Week 11: What to do if your MP wins a golden ticket in the Private Members’ Bill ballot #107days

This blog post, on the eve of the Private Members’ Bill ballot #PMBBallot makes some suggestions of what to do if your MP wins the golden ticket in tomorrow’s ballot (and some of them might be useful even if they don’t).

Thanks to the unstinting efforts of #JusticeforLB’ers across the country, at the time of writing over half of all MPs (333 out of 650) have been contacted about #LBBill. This is a huge achievement in just over a week, and reflects the entirely crowdsourced nature of the Bill so far.

Our campaigning is far from over though and we need to redouble our efforts at 9am tomorrow, when the ballot for this year’s Private Members’ Bills takes place. The House of Commons twitter account has been highlighting the role of PMBs and using the #PMBBallot all week, so we’re hopeful that they may live tweet it and if you’re online you can watch it on Parliament TV here!

Did you know backbench #MPs can introduce Bills for debate in the Commons?http://t.co/6FpbWYzvSI #PMBballot pic.twitter.com/yaopmcMlP8

— UK House of Commons (@HouseofCommons) June 1, 2015

Shortly after 9am we will know the names of the MPs who will have the chance to present a Bill of their choice to Parliament. As explained in a previous blog on the LBBill site we need one of the top six or seven MPs to take #LBBill for it to have a real chance of becoming law.

Therefore we’re asking all of you to check Facebook or Twitter as soon as you can after the ballot tomorrow morning to see if your MP has drawn one of the ‘golden tickets’, that is to see if they came high up in the Private Members Bill ballot.

If they have, then these are some suggestions of things you might do to get your MP’s attention and persuade them to sponsor the #LBBill:

1) Tweet your MP. While this only takes a few seconds our experience so far is that not all MPs engage with their Twitter accounts (indeed some still aren’t on Twitter). So please do this, but don’t just do this! 140 characters is limiting but please try to get across why #LBBill matters.

2) Email your MP. We won’t win any prizes for originality with this suggestion but emails will go straight to the MP’s staff and experience is showing supporters are getting better engagement from emails than tweets. Explain to your MP why #LBBill matters to you.

3) Phone your MP. You can ring the House of Commons switchboard on 020 7219 3000 and ask to be put through to the office of your MP. Be sure to say you are their constituent, you are calling because you know they have been drawn high up in the Private Members Bill ballot and that you would like them to sponsor #LBBill. Explain why the Bill matters from your perspective. If you can’t reach your MP ask for their researcher.

4) Send your MP a letter. Despite being a little bit obsessed with the power of social media to engage with politics, we also love getting post and think your MP may too. Why not dig out your finest writing paper, or dig in to your stash of LBBus postcards and write to your MP. Be sure to do it quick so it reaches your MP before they decide on who to support. If you have children or artists you’re keen to engage, why not send your MP an LB Bus picture too and explain the significance.

5) Go to your MP’s next surgery. All MPs hold surgeries where their constituents can go and discuss local issues with them face to face. Check your MPs website, look in the local press and find out when their next surgery is to be held. Maybe try to get a group of people together to go and see them. If you are going as a group you might want to contact your MP’s constituency office (as opposed to their office in Parliament) and let them know in advance.

6) Go to see your MP in Parliament. If you contact your MP by email or by phone (see 2 and 3 above) you could ask for an appointment to go and see them in Parliament – and perhaps take friends / a local group with you. If you meet in Westminster you may also be able to get a tour round Parliament!

7) Invite your MP to come and meet you. You might like to invite your MP to come and meet you and your family at home, or to come and speak to a local group your involved in. MPs generally want to engage in their local community and it will help convince them of the need for action if they get an insight into people’s real lives.

8) Hold a #JusticeforLB pop-up picnic or party and invite your MP along. The idea for pop-up parties was first shared back in April (see Action 3 in this post) and we’re keen to ensure everyone, regardless of any disability they may have, gets the chance to attend. This is a great chance for a number of people to get together, have fun and meet your MP in an informal setting.

Even if your MP is not a lucky golden ticket holder, their support for the Bill could be key. The more MPs that are aware of the challenges facing disabled people, the origins of the Bill and how it could improve disabled peoples live, the better. The one key element of any action at this stage, is speed.

MPs will be starting to commit to particular causes in the hours and days after the ballot. So please do contact your MP as soon as possible, even if just by a quick tweet, email, letter or call. You can always follow up with something more creative.

Some resources that might help you are:
– The quick guide to the Bill
– The full text of the Bill
– Explanatory notes, which deal with the technical issues
– A film which explains where the Bill came from and what it would do
– A blog from Sara explaining why the Bill would have made a difference to LB
– A blog from Steve explaining why the Bill is needed in the light of the Care Act 2014

You can include links to some or all of these when you contact your MP, but they will definitely need to have the full text of the Bill to hand. You can download it by clicking here: LBBill Draft 2

If your MP has any questions, they can send us an email to LBBillFeedback@gmail.com or tweet us @JusticeforLB and we will arrange for someone from the LBBill Team to call them.

Don’t forget if your MP isn’t chosen at the top of the ballot (a highly likely event) that you can still email or tweet them asking them to contact their colleagues who have been successful in the ballot and support the Bill. Peer pressure is very important!

Finally, there will be thirteen MPs who are picked at 8-20 in the ballot who will get the chance to sponsor a Bill but without any realistic prospect of it having enough Parliamentary time to become law! If we cannot persuade any of the top seven MPs to sponsor the Bill we would be delighted for it to be picked up by any of these MPs as a chance to keep the pressure up. So if your MP is picked in a lower slot please still contact them.

Thanks for your support so far, and for all the work that will follow Thursday’s ballot. Some of you potentially hold the keys to the next stage of making the #LBBill law and are about to have a very important role to play in the campaign! As ever, we could not do this without you, so thank you.

Day 47: Indignation and initiative vs ‘institutional inertia’ #107days

We are now on Day 47 of #107days, rapidly approaching our half way point, and we are delighted to share with you a post written by Saba Salman, who adopted today. Saba wrote the initial piece on LB’s death and #JusticeforLB, published in the Guardian on Day 0. It has been phenomenally heartening to see an independent person’s take on our campaign, but we’ll leave you to judge that for yourselves:

Imagine if you had £3,500 a week to run a campaign, consider the awareness you could raise with even a tenth of that.

Now multiply £3,500 – the average weekly cost of a place at an assessment and treatment unit (ATU) – by 3,250 – the number of learning disabled people in such units. That’s an indicator of the costs involved in using controversial Winterbourne View-style settings.

Just over a year ago, 18-year-old Connor Sparrowhawk, aka Laughing Boy or LB, was admitted to a Southern Health NHS Trust ATU where he died an avoidable death 107 days later.

In contrast to the vast amounts spent by commissioners on places like the one where LB died, the #JusticeforLB campaign sparked by his death is ‘funded’ solely by goodwill. No PR team crafting on-message missives, no policy wonks collating information, no consultants advising on publicity.

#107days of action began on Wednesday 19 March, a year to the day Connor went into Slade House, and continues until the first anniversary of his death, Friday 4 July 2014. Half the aim – and I’ll come to the other half at the end of this post – is to “inspire, collate and share positive actions being taken to support #JusticeforLB and all young dudes”. The goal is to capture the “energy, support and outrage” ignited by LB’s death.

This post, around halfway through #107days and written from the perspective of having reported on #JusticeforLB at the start of the campaign, looks at what’s been achieved so far.

I’m not describing the “abject failure” of progress to rid social care of Winterbourne-style settings – care minister Norman Lamb’s words – the sort of apologies for care where compassion is often as absent as any actual assessment or treatment. Nor do I write about the errors at Southern (you can read here about the enforcement action from health regulators after a string of failures). I want to explain, from my interested observer’s standpoint, the impact of #107days and what might set it apart from other awareness drives.

It’s a timely moment to do this. It is now three years since Winterbourne, less than a week after Panorama yet again highlighted abuse and neglect in care homes and a few days since new information on the use of restraint and medication for people in units like LB’s. The campaign reflects not only the importance of #JusticeforLB, but also an unmet need to finally change attitudes towards vulnerable people (and it’s not as if we don’t know what “good care” looks like).

There is a palpable sense that the #107days campaign is different. Talking to journalists, families, activists, academics, bloggers and social care providers, the word “campaign” doesn’t adequately define #107days. It’s an, organic, evolving movement for change, a collaborative wave of effort involving a remarkably diverse range of folk including families, carers, people with learning disabilities, advocates, academics and learning disability nurses.

It’s worth noting the campaign’s global reach. LB’s bus postcard has been pictured all over the UK and as far away as Canada, America, Ireland, France, Majorca and São Paulo. LB has touched a bus driver in Vancouver and brownies in New Zealand.

Because of the blog run by Connor’s mother Sara Ryan (launched long before his death), LB and his family are not mere statistics in a report or anonymised case study “victims” in yet another care scandal. Instead we have Connor: a son, brother, nephew, friend, schoolmate, neighbour – and much more – deprived of his potential. We forget neither his face and personality nor the honest grief of a family facing “a black hole of unspeakable and immeasurable and incomprehensible pain”.

Yet while anger and angst has sparked and continues to fan #107days, the overwhelming atmosphere is optimistic. There is the sense that outrage, can should and will force action (and it’s worth mentioning, as #JusticeforLB supporters have stressed, exposing bad care begs a focus on good care – lest we forget and tar all professional carers with the same apathetic brush).

Both in its irreverent attitude and wide-ranging activity, this is no orthodox campaign. It is human and accessible because of its eclectic and inclusive nature (see, for example, Change People’s easy read version of the report into Connor’s death). And at the heart of the campaign lie concrete demands. In its bottom-up, social media-driven, grassroots approach and dogged determination, #107days has a hint of the Spartacus campaign against welfare cuts (Spartacus activist Bendy Girl is supporting #JusticeforLB through her work with the newly formed People First England).

As for impact so far, daily blogposts have attracted over 25,000 hits with visitors from 63 countries. There have been 7,000 or so tweets (which pre-date #107days) 1,380 followers, the #justiceforLB hashtag has been used more than 3,560 times and the #107days hashtag more than 2,000 times in the last month (thanks to George Julian for the number crunching). So far, the total amount raised for Connor’s family’s legal bills is around £10,000.

I can’t list each #107day but suffice it to say that the exhaustive activities and analysis so far include creative and sporting achievements highlighting the campaign as well as education-based events (or as Sara described progress on only Day 6 of #107: “Tiny, big, colourful, grey, staid, chunky, smooth, uncomfortable, funny, powerful, mundane, everyday, extraordinary, awkward, shocking, fun, definitely not fun, political, politically incorrect, simple, random, harrowing, personal, in your face, committed, joyful, loud, almost forgettable, colourful and whatever events”).

Along with blogs, beach art and buses in Connor’s name, there’s an LB truck, the tale of two villages’ awareness-raising, a hair-raising homage, autobiographical posts about autism, siblings’ stories, sporting activities, and lectures. And patchwork, postcards, pencil cases, paddling (by a 15-year-old rower) and petition-style letters (open to signatures).

It’s worth noting that while learning disability should be but isn’t a mainstream media issue, there have been pieces in the Guardian and Daily Telegraph plus important coverage on Radio 4 , BBC Oxford and in the specialist press. BBC Radio Oxford‘s Phil Gayle and team have followed developments relentlessly and Sting Radio produced an uplifting show on the first day of the campaign. While some of this coverage pre-dates #107days, it reflects how media attention has been captured solely thanks to the efforts of Connor’s family and supporters (links to other coverage are on Sara’s blog).

As for reaching the key figures who could help make the changes #107days wants, the campaign has had contact with health secretary Jeremy Hunt, care minister Norman Lamb, chief inspector of adult social care Andrea Sutcliffe and Winterbourne improvement programme director Bill Mumford, care provider organisations and staff.

Earlier, I described the first half of #107days’ aims to “inspire, collate and share positive actions” and capture the “energy, support and outrage” ignited by LB’s death. Based on the efforts and impact so far, and the campaign is clearly on track.

But the remaining target – to “ensure that lasting changes and improvements are made” – is more elusive, largely because it lies outside the responsibility and remit of members of the #107days campaign.

Contrast the collective nerve, verve, indignation and initiative of the last 46 days to what Norman Lamb calls the historic “institutional inertia” of NHS and local government commissioners, a cultural apathy undermining plans to move more people out of Winterbourne-style units.

The existence and continued use of ATUs might be a challenging and seemingly intractable problem. But that’s not good enough a reason for commissioners – and those who run and govern such places – to ignore the problem. There are good intentions coming from some in authority; people just need to put their collective muscles where their mouths are. Doing that sometime during the remaining 60 days of the campaign for Connor seems like the right thing to do.

Day 4: 107 lessons from dudes and dudettes #107days

One of the most encouraging things that has already happened as a result of #JusticeforLB is the number of new online voices. We know of at least three new blogs and many more twitter accounts that have been established to join the conversation around #JusticeforLB and some specifically as a result of #107days. For anyone who doesn’t blog I think its fair to say that for some it is a rather hard hurdle to jump initially. Who is going to read it? What if people don’t like it? Why would anyone care about what I have to say? Well let me reassure you if you’re considering it, every voice is valuable and the internet is a truly brilliant way to connect with others, who are genuinely interested in your experience and views, and if they aren’t they’ll not hang around, but that’s ok too. Not saying anything means you play it safe, but your voice isn’t heard. A real loss, everyone has something worth saying.

Some of these new online voices are sharing, quite brilliantly already, experiences and wisdom gleaned from many years working with, living with or sharing lives with dudes and dudettes. One of these new voices is Wise Grannie, you can connect with her on twitter @WiseGrannie or read her blog http://WiseGrannie.wordpress.com.

WiseGrannie describes herself as:

Possibly made every mistake in the book as teacher, mother, daughter, wife, trainer, friend, carer and colleague, but I did try to be kind.

and gives her reason for blogging as:

Hoping to help Justice for LB by blogging the good, funny and surprising things I learnt from all the young Dudes and Dudettes I foolishly imagined I was teaching (long ago when the world was young).

WiseGrannie has committed to blogging a story a day and so far she has had us roaring with laughter and sniffling back a few tears, they are definitely worth a read. Start here for her first post that provides context: To begin at the beginning. Can’t wait to see what more she has to share.