Chapter 6 - Doing it for ourselves

Andy Beaton became involved with Birmingham Disability Resource Centre in 1995 when, as an employee of the Economic Development Department of Birmingham City Council he was given responsibility for being the Contact Officer in relation to the Resource Centre’s funding within his wider brief of ‘disability specialism’ in the department’s new thematic team.

A disabled person himself, Andy was able to bring the added dynamic of personal experience to his position as ‘the man from the council’ on the BDRC Board:

“I felt, having had a whole range of experiences because of my disability from ‘86 through to ‘95, the way I was treated by Occupational Health at the time of my appointment to the city council and also the lack of understanding from colleagues of my condition as well as misapprehensions and misunderstandings.

“I think that was something that I shared with many people and certainly with the Board members who I came to work alongside. I think they felt quite positively towards the fact that their city council representative was somebody who declared a disability. Indeed the person who succeeded me in the role also declared a disability and that was not a contrived arrangement. That was the situation that pertained.

“However, I think it was a positive experience for me. That area of work is one that had always interested me. Taking on the thematic work as well and being able to look at the city wide provision for disability.”

Andy’s personal interest in social enterprise, which reflected a wider interest amongst colleagues within the Economic Development Department, was particularly engaged by an area of the Birmingham Disability Resource Centre called Strawberry Studio.

From its opening in 1992 until its closure in 2009, Strawberry Studio was a training kitchen for people with learning disability and operated under the auspices of Birmingham City Council’s employment preparation service.

Whilst Andy, amongst many others, may have recognised in Strawberry Studio the potential to be developed into an independent social enterprise, with disabled people both preparing food in a fully operational kitchen and serving it in the adjacent restaurant, it remained, thereafter, an income generating training environment operated by the council.

Even so, there were many learning disabled people over the years who benefited from their time at Strawberry Studio, such as Jerome Chen-Bacchus, from Erdington, who began training as a chef at the restaurant at the age of 22. Jerome was first given the label of learning difficulty when he was at primary school and was immediately transferred to a special school. Looking back on this experience Jerome expresses some sense of sadness about losing his friends:

“The teachers said to my parents “‘Jerome can do things, but he has a learning difficulty’. What I don’t understand, and can’t find out, is why I couldn’t stay in mainstream school with just a bit more time for copying from a black board or more time doing maths, English, science, etc.

“My mom told me I may have to move school. From primary school I moved to a special school and then to special secondary school. Moving school I felt upset about leaving my friends who understood me.”

Before training at Strawberry Studio, Jerome had worked for four-and-a-half years for a fast food restaurant in Birmingham, but had become frustrated by the lack of opportunities to progress from the role of an ‘area host’, which basically involved a lot of cleaning with no discussion about promotion or development.

As well as offering a new opportunity to gain skills and confidence, Jerome also learnt a lot about other people with learning disability working at Strawberry Studio.

In particular he discovered that the range of different levels of learning related impairment was vast and diverse, a revelation which inspired his own belief that people with learning disability should not be marginalised and had the same rights to opportunity as other disabled people:

“First of all, it’s a shame that people could have the same rights as other people, but are being judged because they have a learning disability. Secondly, I feel everyone with learning difficulty is put under the same umbrella. I mean, if you are working with someone who has the same disability as me, they are not necessarily exactly the same.

“We can each be better in our own way. There are good qualities in everyone, but employers don’t see this. They just want to give you a job and let you do that job until you get bored, when they should be encouraging you to learn new skills.

“Because of the trolley I could work in the offices and meet customers: ‘What’s your name? What do you like?’ Trying to get customers to recognise there is a restaurant here and they are welcome to have their food and sit there.

“That’s what I like about catering – I like the customer care, cleaning, basically making sure everything is suited for everyone. Since I’ve been working at Strawberry Studio I’ve been finding out more about people with learning difficulties. Maybe one day I could open a restaurant they could come to and get a good wage instead of being on benefits.”

From its earliest days, employment and training services became a priority area of focus for the Birmingham Disability Resource Centre. Debbie Nunn is another disabled person who initially gained support from the centre in terms of her own personal development but went on to give back as much as she had gained herself.

Born and brought up in Olton, Debbie had a number of impairments from early childhood and remembers that things were very different for disabled children back then with the emphasis in the education system being entirely on life skills with a bit of art thrown in, as opposed to academic development.

Given the label of ‘learning disabled’, Debbie attended a local church school where she experienced a very similar sense of powerless fatalism about her own long-term future to that expressed by other disabled people earlier in this book:

“It was difficult for me at school. Once my epilepsy started that was where my education ended. There was a strong belief system that as I was a left-handed, epileptic with low vision I automatically fell into the label of being learning disabled by the doctors and possessed by an evil spirit or being punished by many of my peers and teachers.

“Things became pretty dire after that. I was eventually sent to a rehabilitation centre, they were organisations that look to see if a person can achieve certain skills. You had a choice of woodwork, machining, packing components, gardening, catering or basic office work. In truth I drifted through departments and ended up doing odd jobs to support the staff.”

Taking large quantities of drugs to control her seizures – most of which have since been banned, they left her feeling, in her words “zombiefied and in a mist”. Debbie described this period of her life as being “horrifically miserable, isolated and lonely”.

Her life took a turn when a buyer for a building and civil engineering company visited the rehabilitation centre and, following a lengthy conversation on industrial fittings, the buyer mistook Debbie for an employee rather than a service-user. The outcome was that within a month she left the rehabilitation centre and became his assistant in his company.

“It was the most wonderful experience. It was the first time in my life that I was not judged on my medical conditions and labels, but seen as an individual who had intelligence and potentials. I ended up as assistant plant manager.

“At that time Women’s and Ethnic rights had just started to gain strength and I was feeling more empowered and that led me to look at how I and other disabled people could become more empowered too.

“I set up an organisation called the ‘Network’. It was open to anyone who felt socially isolated or had a problem they could not share with family, friends or the authorities. Naturally many people who used the Network had disabilities. It ran for over 25 years and was the foundation for my passion for human rights.

“I went on to work at British Gas but, after ten very happy years. decided to take voluntary redundancy. It was the first time I had been unemployed and the old insecurities and prejudices began to surface. That was when I first got involved with the BDRC.

“I met Steve Blick who, at the time, was the Employment Officer. I did some volunteering and was asked to cover the BDRC reception, it was around 1995. The centre was going through a huge change, having recently moved to Bierton, and it was the beginning of the separation. Teresa Cabot was manageress at the time with Ann Rowles, Tahira Razaq and myself as receptionist in the Admin section.”