Sheila Hollins is one of the leading UK authorities for learning difficulties and mental health problems. However, the Crossbench partner...
Sheila Hollins is one of the leading UK authorities for learning difficulties and mental health problems. However, the Crossbench partner states that his greatest achievement is founding Beyond Words , a pioneering non-profit organization that creates illustrated books to help people with communication problems. "Beyond words, I love it most because it's about changing people's lives," she says.
Its origins lie in the use of Hollin's images to interact with his learning-disabled son Nigel. "He laughed at the films Laurel and Hardy [stupid], but he did not get a word until he was eight." When Nigel was worried about an adventure holiday, his parents made drawings that showed activities like the memory: "When we put things into pictures, he feels more in control."
Thirty years later, Beyond Words has distributed or sold 100,000 copies of its 57 titles covering everything from relationships to violence to casualties. Each title involves 100 people with learning difficulties as consultants or authors. There are 60 reading clubs with 350-400 members.
Nigel Hollins, now 47, is a consultant for Beyond Words and leads one of Surrey's reading clubs. Live alone in an apartment near your family with the help of a personal assistant. His mother says: "People see Nigel in the shops, in the cafeteria or at the train station, he has a life in the community."
He is part of a theater company for actors with learning difficulties and says in an interview with his mother, he relaxes with "something to eat with my girlfriend and watch a movie". His favorite movie is The Rewrite, which was shot "with Hugh Grant". His friendship with Grant, who earned him the role in the film, came after the actor contacted the Hollins family for a documentary on the press's entry (the family received unwanted attention) from the press, as Sister Nigel in 2005 after one Knife attack was paralyzed.
Hollins advocated disability awareness through an employment plan as a professor of disability psychiatry at St. George's University of London. It has hired five people with intellectual disabilities over the age of 25 to teach medical students how to communicate better. (In the UK, only 5.8% of people with learning disabilities are in employment, compared to 74% of people without disabilities). "In my department, medical students were not there to impress the teacher, they had to speak in ways that people with learning difficulties could understand," he explains.
Despite a National Audit Office report released in March criticizing the government strategy's failure to bring down another million people with disabilities in 2027, Hollins, a former autism learning consultant, said Alan Milburn, of New Labor, ministry health minister For work and retirement planning, to create four collections of Beyond, was looking for a job and maintaining it. "The project supports Beyond Words and the world of work in developing a support program to encourage more people with learning disabilities to find a job, be it on a voluntary, part-time or full-time basis," he said. there.
What does it think about the current support for people with learning difficulties and autism?
Hollins says the return of people from in-patient facilities to communities "will not work until people understand that this is not a building and a team of staff members who have collapsed and procedures are putting someone like Nigel on the list "center of the plans. "Professionals need to understand that people have to live to belong to communities," he said, but is well aware that progress is slow.
The Health Care Regulator, the Quality of Care Commission, recently published a report on the long-term segregation of people with mental disabilities in mental health institutions . The NHS has published its annual report on the premature death of people with learning difficulties . and Panorama of the BBC revealed grievances in Whorlton Hall, an NHS-funded private hospital for people with learning difficulties and autism in Durham County.
The latest scandal occurred eight years after the government promised to close facilities like Whorlton Hall and bring people into communities after Panorama reported similar abuse in Winterbourne View near Bristol.
And the latest NHS mortality rate , released last month, shows that people with learning difficulties have an above-average chance of dying in the hospital.
There is still much work to be done to remedy the lack of equality in health care for people with learning difficulties. When his son was attacked by two men 20 years ago in London, doctors hesitated to operate on his cheekbone "because they said it was just cosmetic," Hollins recalls.
"It was a discrimination." She advocated an operation. Since then, Hollins has found that attitudes have improved, not least because more people live in communities. However, a major challenge remains the gap between the health and care systems that people with learning difficulties depend on: "We need a continuous process: social care is an essential part of health."
What hope does she have for her son, who inspired Beyond Words? "I hope Nigel is so integrated into his community that there will always be people to take care of him, love him and take care of him when he's gone, parents want," she replies.
curriculum vitae
Age: 72 years old.
Live: Surrey.
Family: Married, four grown children.
Education: Notre Dame High School, Sheffield; Medical School of St. Thomas Hospital in London (now part of King's College London); Postdoctoral Education in Psychiatry, Westminster Hospital, London.
Career: from 1989 to today: Founder, Beyond words; Since 2011: Emeritus Professor of Disability Psychiatry, San Jorge; Senior Policy Advisor, Department of Learning Disability and Autism, Ministry of Health; 1990-2011: Professor of Disability Psychiatry, St. George's, University of London; 1981-1990: psychiatrist consultant and lecturer in St. George's; 1971-1974: GP, Balham, South London.
Public life: President of the Royal College of Occupational Therapists; former president of the British Medical Association; former president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists; former member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors; Model, answer; Pattern, live well and die; In 2010, a Crossbank life partner was appointed (Baroness Hollins from Wimbledon and Grenoside).
The honors include honorary chairmen at the Department of Theology and Religion at Durham University, honorary doctorates from the Universities of Durham (letters), London (Divinity), Sheffield (medicine), Bath (law) and Worcester (science), and the Catholic University of Australia in Melbourne (University of Dr.) and the bronze medal of the San Martin Institute in Florence for her work in the disability sector.
Interests: oil painting, listening to music, long trips, everything with the family.
