Campaigns such as #hellomynameis started by Dr Kate Granger MBE who was a terminally ill patient at the time that she started the campaign show that utilising the experiences of patients can take good care to great, compassionate and person centered care.
For CHANGE this means that we work with people who have experience of learning disabilities, learning difficulties and autism.
At CHANGE we believe in ‘nothing about us without us’ and this is at the heart of our work. From our Words to Pictures team of Easy Read quality checkers to the resources our projects team create we believe in the value of co-production and involvement.
The benefits of this are:
Long lasting resources that encompass the needs of the target group and have a stronger impact
The increased quality of our work
Inclusivity of often underrepresented and under engaged groups
When you work with CHANGE you can feel confident in the assurance that your accessible information is just that – accessible.
Our experts have found that accessible information is often too ‘wordy’, uses complicated jargon and does not take formatting such as font size and contrasting colours into account.
As our accessible information is quality checked changes can be made to increase its accessibility, accuracy and utility to people with disabilities, that use English as their second language, have a low reading age and information processing difficulties.
Working with experts by experience also prevents our work from being tokenistic as it continues to engage with and value these groups. We understand the importance of upskilling volunteers and do this by providing good quality training, networking opportunities at events and regular supervisions focusing on progression.