Beyond Words team efforts during the pandemic to support people with learning disabilities to understand coronavirus is recognised with a national Breaking Down Barriers Award.
Amanda Cresswell has worked with Beyond Words for many years. The first book Amanda worked on, Getting on with Cancer, reflected her own experience with having cancer and getting well again. She has also been part of the team that has worked on books for sight loss and constipation, so when the pandemic hit, Amanda was one of the people who worked long hours to help create the Coronavirus stories and resources that helped win this award.
Amanda had also worked with her support worker Celia to set up an online book club during the pandemic. She had attempted to set up a face-to-face book club before the pandemic but it was hard to get going. So many people with learning disabilities rely on support workers and families to help them get to places so running one online was much easier. Not only did it mean that Amanda could stay in touch with friends but her and the other members of the book club made many new friends. It is still running every second Wednesday online.
The Breaking Down Barriers Award is to celebrate a team who have worked to make sure people with learning disabilities get clear information and are able to contribute their views and experiences. Amanda and colleague Lucy Bergonzi, artist of the Coronavirus series, accepted the award on behalf of the team at Beyond Words. Both Amanda and Lucy, along with founders Baroness Sheila Hollins, Nigel Hollins and the team have been doing just that for many years.
For those unfamiliar with Beyond Words, we are a charitable publisher founded in 1989 that co-creates wordless stories that help people with learning disabilities, autistic people, hearing impaired people, children and non-native English speakers understand the world around them and communicate how they feel.
Working across education, health, social care and the criminal justice system, our work helps staff to communicate more effectively and open up conversations with the people they support using visual communication and learning methods.
From the onset of the pandemic, the Beyond Words team realised how terrifying the complex and changing messaging was for people with learning disabilities. People were scared and didn’t know how to keep safe. They were 6 times more likely to die during the first lockdowns than the general population. 9 out of 10 people with learning disabilities lost their usual support and activities.
Our stories help people who find pictures easier than words to make sense of new experiences. Beyond Words has a tiny team and it usually takes twelve months to develop a new book (publishing 2 annually), but this was an unprecedented crisis, and we knew we needed to help.
Beyond Words founder and editor, Baroness Sheila Hollins, took up the reins and worked with the rest of the team and as many friends and supporters as we could find to get the first story, Beating the Virus, out within 2 weeks. We went on to publish sixteen freely downloadable Covid-19 resources and reached at least 150,000 people in the UK alone. The book titles and guidance on how to use the books with people with learning disabilities were translated into 4 languages and are being used around the world.
Within weeks we had also moved most of the Beyond Words community book clubs online using Zoom and YouTube video tutorials to show people how to do it. 9 book clubs were meeting weekly, and they became a safe place for book club members to share experiences and worries and to have a way to connect with friends.
The National Learning Disability and Autism Award judges were impressed at how the tried and tested model of the Beyond Words book club has been made more accessible across the country and empowered people during lockdown. They also liked the focus on current affairs topics and bringing people together to share experiences about important issues, such as the work Beyond Words has done to support the refugee crisis.
“It was a privilege and an honour to get this award. When we were told we won I just felt really excited that I am part of Beyond Words and felt proud to accept it on behalf of Sheila, Hannah, Lucy and the team. We are a really good team!“
- Amanda Cresswell, co author, Beyond Words
“We were all scared and confused with the onset of the pandemic. My son Nigel, who has learning disabilities suddenly lost all his activities and had to follow rules that were hard to understand. We knew it was the same for many people with learning disabilities and we knew we could create something that could really help people understand what was happening through our pictures and stories. Our staff team, artists, volunteers and friends all pulled together to get 16 free books out to people all over the world and countless people have told us how much they have helped. Winning the Breaking Down Barriers Award at the National Learning Disability and Autism Awards is such a lovely way to be recognised for our work.”
- Baroness Sheila Hollins; Founder, Chair and Editor, Beyond Words
Thank you to the National Learning Disability and Autism Awards team and the judges for choosing us as winners and ARC England for sponsoring the award. So many of our colleagues and friends were nominated for awards and won awards like Lloyd Page, a Beyond Words co-author, who won the People’s Award; Jordan Smith and Dr Mark Brookes from Dimensions, who we worked with on the My GP and Me campaign, won the Social Care Covid Hero Award; and Steve Scown from Dimensions who received the Lifetime Achievement Award and who has always been a great supporter of our work.
Congratulations to you all and to everyone who was nominated for awards. We need to be able to pause and celebrate what we have achieved despite a difficult 2 years. Well done to all!
If you want to start an online or face-to-face book club to have a way to connect with friends and to explore our word free stories together, get in touch admin@booksbeyondwords.co.uk
To download our coronavirus series visit this page: www.booksbeyondwords.co.uk/coping-with-coronavirus