Potential voters 'put off' by politics

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ePolitix.com speaks to Su Sayer, chief executive of United Response, about the 35th anniversary of the charity and its ongoing campaign to make democracy more accessible to all.

What led you to launch www.everyvotecounts.org.uk?

For a long time we had been aware that people with learning disabilities, who are often disproportionately affected by decisions made by the government or their local authorities, are the very people who find it most difficult to get engaged in the political process.

Information about politics is often extremely inaccessible, whether that be local government websites that are drowning in jargon and long, difficult words, or election materials that are dense and text heavy.

For people with learning disabilities – and indeed for many other people, such as those who don't speak English as a first language – these obstacles make it very difficult to understand how to engage in the democratic process. So when we got the chance to work with the Electoral Commission on a set of accessible guides and a website designed to help people with learning disabilities make sense of the world of politics, we absolutely leapt at it.

What has the response been to the website?

Really positive. The press were interested in the project from the start, and the Guardian and Community Care ran major pieces on every vote counts and what it hoped to achieve.

This helped generate more than 500 requests for the guides from external organisations, so we know that the word has spread. And the website has exceeded all expectations in terms of usage, receiving 266,481 hits and 3,950 unique visitors since going live at the end of January 2009.

Most importantly, people with learning disabilities have told us how useful they have found the guides and website, and why it's important to them. As Lizzie Emeh, someone we support, said of politicians, "even people without disabilities find it hard to understand politics... they don't use clear language that we can understand".

Starting to break down that barrier is one of the most exciting things about this project.

'Making democracy accessible' is the second stage of the 'every vote counts' project. What is it, and who is it aimed at?

If the first stage of the project was about helping people with learning disabilities to understand the democratic process, the second stage is all about reaching out to those in charge of that process - including MPs, councillors, political parties and returning officers – to help them gain a better understanding of how they can make it easier for voters with learning disabilities to use and understand the democratic process.

The guides highlight the barriers facing people with learning disabilities; the duties and responsibilities on stakeholders to make information available to people with learning disabilities; and a five point practical guide on how to make public information, such as leaflets, manifestos and websites, more accessible. Already the feedback on the five point guide has been fantastic. There's more information at www.unitedresponse.org.uk/mda.

Do you think politicians are going far enough in making politics accessible to all? And what more can they do?

There is some progress being made, in the form of projects like this, and the work being done by parliamentary outreach officers, who have been very positive about the project.

But the fact is that there is still a long way to go before the political process is accessible to a large number of people. This is a matter of some urgency for all parties, as there are just months to go until a general election, and the 2005 turn out was among the lowest of all time.

Voter participation must be driven up, but thousands of potential voters are being put off by both the lack of easy to understand information about candidates and policies and the complexity of the democratic system.

We're hoping to speak to MPs and policy makers about this at this year's party conferences and give them some ideas about how to reach out to people with disabilities.

This year is the 35th anniversary of United Response. What areas have you seen progress in and what would you still like to see improved?

So much has changed for the better. The most significant single change has to be that almost all of the old, long term stay institutions have been closed down, some of which were awful places, where people with learning disabilities were effectively hidden away from the rest of society, and with very few human rights...

Now, most people live in the community, and many have their own tenancy, giving them the freedom, stability and independence others take for granted. I've also personally been thrilled at how people with learning disabilities have greater expectations from life in 2009, believe they do have the right to a social life, relationships, and a meaningful job.

But there is still so much to be done to make sure these hopes are met. Sadly there is still a great deal of prejudice in society but the more people with learning disabilities are given opportunities to contribute to their community the more those prejudices will be dispelled.

And that means that in areas like employment and volunteering, people with learning disabilities need to be given a fair chance. The government recently had to admit its figures on the number of people with learning disabilities in employment were too optimistic, and the real figure is more like a shocking 7.5 per cent.

Question: The social care green paper has big implications for the sector. What are your views on it?

This is a very important debate. With an ageing population and more and more people with learning disabilities living longer, there is no doubt that we need to work out how to tackle social care funding in the future.

People living longer is a real success story, but we must ensure we can also be proud of the quality of people's lives.

So, like many other disability organisations, we would like to see more detail on what the proposals would mean for working age disabled people, and especially those with a learning disability.

At the moment the lack of clarity in the proposals makes it difficult for disabled people to engage in the debate. There are too many uncertainties.

We need to see the kind of essential services that people with learning disabilities should be entitled to receive irrespective of where they live.

And in my view it is vital that these include support for people with moderate needs. Just a few hours a week of specialist help - with tasks like budgeting, maintaining a tenancy or looking for work - can be enough to enable them to lead an independent life in the community.

Are there longer term issues that you believe the country needs to focus on as well?

In terms of what United Response does, the most important thing – in light of the above green paper, the economic situation and the upcoming election – is that we keep making progress towards a better life for people with learning disabilities.

In 2007, Ivan Lewis – who was care services minister at the time – called the way we used to treat people with learning disabilities "a scandal which disfigured our society".

Abandoning the progress made and going backwards would be even more scandalous, which is why we must continue to make our arguments for a strong, properly funded and efficient social care system, no matter how circumstances change.

Click here to find out more about United Response.