Communication Charter work - Care Quality Commission, hidden voices and quality checkers

Following the election, residents of Bury North elected a new MP James Frith. This meant we needed to explain the work we had been doing with the communication rights charter. We had previously worked with James Daly who had enabled us to take the charter to Parliament.

 James Frith attended a meeting with us at the Bury People first office on 15^th November 2024 and we were able to explain how our focus was now on meeting with representatives from the Care Quality Commission. James wasted no time in introducing us to Brian Burke who is the Senior Specialist Advisor regarding People with learning disabilities and autistic people. Brian arranged for us to meet with CQC inspectors and to provide an online training session for them.

We were joined by our friends from a local mental health hospital who represented the voices of the many people who are currently living in hospital and who have learning disabilities and autism. We wanted to highlight the fact that these voices are hidden.

The training session was well received, and this is a significant development towards our goal of becoming paid communication quality checkers. If we want services to implement the communication rights charter, then it stands to reason, that if we were involved in checking the quality of communication support provided by agencies, we could then have a tremendous impact on the lives of people with learning disabilities and autism as services would need to provide the rights listed on the charter.

Brian has agreed to help us with our goals and we are delighted to be working with him and to have found such a great ally.

Alison Matthews