Transcript Leonard Cheshire Disability Relaunch Briefing SUS Team

Leonard Cheshire Disability
Creature Discomforts: Using advertising, PR
and campaigning towards a more diverse
society
Peter Dickens
Alex Mihaly
Sheffield Hallam University
February 2008
Presentation title Slide 1 7/17/2015 2:52 AM
Leonard Cheshire Disability:
60 years at the forefront of disability issues in the UK
Who we are
•We’re a disability charity born out of the life experience and
inspiring vision of one man: Leonard Cheshire VC
•We employ over 7,000 people and have 4,000 volunteers in
180 services working with over 21,000 disabled people in the
UK, and we have 5 international offices serving 54 countries
around the world
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Leonard Cheshire Disability:
60 years at the forefront of disability issues in the UK
What we do
•We operate social care services with local authorities that
provide support for disabled people both in their own home
and in facilities we own and run, and also in the community.
•We use our skills and knowledge to develop and pilot new,
innovative, exciting support services for disabled people with
the support of corporate, private and charity partners.
•We campaign to change society’s responses to disability
•We do these things around the world with partners in 54
countries as a sustainable, inclusive development NGO
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Realising Potential
Broadening priorities:
•Service delivery and campaigning
Our goal:
•By 2015 we will be known globally for changing society’s
responses to disability
Next steps: taking our messages to the public
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Why we advertise, campaign and talk to the media:
The need for our work:
Disabled people experience disadvantage and
discrimination every day, largely through ignorance - this
needs to change.
Our call to action to society:
We want people to think and act differently to make a
positive difference to the lives of disabled people.
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The public has lost touch with disability
Name a charity, pressure group or voluntary organisation that comes
first to mind in the area of protection of animals
RSPCA scored 68%
RSPB scoring only 17%
PDSA 16% and WWF 15%
and others between 1-5%.
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The public has lost touch with disability
However, in contrast, when the public were asked who comes to mind
in the area of disability:
The top scorer was Scope with only 5%
Mencap and RNIB at 4%
Mind at 2%, others at 1%
Leonard Cheshire with no score at all.
The ‘don’t knows’ ran at 74%
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The public has lost touch with disability
The public are in 2 groups:
•A direct/indirect connection with disability
•No connection with disability
“Doesn’t the existence of the NHS, local
authority services and the DDA mean that I
don’t have to think about this now?”
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The public has lost touch with disability
•No real awareness of Social Model outlook
•Huge resistance to being told they might be contributing
•Filtering out of any message that is confrontational
•Comfortable turning away from the issues
•Mostly unconscious “sins of omission”
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How to reach the public with a diversity message
•To get anywhere, we needed to reframe the concept of
disability in their minds
•Need to get in “under the radar”
•Research showed us humour can do this
•Clear that this is a journey
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The development of the advertising messages
•40 hours of interviews with disabled people
•Consistent themes: Attitude, Action, Access
•Campaign based completely around the voices of disabled
people
•Inviting people to engage, read, hear, learn and then Act!
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Working with the media
•Stories and news about disability and disabled people have not
been high on journalist’s agendas
•Where disability is talked about or shown, it’s usually as a
medical issue, rather than a social one
•Often the media – and much of the general public - look on
disabled people with pity or as ‘other’
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Working with the media
•The Creature Discomforts media activity is designed to
challenge and change attitudes towards disability, even within
the media themselves
•For the media launch of our campaign we used statistics about
disabled people’s experiences, along with personal stories of
people’s negative attitudes and being treated differently
•To bring the characters and messages to life, the people who
gave their voices to the characters were interviewed by the
media
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Working with the media
•By piggy-backing on the familiarity and humour of the Aardman
style, we make a serious point with humour
•By using the real people behind the characters we highlight the
human impact of the negative attitudes that exist
•From the success of the launch of our campaign the media are
starting to take more notice of disabled people and disability
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Working with the media
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Working with the media
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How successful has it been?
•40 minutes of prime time news coverage!
•International media all the way to New Zealand
•Hugely improved profile with editors nationwide
•“I have never seen an advertising campaign garner this
much news coverage in my career”
Matthew Freud, Freud PR
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The making of
“Creature Discomforts”
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Taking it to the streets: why we need to campaign
•There are a number of different Acts and pieces of legislation
related to disabled people, most notably including the Disability
Discrimination Act (DDA).
There’s a real sense of complacency now that ‘disability is
done’ – that the legislation has been passed and disabled
people now enjoy equality.
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Taking it to the streets: why we need to campaign
…but what we know from our research:
•Disabled people are twice as likely to live in relative poverty as
non-disabled people;
•Disabled people are more than twice as likely as non-disabled
people to have no qualifications;
•Disabled people have an employment rate of around 50%,
compared to around 80% for non-disabled people; and
•Around 9 out of 10 disabled people feel that there is
discrimination or prejudice against disabled people in the UK
today.
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Taking it to the streets: how we campaign
•We talk directly to institutions and organisations. This can
include changing government policies, or changing policies or
practices of businesses
•We produce regular research, based on disabled people’s own
experiences, to help provide the evidence for our campaigning
work, we then work directly with politicians or others to get the
message across.
•We ensure that disabled people get support to change
attitudes and change policies through their own campaigning
work.
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Taking it to the streets: Campaigns Action Groups
•Campaigns Action Groups (CAGs) put disabled people in
control of campaigning.
•Leonard Cheshire Disability continues to work with politicians
and to produce research on particular issues or pieces of
legislation; CAGs are provide the campaign presence on the
ground – and are challenging attitudes around the issues that
disabled people themselves think are important in their
communities.
•CAGs work! They are a very effective way of changing
attitudes, of challenging inequality and ensuring that disabled
people are better represented in our society.
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Taking it to the streets: the Aspire group
Chesterfield
Campaigns Action Group of the Year 2007
Alex Mihaly
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Conclusion
•Diversity is hugely important
•Take people on the journey with you
•True inclusion is not simple compliance with the law
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Thank you!
Alex Mihaly
Peter Dickens
Sheffield Hallam University
February 2008
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