Our community - Harrow Mencap

At Harrow Mencap, we are dedicated to improving the lives of our entire community.

This means, we not only engage with the public, private and voluntary sectors to benefit our own clients and their families, but we also work together with these partners to support other marginalised groups, Harrow residents and Londoners as a whole.

To do this, we have campaigned on a range of important issues, here are some of our past successes:

1.The Harrow Carer Card

In this campaign, despite the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic, we continued to consult with carer support groups before teaming up with other local charities as well as the Harrow Council Carer Lead to introduce a new card for all people (of any age) who provide unpaid care and support to a vulnerable person living in Harrow, we did this in order to:

recognise the unpaid carer and support them where possible in areas such as priority health appointments, access to health checks, training, counselling, employment support and health & wellbeing sessions.
confirm details of people who may be able to step in and offer support in the event of the carer being unable to care in an emergency.
link the carer with Harrow businesses who may be able to offer their support, which we hope will include discounts

Thank you to London’s Community Kitchen, the Red Brick Cafe, the Red Cup Cafe and the local Morrisons and Tesco branches who have supported the scheme so far:

For carers wishing to apply for a Carer Card, please contact Harrow Carers on admin@harrowcarers.org or call 020 8868 5224. You can also check their website: www.harrowcarers.org/carer-card/

This card will replace the existing Carers Emergency Support Service as previously administered by Harrow Carers.

2. Accessible transport

Our self-advocate group has continued to campaign for safer, more accessible transport for people with additional needs, and others in London.

We have lobbied and engaged with our London Assembly Member Navin Shah and met the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan at City Hall to discuss issues such as bus frequency and speed problems, bullying and abuse from other passengers, and a lack of step-free access at Harrow-on-the-Hill Underground Station.

Our trustee, self-advocate and veteran activist David House who played a leading role in this initiative explains how we worked together with other groups who were also affected by a lack of step free access at Harrow-on-the-Hill:

“On this campaign partnership worked brilliantly, we were on the ball and knew what needed to happen and how to get there. Over time, people with a learning disability and other residents including older people, parents with pushchairs and other people who use the station met up, discussed how to improve the station as a group and then lobbied Transport for London, the local council and the GLA together”.

After steady, united, and focused engagement with these public bodies, the campaign triumphed, and we are expecting work on the step-free access lifts at Harrow-on-the-Hill to be completed soon.

The London Assembly Member Navin Shah has said:

“I am looking forward to continuing to work closely with the charity [Harrow Mencap] and other stakeholders to ensure that the concerns of the disabled community in Harrow are heard clearly by the Mayor, TfL and other agencies.”

3. Promoting good health practices

At Harrow Mencap we are also dedicated to promoting good health practices across the wider community. In 2019 we worked in partnership with individuals, the NHS, the local authority, and the private and voluntary sectors to run two series of health-related events.

The programme, called It’s all about your health, ran a variety of different events attended by a variety of people including individuals with a learning disability, unpaid and family carers, health and social care workers and representatives from different charities and organisations.

Each event hosted specialist speakers who gave workshops on different topics for their relevant audiences, such as how to access local services for people with learning disabilities, their carers, and family members. Meanwhile, health and social care workers got to take part in workshops on how to make sure the person they are supporting can eat and drink safely, and how to manage a person’s challenging behaviour.

Other topics included mental health, health action plans and health passports.