United Response: Winning the Charity Award was a huge morale boost

29 Jan 2015 Voices

Diane Lightfoot reflects on what winning a Charity Award meant to United Response. 

United Response's Easy News publication won a Charity Award 2014

Diane Lightfoot reflects on what winning a Charity Award meant to United Response.  

People with learning disabilities are widely acknowledged as one of the most disenfranchised minority groups in the UK, due to our country’s complex democracy and lack of easy-to-read news about current affairs.  

United Response has always believed that people with learning disabilities should be equal participants in society with the same rights and opportunities as everyone else and so, in 2013, thanks to funding from the Big Lottery fund, we launched Easy News as the first-ever accessible news magazine.

Easy News was created to build on our successful ‘Every Vote Counts’ project – which aims to raise awareness of voting – by making the news and current affairs more accessible to the 1.5 million adults in the UK who have a learning disability. Its aim was to keep people informed and to help people with learning disabilities get engaged ahead of the 2015 general election.  

Produced bi-monthly, Easy News uses simplified text and useful pictures to provide easy-to-understand summaries of key news stories and events. Stories are selected and translated by UR Consultants, a group of 30 individuals with learning disabilities and autism who are employed by United Response. UR Consultants work from four locations across England and select news stories sourced from a number of newspapers to ensure a wide range of views, as one of the biggest challenges in creating Easy News is ensuring that the articles are politically neutral and that reports reflect all sides of a debate.

Stories covered have ranged from the deaths of Nelson Mandela and Margaret Thatcher to the royal baby; from the Scottish referendum to the Syria crisis. All have been made accessible thanks to the expertise of the UR Consultants’ team. As consultant Dan Hodges, says: “The best thing about working on Easy News is that I get to think outside the box and really use my brain. The news stories we pick open up really good discussions. Everyone has some form of capacity to understand the news as long as it is made accessible. Easy News really focuses on the news by removing jargon and changing big words to smaller words that mean the same.”

Since its launch in 2013, the magazine has gone from strength to strength, with 90 per cent of readers saying it was easier to understand than other news sources, while 78 per cent felt that politics was now relevant to their lives, compared with 31 per cent a year before.

By the end of 2014, Easy News had published 12 issues and three special report issues covering the 2014 Budget, European and local elections and the Scottish Referendum. It now has a readership of over 20,000. Readership continues to grow and the next issue (out in February 2015) will feature interviews with the disability spokesperson from the three main political parties with the aim of helping people prepare to vote in the general election in May; our goal is to see the largest turnout in recorded history of people with learning disabilities.

We were delighted to scoop the top prize in the education and training category at The Charity Awards 2014; it was a huge morale boost to the team who had worked so hard to bring the idea to fruition. Not only did the award recognise Easy News itself as being a real game-changer in presenting the news and current affairs to people with learning disabilities, it also highlighted the importance of accessible information in breaking down barriers and opening up opportunities for people to participate as equal citizens.  

Perhaps most importantly, it put learning disability in the spotlight and showcased the achievements of the team of people behind Easy News, particularly the UR Consultants themselves. And, as the consultants couldn’t be there in person for the London ceremony, we decided to bring the ceremony to them with our own celebratory event in Old Trafford. Each consultant received an individual certificate of achievement and the whole team joined together to receive the trophy, which now takes pride of place in the Trafford office.

We are now seeking further funding to continue Easy News and – we hope – to increase it to a monthly edition. With this will come more employment opportunities and a chance for UR Consultants to develop their skills as interviewers, reporters and journalists.

Watch this space…

Diane Lightfoot is director of communications at United Response, winner of the education and training category at The Charity Awards 2014