My reflection of the week this week is about how freelancing has made me an advocate in so many incredible causes. Coming into freelancing, I brought specialist knowledge in certain areas – like local government (how I tried, and mostly failed, to be part of the revolution of local government through the national graduate development programme), charity infrastructure organisations (supporting new charitable organisations to start up, develop and grow) and hospices (talk to me about end of life care any day). What I hadn’t appreciated is how many more specialist areas I’d learn about through my work.

While you might be supporting an event or a process for a new organisation, you can’t help but learn about their cause in the process. In the last year alone I’ve worked within employability, disability, hospice care, child development, community development and debt campaigning. Here’s a just handful of things I’ve learnt:

Disability

  • 1 in 5 people of working age are disabled
  • Disabled people move out of the workplace at twice the rate of non-disabled people
  • The prevalence of disability and long-term health conditions is rising. This is in part driven by an increase in mental health conditions, particularly in women aged 16-34
  • 1 in 3 people classed as disabled one year are no longer the next
  • 78% of people acquire their disability or health condition during their adult life

There is significant work to be done improving the recruitment and retainment of disabled people in the workplace – with schemes like Disability Confident needing reform, more robust organisational policies, better awareness and understanding of rights and a cognitive shift to understanding that people are disabled by the barriers created by society.

Child Development

  • 1 in 3 children experience trauma in their childhood
  • Childhood trauma can be direct such as significant bulling, sexual abuse or neglect, indirect events in the household such as domestic abuse or parental incarceration or events outside anyone’s control such as a car accident or bereavement
  • Trauma affects how the brain develops and it can have long-term impact – physically, mentally and socially
  • A child’s first 5 years are the most crucial developmentally
  • The power of independent mentors is phenomenal

Child development is a fantastic example of the power of prevention and early intervention. As Desmond Tutu once said (roughly) – we have to stop just pulling people of the river, and go upstream and work out why they’re falling in in the first place. So many organisations are doing amazing work, but children deserve significant systemic change across health, welfare, education and criminal justice to name just a few.

Household Debt

  • There is a perfect storm of low wages/zero hour contracts, a cost of living crisis, a failing society security system and aggressive marketing from companies offering inappropriate debt-solution options that is pushing more and more people into debt
  • The impact of debt can be profound – with 1 in 8 people considering suicide
  • The shame, stigma and lack of good quality accessible advice is preventing many of understanding all the options available to them
  • 61% of working age adults live in poverty in a household where at least one person works
  • A single adult needs at least £120 a week to cover essentials but Universal Credit only provides £85

The amount of unsustainable debt in the UK is staggering – and more and more people are having to borrow to buy food, heat their homes and pay for essential bills. Aggressive and poorly regulated debt companies offering inappropriate solutions, alongside the irony that a lot of debt management options involve further costs, means locking people into a debt spiral that they cannot see a way out of.

Advocacy

All three of these examples have created an advocate of me. All are social justice issues – all need a better understanding nationwide, all require putting those with lived experience at the core of developing solutions and all deserve substantially more investment to support long overdue change.

Photo by Ian Schneider on Unsplash