Community
Langdon CEO: 'We need to talk about learning disability'
Neil Taylor believes the issue should be on the communal agenda 'as much as mental health in older people'
April 1, 2019 09:29
By, Barry Toberman
3 min read
Neil Taylor believes the issue should be on the communal agenda 'as much as mental health in older people'
April 1, 2019 09:29ByBarry Toberman, Barry Toberman
It has been Neil Taylor’s long-held contention that the community does not talk enough about learning disability. Now in his new role as Langdon’s chief executive, he is in a position to shape that conversation.
After five months as interim CEO, the Redbridge-raised North Londoner was recently appointed to the permanent post at the charity, which supports young people and adults with mild to moderate learning disability. He had previously spent 28 years at Jewish Care, latterly as director of care and community services.
He also brings personal insight to the role as a parent of a daughter, 16-year-old Leah, with severe disability — “she has no language; she couldn’t be a Langdon client. She gets a very good service from Norwood.”
In the 25-plus years since Langdon’s establishment, it has grown to support around 500 people in the London area and Manchester, including members’ family, which Mr Taylor considers particularly important.
The aim, he said, was to create an environment where parents and siblings could also live independently, secure in the knowledge that Langdon was enabling its members to do likewise.
“We want to give parents a greater voice. It’s tricky sometimes because the vast majority of our members have the capacity to live their lives independently and make decisions — including unwise ones.”
For its core of 150 members, there are colleges in the capital and Manchester providing educational, vocational and life skills training. Social provision from the age of 12 is available through the Langdon Brady Club and, in adulthood, 100 live independently in either Langdon-owned or private rented properties. “We are constantly looking for new, fit for purpose accommodation.”
The charity’s strategy has been to concentrate housing in the Edgware/Borehamwood area to create a close-knit community. “They invite each other for Friday night dinner and have Seders together,” Mr Taylor explained. There are now also some Langdon couples, or members with a partner from outside the charity.
“Relationships are as much about a person living a fulfilled and independent life as anything else. And the support that comes from a relationship allows them to live more independently — and potentially be less reliant on Langdon.”
Although the charity runs its own social enterprise — a second-hand books business, New Chapters — many members find positions in the wider job market. Sixty per cent are in paid employment — the national average for those with learning disability is 17 per cent — and a further 30 per cent are involved in some form of volunteer activity.
“One of the things that attracted me to Langdon was the ambition of the trustees for members,” Mr Taylor said.
“Some organisations ‘warehouse’ clients, leaving them static in employment with no ambition to grow. We ‘greenhouse’ ours so they can flourish.”
Friendships have also been forged among members’ parents, who can often feel alone in their situation.
“Being a family with a member with a learning disability can be very isolating,” he noted.
“Speaking from personal experience, parents find friends at the school gates. Many children with a learning disability get transported to school. You are not going to your neighbourhood school, you are going to specialist provision.
“It’s difficult for other people to understand the disability. They feel uncomfortable talking about it. They don’t know how to communicate with your children — and that’s out of fear. I’m describing my set of circumstances but I can translate it to a lot of families.
“Many Langdon members did go to ordinary schools but they would have found it difficult. Sometimes a function of being on the autistic spectrum is an inability to create friendships. They don’t get to go to camps, they don’t participate in youth movements.
“The great thing about the PSRP [Pears special resource provision] at JCoSS is that it was developed within a mainstream provision.”
With the majority of Langdon members now in their 30s, and some in their 40s, the organisation is facing the challenge of long-term planning. “The thing parents say to us is that after they die, what will happen to their children?
“Many families have an expectation that Langdon will be there for the rest of members’ lives. But there are implications. Our core mission is to promote independent living. But there will come a point where their needs are such that we cannot respond to them. It might be because of severe dementia; it might be that they develop nursing care needs.”
For the present, Mr Taylor wants learning disability “to be on the community’s agenda as much as mental health in older people”.
As for the three main charities in the field [Langdon, Norwood and Kisharon], “we have to work more collaboratively.
“I have no sense what form collaboration will look like. I can only speak to the relationship Jewish Care and Jami formed. Ensuring that organisations retain their unique culture and identity doesn’t have to be an obstacle to working collaboratively in a way that offers value for money and allows us to offer a broader range of services. The real potential is that the three chief executives [Mr Taylor, Beverley Jacobson at Norwood and Richard Franklin at Kisharon] have longstanding and positive working relationships.”
