***Update 25/01/17 ***  We have now secured and completed interviews with  Rob Grieg author of the 2001 government White Paper on learning disability rights, Jonathan Bartley co-leader of the Green Party and Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Debbie Abrahams. We spoke to them about a range of issues focusing on social care cuts and the problems people with learning disabilities are facing in todays society.

As part of the East Kent Mencap Learning Disability Rights project we’ve recently returned from Liverpool Hope University where we were attending ‘Remembering for the Future’. We heard from leading thinkers across the UK who outlined some of the key social care issues facing our society. Simon Duffy, Director of the The Centre for Welfare Reform provided us with an interview in which he spoke of the deliberate targeting of disabled people through government cuts.

We’ll also be interviewing Olivier De Schutter from the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. He’s agreed to talk to us about why the Committee found the UK Government to have failed in its international human rights obligations, as well as the affects of austerity for people with a learning disability.

Throughout the project we will be following a number of groups around Kent who are campaigning to improve things for people with disabilities. They’re tackling companies that are not making enough effort to provide accessibility to their services and they’re hoping to make a big impact.

We will present in the film a candid account of the state of our social care system and discuss what measures might be necessary to reverse the decline of essential services for people with learning disabilities.