Barod - Ready to Work

What Makes a Good Self Advocacy Project: The added value of co-production What this Learning Report is about This is about co-produced research funded by DRILL to define what makes a good self advocacy project and to make an Evaluation Toolkit for self advocates and funders to use.   The five people who did the DRILL funded research together are: ·     two independent academic researchers (Jan, who was subcontracted by All Wales People First, and Bryan, who worked as part of BAROD), ·     two activist researchers (Alan and Simon)  ·     one supporter / technical advisor (Mal). We also had support from Anne Collis, BAROD The four researchers all had equal roles and equal responsibilities.  The Report explains how we all worked together to co-produce the research and the Toolkit. The Report considers what made it possible for co-production to work well. How the Project started This project started with All Wales

Barod formally started on 31st January 2013. We started trading June 2013. This year we celebrate five years of existing. That may not sound a huge achievement. But it is. We were trying to do something rarely attempted, and never before achieved: a cooperative of equals, all deciding that we wanted to come together as a cooperative, all earning equal pay, all with an equal say in running the company, all colleagues with the same status, despite living in a society that assumes people with and without learning disabilities are not equal. To everyone who said the idea of Barod was unrealistic or impossible - Hello! We found a way to make it happen. And five years later we are still here to tell the tale.   To the person in the job centre who said 'starting a business isn't for people like you' - we think you'll find we've proved that it is.  For five years, we have worked together. We have proved we were all ready to work, ready to run a business together

Barod Community Interest Company is delighted to announce that we will be working in partnership for the next two years with Carmarthenshire People First , My LifeMy Choice (an Oxford organisation), People First Dorset and Social Firms Wales on a project called The Bridge. Says Anne Collis, project lead, “ The project is called The Bridge because we aim to bridge the gap between the current situation where too many people with learning difficulties are working for free and their organisations struggle for funding, to a future where individuals and organisations are well paid for their work” . People with learning difficulties across the UK have developed highly desirable skills through their involvement in self-advocacy and are engaged in high level policy and service design work. However it is rare to be able to secure well paid work that uses these skills, and many groups struggle to find funding. Five years ago, a small group of people with and without learning difficul

Changing Places David works for Barod and is a member of Powys People First. He has been a passionate campaigner for Changing Places a project aimed at getting everyone access to bathrooms and the freedom and independence that goes with it. you can find out more here: www.changing-places.org/  powyspeoplefirst.org/

On Tuesday, we ran a game at the Swansea Behaviour Change Festival. We called it ' Swansea’s Got Jargon*-Busters'. *Jargon: a word or phrase not used in everyday life, or that is being used with a different, special meaning. It often goes with waffling and speaking too fast. We wanted to see if, when faced with a panel of three people with learning difficulties, people could talk for 2 minutes about their job or what they'd learned at the Festival without using jargon. If someone on the panel couldn't understand them easily, they would buzz. Three buzzes and you're out. If you are still going at 2 minutes, you got a rosette saying 'I'm a Jargon Buster'.  Summary People who took part, the panel and the observers were surprised and pleased that people succeeded. Face to face communication is easier than communicating in writing. Jargon is comfortable. You need to know your subject to be able to explain it without jargon. If you find

I’m sat in Café Nero in Fforestfach. I’m drinking coffee and blogging. I’m watching people sat alone, reading papers, staring into the distance, doing paperwork. I can see the couples sat in silence, and the couples talking. I can see the women in the window seats glued to their smart phones. Usually, but not today, I watch a group of mothers laughing together with babies in prams, or a group of older women Earlier today I was part of a talking couple, catching up with my husband. And then we got talking about ‘coffee shop conversations’. That’s something I do in coffee shops as part of Barod, but not today. And it’s something I’m researching for a PhD. Imagine, the group of mothers get talking about the local maternity service. A fly on the wall would have a field day learning by listening to them. The fly would hear all sorts of things that weren’t said at the formal consultation on the future of that service. I did listen in to one of those conversations a few years a