Find out what we found out in The State of Stay Up Late Survey 2016
We launched the State of Stay Up Late survey 2016 as part of the work we’re doing around developing our campaigning work with the aim of challenging and challenging inflexible support systems in care settings which means it’s very hard for people with learning disabilities to lead ‘ordinary’ lives.
Click on the image for the easier-to-read report
Click here to download a PDF of the full survey report
Click here to download the Infographic and scroll down to see the Infographic right here!
The purpose of survey was to get a snapshot of where things are now.
Who answered?
195 people responded to the survey.
52 were people with a learning disability.
34 were parents, carers or friends
19 were support workers.
6 were personal assistants.
20 were managers.
2 worked for a local authority commissioning team.
45 had another connection.
12 had no connection.
Is this a big issue?
Were you aware that not going out after 10pm was a big issue for people with learning disabilities?
81% said yes
19% said no
Do most people get to Stay Up Late?
In your experience are most people with learning disabilities that you know able to access support to go out in the evenings?
24% said yes
72% said no
4% didn’t know anyone with a learning disability
Do you get support to stay out after 10pm?
48% of people with learning disabilities said yes.
28% said no.
24% said they didn’t need support.
Are you able to support people in the community after 10pm?
76% of respondents said yes.
24% said no.
“I am employed 8am – 6pm, I could possibly attend a one off evening thing”
Are the team you manage able to support people in the community after 10pm?
78% of managers said yes.
22% said no.
Do you commission services that enable people to access support in the community after 10pm?
Only one commissioner responded to this and they said ‘No’! We’d really like to find out more about what is going on here and talk to more commissioners of services.
We asked parents, carers and friends if the person they know gets support to go out after 10pm
39% said yes
42% said no
9% said they don’t need support
“On occasions he does”
“We organise events and encourage people to stay out after 10pm but often come across staff who take customers home at 9pm”
“Only if he gets to go out with his Gig Buddy”
“I know people who do but sadly still observe others with inflexible packages of support”
“Some get support if it can be fitted round the rota”
So what have we found out?
It seems that a lot of the people we reached out to were working to ensure that people with learning disabilities are leading active social lives. However, 28% of people with a learning disability said they weren’t and 24% of staff said they weren’t able to.
This really needs changing and if you consider too that 72% of respondents said that most of the people they knew with a learning disability couldn’t get out in the evening. That’s a shocking figure.
It tells us that there’s probably an awful lot of people with learning disabilities who don’t know their rights and don’t know that they can complain about this.
There’s sadly no big surprises in this survey and what we really want to do is find out what is getting in the way of support staff working more flexibly. It’s really hard to find people who are prepared to talk about this openly though.
We’re therefore planning a roundtable event where we’ll be promising not to judge people but just find out what’s going on.
What we want to do next?
- Work with managers to create a simple step-by-step guide to enabling people with learning disabilities to go out after 10pm. We want to write this in partnership with managers who know how to do it.
- We wanted to find out more about how the commissioning of services could be used to support people to stay up late but only had two responses from commissioners. We’re going to follow this issue up personally with some commissioners we know to find out more.
- We’ll be following up with managers who’ve said they’ve cracked this issue and asking if we can interview them on film so they can share their tips and positive attitude.
- We are going to organise a ‘roundtable’ event in the Spring and invite a group of people to talk about what we’ve found out, and come up with a plan for what to do next. We’ll make sure there’s a mix of people with learning disabilities, support workers, managers and commissioners there.
- Reach out to more groups to run campaigning workshops and create resources to encourage self-advocacy groups to engage with support providers and local authorities locally.
Thank you for taking time to read this, and thank you to everyone who took the time to reply, and do get in touch if you’ve got ideas for developing the work of the Stay Up Late campaign, or would like us to run a workshop/campaigning event.
For more information contact:
Paul Richards, Director, paul@stayuplate.org, 07460 840984
Click on the image for the easier-to-read report
Click here to download a PDF of the full survey report
Click here to download the Infographic and scroll down to see the Infographic right here!
What’s going on?
The purpose of this survey was to find out what’s going on and believe it or not Donny Hathaways’ wonderful live cover version of Marvin Gaye’s classic came on in the cafe where I was working on this post. So I thought I’d share it here. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
Read next>>> Alan Courtis and The Band of God!
