of voting (so complementing those delivered by the Dimensions campaign) that include a chance in some areas to meet MPs and hold a "hustings" (a debate or discussion between politicians).

Both websites have brilliant resources that you can use to support people to understand more about politics and voting. United Response also produce a regular accessible format bimonthly news bulletin (www.unitedresponse.org.uk/easy-news )that may be good to share with people to support developing interest in current affairs, and their website also has some great resources as part of their Every Vote Counts (www.unitedresponse.org.uk/every-vote-counts) campaign - including an election planner, and regular updates. Every Vote Counts will be publishing updated resources and launching an updated website next month as well as holding an event for MPs on 25 November to raise awareness of people with learning disabilities as their constituents to encourage them to engage with people.

It's really important for provider organisations to be thinking through how they will support people to vote - and to know the myths and assumptions that surround voting for people with learning disabilities and also people mental health issues. Concerns about capacity have led to many people thinking that people can't vote. This isn't the case. The 2006 Electoral Administration Act abolished this restriction on eligibility. The same applies for people with mental health problems (although there are some restrictions on people detained under certain sections of the Mental Health Act - but this is a very small number of people affected). What is important is making sure people are on the electoral roll.

So what have we learnt so far?

Firstly, all of us that have attended the workshops have learnt a lot about political systems - both people we support and those of us supporting. We have also realised that some of us were not really clear about who could vote, and had assumed that some people we support might not be interested. The question we are now thinking on is what good support looks like in supporting people to vote. We'd love to hear from anyone else working on this! We are also going to ensure that we have supported people in some of the basic requirements of voting - by making sure that the people we support are on the electoral register, and trying to make sure people have access to good, accessible information that can help decision making when it comes to voting. We are also looking at what we need to do to support everyone in our recovery and treatments centres too.

Doing this now means people will be ready for May 2015, and we will be able to confidently support people to vote. We have found the organisations detailed in this blog a great help in structuring this work, and we look forward to continuing to work with them over the coming months.

For more information on voting, see: https://www.mencap.org.uk/allaboutvoting