Welcome to the Mencap Liverpool & Sefton website!
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@mencapliverpool

Thursday 3rd April 2025



Today was the final day of our training to become Oliver McGowan  Level 2 Experts by Experience Trainers. Today we worked on our scripts and worked on what we wanted people to know about us.  This is really important as people need to see us as humans, as equals and not have unconscious bias or preconceived ideas of people with learning disabilities. We also had to think of our own experiences and what we want to share with groups in the future - these could be good or bad experiences - both are important to improve health care experiences for people with learning disabilities. Everyone worked extremely hard and it has been excellent training.  A HUGE thank you to Loren Snow who facilitated this training for us over the last 3 days - we have learned so much, it has been intensive, emotional and challenging training. We are all feeling confident that we can be Expert By Experience Trainers for the Oliver McGowan Level 2 training. Geat work team! #expertsbyexperience #olivermcgowantraining #equality #accessible #equity #mencap #mencapliverpool #mencapliverpoolandsefton Read More

@mencapliverpool

Wednesday 2nd April 2025



📻 📻 THE LATEST REACH OUT SHOW IS ON THE AIR WAVES!!! 📻 📻 As many of you know a small core of our members have been involved In creating a monthly show called 'Reach Out' that is available on @lcr_106.7fm The purpose of the show is to show that people with learning disabilities have the same hopes and dreams as everyone else and to talk about our experiences - some positive and the discrimination that we as people with learning disabilities can face. Thank you to Ste Faragher for supporting us and helping us to create our show each month and mentor us to improve our skills. Our latest show is now available on Spreaker (link below) and will be played at 10am on 106.7fm from Monday 7th April every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Thank you to Dr Simon Abrams @be_breast_savvy Haz and Ste from New Mersey Retail Park for coming and being on our show - and thank you to Sue, Rachel, Tony and Lewis - it is a brilliant show and your skills keep improving with every show you make - great work team https://www.spreaker.com/episode/mencap-reach-out-april-25--65290960 Read More

@mencapliverpool

Wednesday 2nd April 2025



As well as 8 members from Mencap Liverpool and Sefton on the training we also have another person joining us - Charlotte. Charlotte is a part of 'big' Mencap.   Charlotte has come up from the Midlands to attend this training and it has been lovely getting to know her. We were blown away to find out that she has run 5 marathons for Mencap - the London Marathon 3 times, and the Berlin and New York marathons too. How fantastic is that! Charlotte has raised over £15,000 and knows our very own Megan Thomas and our last CEO Sarah Jones from running the London Marathon - how brilliant is that - you're one amazing lady Charlotte! Read More

@mencapliverpool

Wednesday 2nd April 2025



Today was the 2nd Day of our Oliver McGowan Training to become Expert by Experiences Trainers to co-deliver the Level 2 Oliver McGowan training to staff across the Health and Social Care sector. Loren our facilitator talked us through the Autism part of the training so we understand the full  day and how the training runs. We have covered: 🔸️Understand why autism is described as an invisible condition 🔸️Reflect on our own values and beliefs 🔸️Understand potential differences, strengths and challenges for autistic people 🔸️Understand anxiety 🔸️Understand reasonable adjustments and ways to adapt your practice 🔸️Be familiar with law - The Equality Act 2010 Today we've had lots of group discussions and its been another fabulous day of training and we are 1 step closer to becoming approved trainers! Read More

@mencapliverpool

Tuesday 1st April 2025



Today was the first day of our members receiving training to become Experts by Experience Trainers for Oliver McGowan Training with @mencap - or 'Big' Mencap as we like to say! We met with Loren who will be training members for the next 3 days and preparing us to be trainers. Our first day has been jam packed. We watched the film clips of Paula McGowan from the Level 1 Oliver McGowan training so that we are clear on the training people have had so far.  We will be co-delivering the in-person Level 2 Oliver McGowan training when we have been trained and passed as being proficient in delivering this training. The films are extremely hard to watch and provoked lots of discussions around the table, people shared thoughts and personal experiences.   We covered a lot on our first day - as well as watching the film clips of Olivers Story - we talked about  🔹️what having a learning disability means 🔹️unconscious bias 🔹️learning from lives and deaths and the LeDeR Report 🔹️Diagnostic Overshadowing 🔹️Important Laws 🔹️Reasonable adjustments and communications Everyone worked really hard and we had a fantastic first day - great job team - can't wait for tomorrow! #mencapliverpool #mencap #mencapliverpoolandsefton #olivermcgowantraining #healthinequalities #makingadifference Read More

@mencapliverpool

Tuesday 1st April 2025



On Monday our Learning Disability Awareness Trainers Lewis, Kyle and Adam co-delivered Learning Disability Awareness Training to 4th Year Student Doctors at the @livuni l with Dr Fiona Greeley and Learning Disability Health Care Facilitators from @merseycarenhsft Vivien Mansfield and Suzanne Robinson.  We were also joined by Dr Niranjani Gadgil Phychiatry Specialist Trainee and 2nd Year Student Nurse Glenda Trimble of @edgehilluniversity Our members raise awareness of learning disabilities - often being the first people with learning disabilities that the students have met.   Part of the session our members work in small groups with students. The students are tasked with finding out as much as possible about each of our advocates and to feed this back to the main group  This part of the training shows students we are the same as everyone else and have lots of shared hobbies, interests, pets, holidays etc.   Some of our trainers have been working on this for 10 years and it is always interesting for Fiona to find out a new fact that the students have discovered! The 2nd time we break out in to small groups the students find out about the reasonable adjustments that help our members and how best to help people with learning disabilities.   Our members also deliver some of the presentation and the statistics our members share with students e.g. that our male members are more likely to die 22 years before the other men in the room is quite sobering.  The messages our members deliver are very powerful. The training also talks about other things the Mental Capacity Act, how best to communicate with me, receptive and expressive language and much more. The final message of the day is that behaviour equals communication. Great work Lewis, Kyle and Adam and thank you to Fiona and Vivien, Suzanne and the other Learning Disability Health Care Facilitators for working in partnership with us to deliver these important facts to our future doctors. Our voices are important and we want to be heard and help others have a voice too. Read More

@mencapliverpool

Tuesday 1st April 2025



On Friday member Sue Wignall was recording her show about the work she had been involved with for the Be Breast Savvy Campaign. @be_breast_savvy Last year Sue worked with Chloe Hughes and Vivien Mansfield - Learning Disability Healthcare Facilitators from @merseycarenhsft and appeared in a short film where she talked about the importance of going for your breast screening appointments.   The Be Breast Savvy Campaign targeted women in the North of Liverpool to encourage them to go to their screening appointments and worked in a really creative and collaborative way with lots of different organisations.  The Be Breast Savvy Campaign also won and was nominated for a number of awards and we are really proud to be involved in such important and inspiring work! For Sue's show she interviewed Dr Simon Abrams Chair of the Anfield and Everton Primary Care Network and the lead of the Be Breast Savvy campaign and he talked about the Campaign.  Sue also interviewed Chloe Hughes - Learning Disability Healthcare Facilitator who worked with Sue on the film and we were also joined by Dr Eman Trainee GP. Sue has been working really hard on preparing her questions and talking about he involvement ready for this show and she did an amazing job! Well done Sue and watch this space for when this show will be broadcast on LCR 106.7fm A big thank you to everyone at LCR 106.7fm for your continuing support of our members to create a show where our members can speak up and show everyone that we are the same as everyone else - with the same hopes and dreams. Read More