Big Focus Campaign for Better Housing
Safe and appropriate housing is a human right.
Over the past year Speak Out members have been campaigning for better housing. We want to raise awareness of the challenges many people with learning disabilities face with housing and what ‘home’ means to them.
Our reality
Many of the things that people might take for granted are not our experiences. For us, home can mean:
- Waiting a long time to get a suitable home
- Limited choice about where we live
- Lots of changes
- Living in unsafe and inappropriate places, including secure hospitals or emergency accommodation
- Limited support to live independently
- Little understanding about our experiences
Visit the Exhibition
At the Jubilee Library from 31st March 2025:
People with learning disabilities want change.
Together we have been shining a light on the issues local people with learning disabilities face with their housing – and developing recommendations for change.
Read the campaign report here.
Speak Out members:
- Held an open advocacy meeting to hear what people with learning disabilities had to say
- Ran creative workshops to explore housing and what’s important about home
- Created a powerful poster campaign to illustrate the experiences of housing for people with learning disabilities
- Attended the Learning Disability Partnership Board and other meetings to represent what people feel about their housing
- Made podcasts interviewing local people about housing issues
- Made a film where young people with learning disabilities were invited to share their thoughts about moving on the live more independently, theirs dreams and aspirations and also some of the challenges they face
Exhibition: 'A Place To Call Home'
This April, visit “A Place To Call Home" – a powerful new exhibition at Jubilee Library, Brighton to show the housing experiences of people with learning disabilities in Brighton and Hove and create a platform for debate.
Visit the exhibition at Brighton’s Jubilee Library from Monday March 31st to Saturday April 12th
Find out more about our creative workshops:
Previous campaigns
Voting and Democratic Rights
Speak Out has a history of campaigning for the democratic rights of people with learning disabilities.
Much of this work was done by the ‘Being Heard in Government’ (BHIG) group. The BHIG group started in 2013 and set out to combat cuts to learning disability services. They organised demonstrations, attended council meetings and public debates. The group also went to the Houses of Parliament and were involved in various all-party parliamentary groups. They made contributions to the Mental Capacity Amendment Bill and campaigned for easy-read election material. In 2020, the group won the ‘UK Parliament Campaign’ of the year award!
The ‘Our Voices Matter’ (OVM) group has continued the BHIG group’s democratic rights work. They have hosted ‘register to vote’ events and co-hosted accessible election hustings with Grace Eyre, before the local council elections in May 2023 and the general election in July 2024.
