Dear All,
I am a trustee of my local user led organisation of disabled people and have
become increasingly aware of how most of the decisions are being made by the
chief officer, who is nondisabled and other waged members of staff who I
assumed were also nondisabled. When I mentioned the fact that as a user led
organisation, the trustees, all of whom have visible impairments, should be
making decisions and not following decisions made by non-disabled people, I
have been accused of failing in my duty as an employer, making assumptions,
being a hypocrite, an angry man, trouble-maker and a barrage of other
personal insults.
They are right, I have made assumptions about who is and is not disabled
within the organisation, but what else can I do if the people choose to hide
their impairments.
I understand that a person does not have to disclose impairment to employers
and I can totally understand why someone would hide their impairment from
the general public –in order to avoid being subjected to prejudice and
discrimination. I can also understand that a person might deny their
impairment to themselves as a way of defence mechanism, “I’m not one of
them” kind of thing. But I find it difficult to understand why someone
would want to hide their impairment from other disabled people within an
organisation of disabled people.
I thought that peer support was one of the reasons we had organisations of
disabled people, to help negate the emotional effects of disablism, to help
take away the shame etc. More importantly, how does this logic pan out
when a user-led organisation stipulates that a certain percentage of the
board have to be disabled? If a person does not have to disclose whether or
not they are a disabled person or have impairments then how would they know
how many disabled people are on the board? This means that such
organisations can only be sure by taking on people whose obvious impairments
can be displayed rather than disabled people with hidden impairments
otherwise people looking from outside might begin to make assumptions.
I would be interested in any other people’s thoughts on the issue.
Thank you,
Harvey Cowe
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