Mencap

Mencap is a UK charity that works with people with a learning disability.

Profile

Mencap is the UK's leading learning disability charity working with people with a learning disability and their families and carers. Mencap works collaboratively, fighting for equal rights, campaigning for greater opportunities and challenging attitudes and prejudice.

Mencap also provides help and support through supported living, supported employment, respite services, organised activities, systemic and individual advocacy, and outreach support.

Mencap provides advice and support to meet people's needs throughout their lives, as an individual membership organisation with a local network of more than 450 affiliated groups. Mencap's work is membership-driven.

Campaigns

Mencap is currently campaigning on the following issues:

• Equal rights
• Health
• Independent living
• Social care and cuts
• Employment and training
• Children and young people
• Profound an multiple learning disabilities
• Families and carers

Coalitions

Mencap, along with nine other organisations, is a member of the Learning Disability Coalition. The Coalition was formed in May 2007 to campaign for better funding for social care for people with a learning disability in England. Mencap is also a member of Every Disabled Child Matters.

Management

Since 1998, at least one-third of the members of the National Assembly must be people with a learning disability.

Since 1980 the actor Brian Rix has represented the charity in a number of positions, including Secretary-General, Chairman and latterly President. The chief executive of Mencap is Mark Goldring, succeeding Dame Josephine Williams on 1 November 2008. Goldring was previously chief executive of Voluntary Service Overseas.

History

In 1946 Judy Fryd, a mother of a child with a learning disability, formed The National Association of Parents of Backward Children. She wrote to Nursery World magazine inviting other parents to contact her. Many wrote back to Judy expressing their anger and sorrow at the lack of services for their children.

In 1955 the association changed its name to The National Society for Mentally Handicapped Children and opened its first project, the Orchard Dene short-stay residential home. In 1958, the National Society launched a ground-breaking project called the Brooklands Experiment. This compared the progress of children with a learning disability who lived in hospital with a group of children who were moved to a small family environment and cared for using educational activities modelled on those in 'ordinary' nurseries. After two years, the children in the home-like environment showed marked improvements in social, emotional and verbal skills. The success of the experiment was published around the world.

In 1969, the society shortened its name to Mencap.

In 1986, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother became the patron of Mencap and in 2004 the Countess of Wessex became Mencap's patron.

Supporters & Ambassadors

The charity has several notable supporters such as Christopher Eccleston, Bruce Barrymore Halpenny, Joanne Salley, Norman Wisdom, Jonny Lee Miller and Snow Patrol

External links

• Official website
• Learning Disability Coalition