Reflections

Zara Todd: Involve us

Zara was born in 1985 in London. She attended a special school initially, then transferred to mainstream at the age of seven. She continued with mainstream education at secondary and then went on to university.

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Zara Todd

Here Zara talks about the importance of involving young disabled people and their families.

Transcript

I think my experience suggest that disabled young people and their families where appropriate need to be actively involved in the decision making about their support and what them being included actually means because throughout the entirety of my mainstream education, with the exception of my sixth form, I wasn’t included, I was integrated. It was always me that was expected to make the change and the adaption. Thankfully, I am very adaptable but in terms of creating a good education environment for everyone, the educational institutions need to be much more responsive to people’s needs, rather than just expecting them to fit in or to follow their procedure. Everybody needs to be involved and invested in the process rather than it being a very unhealthy power dynamic between we have your life, this is what we think you should do with it.

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