This Anti-bullying Initiative is run by a group of self-advocates with the support of their Advocacy Development Officer. They believe that bullying for people who have an intellectual disability is very serious and needs to stop.

Friday 24th January 2014. From 10.30am to 3.30pm.

The National Institute for Intellectual Disability, Trinity College Dublin.

The group have designed 3 workshops, 1 specifically for people who have an intellectual disability, the 2nd aimed at people that support people with and intellectual disability and the 3rd aimed at people that support persons with intellectual disabilities.

The group are made up of self-advocates (people with intellectual disabilities speaking up and speaking out for their rights), along with supporters and allies from all over Ireland.

The Objectives include:

1. Communicating to participants about the lived experiences and learned understandings of bullying from the perspective of those who are working members of the group
2. Providing a safe platform where participants can share their ideas and experiences about their understandings and experiences regarding bullying
3. Recognising and confronting bullying behaviors in themselves and others 4. Learning strategies on how to deal with bullying behaviours directed towards themselves and how to offer support to others
4. Bringing back their new learning’s to others who they work or live with.

There will be refreshments in the morning and afternoon.

There will be a sandwiched lunch.

Participants will receive a copy of our anti-bullying guide to bring away with them.

Participants with get a certificate of attendance at the end of the days proceedings.

Cost: participant €40

Cost: support staff €10

Important:

• Please take note that we have a policy that all people taking part on the will need to arrive on time and stay until the workshop is finished.
• Please take note that this workshop is for not aimed at staff or parents.
• Only participants that need support to take part in the workshop will be able to attend the days proceeding.
• Please do not hesitate in contacting us if you need any further information regarding this issue – This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
• Participant numbers will be limited to approximately 14 participants, closing date for completed booking forms is Wednesday 22nd January 2014

For further information contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

England: The Confidential Inquiry into premature deaths of people with learning disabilities reported its findings to the Department of Health in March 2013. 

A year on from this, the Department of Health will be running a national conference to review progress in taking forward the recommendations of the Inquiry. 

Have you been involved in any work that is taking forward learning from the Confidential Inquiry, and would you be willing to share it at the conference? 

We are looking for examples that are at a strategic level, as well as regional, local or small and specific examples of change. 

If so, could you please contact the Confidential Inquiry team (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ) with a short summary of your work, and your full contact details. 

If you want to discuss it with one of us first, please email us with a phone number at which we could phone you back. 

Pauline Heslop and Anna Marriott - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

'Multi-agency groups have not worked because individual professional groups see them as groups of other individuals – all trained differently, who do not understand each other's point of view because they are all, individually, right. 

'And everyone else is therefore wrong. This is both a political and organisational dilemma because individuals will have to give up their own power to enable the services that provide for children to succeed. There is an established hierarchy across any group of professionals and this is more true in Birmingham than anywhere else I have worked. 

'And in my view, the best example of the failure of joined-up thinking was the creation of the children's services division – the original amalgamation of educational and social services in a city so large that each area, division and pocket of professionals felt they could act autonomously from the centre in whatever direction they were pointed. 

It was an attractive ideal – it just hasn't worked.' 

This is an extract from a piece by a highly experienced child psychologist, Charlie Mead writing for Special Needs Jungle. 

Read the full article here