Aren't we the Big Society?
David Cameron's vision for the big society is about empowering local communities. This should be great news for pinpoint and its supporters as this is exactly what we are about, and have been trying to promote for the past 2 years. But is it?
As the big society game gets played out in the media, much recent news is about cuts in funding and how this is having a direct impact on small community organisations as council's make their cutback decisions.
Small organisations such as ours us don't have the resources to get heard at all the top policy tables, and sometimes feel decisions are being made about us more than with us. However, at pinpoint we're using our contacts to try and make sure parents and carers voices are heard when decisions on cutbacks in services for families are made.
As anyone coming to our network meetings for parents and carers of disabled children knows, one of the 'ground rules' for these meetings is that 'the whole is bigger than the sum of the parts'. What this means is that we have a louder voice working together than individually. Never has this been more important.
If you want to make sure that community-led groups like pinpoint are part of Cambridgeshire's big society, please look out for any opportunities to help us get parents' and carers' voice heard in the big society debate. Challenge your councillors and MPs, and the people who manage the services you use, on how they are involving families in making decisions about which services will stay, and which will go; which families will continue to get support, and which families will have their support cut.
We may be small, but we represent a large part of Cambridgeshire's community - parents and carers - so now is the time for pinpoint to act big. If we work together we can.
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by admin of www.departmentforhealth.com
Shall we play the Game?
'Triage' was originally the name given to the process of selecting which wounded soldiers would be chosen for treatment amd which left to die by the overwhelmed military doctors on the french battlefields. Our struggling to survive children and families represent the wounded soldiers here. Is this the 'power', as an organisation of parents, we are asking for? In a recent meeting of Pinpoint parents were asked to select , in order of priority, areas which should be saved from cuts above others.
I looked at the options we had to choose between like SEN in Education and thought how the present system had not even afforded whatis legally required ( my own child and thousands of others). Could we cut there?
I looked at ' Short Break services' and thought about how I might otherwise have avoided depression and breakdown, could we cut there? I looked at medical diagnosis and follow up, and thought how this is currently too late, or (follow up) unavailable, leading to childrens misery, could we cut there?
How should we cut already inadequate services?
We talk about the 'reality', its 'inevitable' there really is no money etc. Everyone knows Government ( for which we pay) has made, and is making choices in our name, from Wars, to weapons, to propping the poor old banks so that THEY can prosper, but OUR CHILDREN are not allowed to thrive. Shall we just adapt to this? turn our attention to grabbing little bits of the 'diminishing pot' for what we percieve is our own particular interest? ( and therby finding ourselves pitted against other vulnerable groups like the sick or elderly). You dont have to be a raving trotskyist to refuse to play this game. I have never been involved in British politics but I think our movement ( parents of children with disabilities) should be represented at the ' Stop the Cuts' demonstration , organised by Unions, in Cambridge on Saturday 25 October. I know its hard for us parents to decide how to use our time, but I will certainly be there and I hope others can make it too.
Kathrine
Ps I welcome discussion and contact around this.
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