How we helped Ben to advocate for better accessibility in his school

“Muscular dystrophy is something I was born with, but you don’t necessarily see all of the symptoms when you’re really young,” Ben explains. “It causes my muscles to deteriorate over time and has meant that I’ve lost the ability to walk. I suffer from a lack of mobility and sometimes I get aches and pains.” 

Ben reckons he was around 10 or 11 years old – a time when he was moving from primary to secondary school – when he was using a wheelchair full-time. At that point, his social worker told him that Barnardo’s could offer him some extra support. 

“At the start, I found out that Barnardo’s was running a wee group on a Tuesday afternoon where I could meet other people, and it gave us all something to do; to increase ‘social opportunity’, really,” he says.

“Then, because I was known to Barnardo’s, I started to get support from the TIS group,” Ben explains. Our Transition and Inclusion Service (TIS) supports young people aged 16 to 21 with a learning disability, autism and/or physical disability in the Southern Health and Social Care Trust area as they transition into adult services. 

Ben continued to work his way through school and was keen to do his A Levels. While the grammar school he wanted to go to had some support in place, like making sure there were classroom assistants that could support him, the level of access for a wheelchair user wasn’t where it needed to be. 

“When you’re prevented from getting somewhere, it can be a bit frustrating” 

Ben’s subject choices were limited by where he could and couldn’t get to in his wheelchair because some of his school buildings weren’t accessible. “There were steps everywhere and I couldn’t get to half the places I needed to,” Ben says, “And when you’re prevented from getting somewhere, it can be a bit frustrating.  

“I ended up doing Sociology, but it didn’t go very well, and I eventually dropped it. In the end, I studied Home Economics and Geography,” he says.  

Ben was also not able to do an A Level in Agriculture because it required a week of fieldwork that couldn’t be supported. “That was really frustrating, as I had been looking forward to doing that course. 

“It was quite a lot of pressure because, in the midst of all of this, I was sick at certain times and there were hospital admissions, so I had to manage all of that along with the barrier of accessibility in a new school.” He also remembers that he found it tough to make new friends at school which was made even harder by not being able to get around easily. 

“Hopefully I’ve made a bit of a difference to others further down the line” 

“After about a year-and-a-half, a lot of things were put into place, and it was a lot more accessible by then. It was a time-consuming process, but there were a lot of us that worked hard to make the school more accessible, including my Mum and Barnardo’s."

“We got there in the end, and it means that when others go to that school, it’s now properly accessible. Hopefully I’ve made a bit of a difference to others further down the line,” he says. 

“[Barnardo’s] have helped me out a lot. And, for me, asking for help is not something I want to do all the time, so having that support from Barnardo’s has been really good.” 

What Ben thinks needs to be done to make more places accessible 

“Many places only make the necessary alterations and improvements when they need to, but they should have to do it as standard,” Ben says. “They shouldn’t just wait until somebody needs it because if it’s not already there, it’s going to deter people from going in the first place. 

“People with disabilities should be given the opportunity to input more into the plans being made to improve accessibility for disabled people because I feel a lot of money is spent on complex facilities when something simpler would have done the job.”  

A model has been used to protect Ben’s identity