Read+John's+story

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I think the biggest part was when I started on the partnership board, which was about 5 years ago. I was on the side of the table before i became co-chair and there was 2 or 3 more people with learning disabilities also on there - as well as people such as yourselves, from mental health, council and we...well sometimes they didn't have a voice then, but all at once their voice decided to come - which was when we started with My Voice My Choice, at Winton House. Me and this young lady, we were 2 bosses that ran it besides having staff down as well as clients. And we got them to open up, to saying how they felt and we got the people and what happened was, some didn't want to open up to us, in the office, so what we did is, we said, Right, ok, if you don't want to open up in any of the other areas, come into the back office with us and tell us what your problems were, how you feel and if it's running right for you. As the months went on we gradually got people to talk and tell us what they wanted. And that's when people said, Oh, the Partnership Board, it's the best place to say things. There's lots of information around if people would only ask for it. It's when people don't ask for it, it gets us confused because if they haven't got a voice and they don't ask, we don't know what they want. So you've got to find... get that person to open up - if they don't open up enough, and talk about their fears and the fight they've had, nobody will know.