What is this life?

“What is this life, if full of choice
If you take control, and we have no voice?”

We are working with Essex County Council to rethink what are currently called ‘day opportunities’.  This week we have run a deliberation event, bringing together a wide range of people to engage with a huge range of insights (including disabled people’s views, national and local data, parents’ and carers’ views, young people’s views, social workers’ perspectives, inspiring horizon scanning exemplars) in order to think afresh about what people want, what they need, and how the system could be more helpfully configured to support ambition, aspiration and wellbeing.

Just before the referendum, we spent a day with the wonderful members of the Clacton Changing Faces drama group, and made this film in which they speak powerfully for themselves. When we showed the film yesterday you could have heard a pin drop. These are the voices from whom we need to be hearing much, much more…

What is this life? from ThePublicOffice on Vimeo.

Ruth Kennedy