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You and Yours - Transcript Â鶹ԼÅÄ Radio 4 |
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TX: 02.08.04 - SPOD (ASSOCIATION TO AID THE SEXUAL AND PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS OF PEOPLE WITH A DISABILITY) CLOSES DOWNÂ Â PRESENTER: LIZ BARCLAY |
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THE ATTACHED TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT. BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF MISHEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE Â鶹ԼÅÄ CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY. BARCLAY The association to aid the sexual and personal relationships of people with a disability, known as SPOD for short, has closed down. It has existed for 30 years but has had a relatively low profile for most of that time. SPOD's website says it's closing because of uncertainty about future funding by the Department of Health and, perhaps surprisingly, a lack of support from disabled people themselves. But, according to its former director, Simon Parritt, the main reason is that sexuality and disability is a difficult issue to campaign on. PARRITT SPOD was set up originally 30 years ago because some people then, who were in the health service and social services, thought that the health service and the social services weren't considering sexual and relationship issues for disabled people and they produced a report which I think they thought at the time would be disseminated and people would go off and integrate it within their services. As it happened that wasn't what happened and the committee, as it was then, slowly kind of developed into the charity. And they tried to, I guess, basically provide initially training, awareness and that kind of stuff and some services like telephone helpline, leaflets and that was basically - after 30 years - that's the core of our business was offering training to health professionals, social care, that kind of thing. BARCLAY And the organisation has now had to shut - why? PARRITT That's right. There's a multiplicity of reasons but I suppose the final straw was lack of funding. Traditionally I suppose the last 10 years we've been funded by the Department of Health through their section 64 funding. It's unusual for them to continue to fund over many years but I think there was a recognition that what we did was odd - it kind of fitted between many stools and other people weren't taking it up, so they continued to fund us but there was an increasing drip effect of reduced funding and encouraging us to get independent funding which was very difficult to get. And in the end it became unviable. BARCLAY What would you say the impact has been of SPOD over the last 30 years? PARRITT It's difficult to say whether it's SPOD or whether there's a general trend. I mean the whole access movement and disability movement has completely changed over 30 years, so what SPOD has done has changed. And so some of what we did has been achieved and in some sense people are more aware. But within social services and within the National Health Service there's still a very poor acceptance of the needs of disabled people as opposed to ill people, I think - I currently teach medical students and often they have very little understanding of disability per se, if anything. And when you add in sexuality and relationships it becomes a kind of dead zone. BARCLAY Tara Flood joins us from Disability Awareness in Action. Tara , what's your view of the demise of SPOD? FLOOD I absolutely support Simon's view with regard to social services and health services but what worries me is that if you have a specialism - a specialised service it basically lets the mainstream services off the hook. Now I accept that with SPOD's closure it leaves a vacuum but really what disabled people and the disabled people's movement should be doing is really pushing for greater awareness on this. I'm a tax payer, I have every right to access the services that non-disabled people take for granted. PARRITT Yes when I took over the job, which was four or five years before its demise, I mean I was the first disabled person to be a director, which is an odd situation in the modern world. But it was one of my concerns that while SPOD existed people could say - Oh well SPOD will do that - or - You're disabled, go to SPOD. And I did try an awful lot to try and shift that perception and make SPOD a more campaigning organisation. I mean we talk about disabled people in Britain generally sexuality's a very odd situation where you have a very over sexualised media - titillation - all that kind of stuff, but actually basic help and information at the level that people really need it is appalling. And disabled people fall even further below that because they have difficulty just accessing mainstream services. BARCLAY So what more then now do the mainstream health services need to do to properly deal with these issues - Tara? FLOOD Mainstream services have to sit up and recognise that disabled people are part of our society and many of our sexual needs and issues are very similar to non-disabled people, we are no different, it just may take a bit more creativity to think about solutions that's all. BARCLAY And as the former director of SPOD Simon what's your message to those mainstream services? PARRITT The health professionals seem to have a kind of blank horror screen comes up when they see somebody with disability and think - Oh god I can't deal with this. But the truth is they can and that's about awareness, it's about having enough training as part of learning to provide proper adequate services and sexuality's one area where they have a problem anyway. So I say get your act together basically. BARCLAY Simon Parritt, the former director of SPOD and Tara Flood from Disability Awareness in Action. Back to the You and Yours homepage The Â鶹ԼÅÄ is not responsible for external websites |
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