At SCC’s full council last Thursday, I asked  a very  pertinent question about SCC’s poor funding of Concessionary Fares which you can read if you follow this link.  More, I hope will follow!

I also commented forcibly on Suffolk’s current Equalities and Inclusion policy ( accessed here – Agenda Item 7 ) – which has surrounded itself with a sufficiently large number of walls to allow it to congratulate itself for being responsible for doing not very much – not half enough, in my opinion. In particular it completely excludes having to contemplate the situation of all the disabled people in Suffolk  and their inability to find work because they have not received adequate or even appropriate training or education – an extraordinary omission for such a policy, one would think (and also one I have drawn attention to before now!)

“Whilst I notice and applaud what I have read, I want to draw your attention to a noticeable gap in our current priorities for Equalities and Inclusion, which I have already raised at Cabinet.

I am therefore saying the following on behalf of the many people with disabilities who have been failed and continue to be failed by our education and training.

In Cabinet last Tuesday, SCC’s Adult Learning Strategy highlighted Suffolk’s woeful performance in educating young people with disabilities for employment.  We heard that ‘people with disabilities in Suffolk are not gaining the skills to access meaningful employment.”

Low academic achievement among Suffolk students with learning disabilities is too often put down to the failure of that student, rather than the failure of the Suffolk school system to educate. And very convenient it is for the Suffolk educational system to think so!

It is is not enough to call students with such disabilities  ‘special,’ and pat them on the head, and give them gold stars, and tell them they have completed ‘challenges’  which did not challenge them – if it fails to prepare them adequately for a world of work. It is certainly not enough for educators to wave such young people out of the educational door at the other end of a life of gold stars and unchallenging challenges without taking any care or responsibility for what they have been offered and whether it was fit for purpose! We must challenge this!

And we need to ask employers to help us: neither we or they have qualms in telling schools where they have failed in educating other school-leavers. Can’t we all do the same for those with disabilities?

And we and our schools should be pointing out to employers that  if school leavers with disabilities can overcome such hurdles it doesn’t make them ‘as good’ as non-disabled employees  Dealing daily with an unsympathetic able-bodied world  gives such people the potential to be not only more determined and more competent,  but more resourceful, more resilient, more capable of dealing with failure and finding other ways round a problem. Better, in other words.

So, a plea for next year. I want Suffolk’s  equalities and inclusion policy to actively recognise and support Suffolk’s  disabled residents (of all ages) to achieve what they are capable of rather than to patronise this potential out of them!”