Gloriously Ordinary Sundays - 13th July 2025

I’ve hesitated over this blog. It’s the last of three (for the moment) about the role of inclusive education in enabling Gloriously Ordinary Lives, but it’s taken me to a tricky place personally. This is probably version 34 as I’ve struggled to find the right words, or even to be clear about what I want to say, so apologies now for my clumsiness.

A couple of weeks ago, as part of Learning Disability Week, Ciaran spoke at an event run by Estia in London, talking about his life. He was bloody brilliant, but it raised a really interesting issue for me (not for Ciaran) in that, for the first time ever, he and I had a conversation about the words ‘learning disability’.

Back in March, when I asked him if he wanted a job with me on the 20th June, he asked me where – London, all good as his favourite place. We talked about the fact that it was sadly not by Big Ben or even Trafalgar Square, but somewhere called Denmark Hill, which had not been on his radar. I showed him the information, and I had to explain that he was speaking as part of this thing we call Learning Disability Week. I’ll be honest, I hesitated for a second to think about how to explain what it was and then fudged it, ‘It’s a big meeting with lots of people talking about Gloriously Ordinary Lives. They want you to talk about Flat 2 and having a job and your friends.’  

His response? ‘Ok fine. Money?’.  Yup mate, I’m paying you, don’t worry!

We did our usual planning (this is all still quite new for him), made travel arrangements for the day and headed into a warm and sunny London, early on the morning of the event. It was lovely to be able to introduce Ciaran to so many people who knew about him or who had read his words on my blogs. I had several proper proud mum moments as he confidently spoke to people and was clearly not anxious about his session at all.

This is where it gets tricky.

At the start of the day, the facilitator asked a few questions to get a sense of who was in the room, including who had a learning disability. Ciaran didn’t put his hand up, and I was interested.

I was vaguely aware that lots of what people were talking about from the start wasn’t landing for him…. conversations about Oliver McGowan training, about good and not good support, about people’s experience of being treated badly in health services …and that he was happily doing his own thing, sometimes looking at his phone.

During his presentation, Ciaran shows photos and talks about coming to live with us when he was 10, about moving to his new school, growing up, and the things he enjoys, then more recent things like his work, and moving into his own place.  At the end of his slides, he invited questions, and someone (with a learning disability) asked him if he had any friends. Ciaran had already shown a couple of slides of him having a barbecue in our back garden and of a birthday party, and he seemed a bit confused. I helped him go back to that slide, and he pointed out his friends. ‘But do they have learning disabilities?’ was the next question ...and Ciaran looked blank. I explained to the person that, no, actually, his friends don’t have a learning disability.

The truth is, we’ve never had the conversation about what having a learning disability is or means. We’ve never talked about being autistic. If you ask his social worker, they’ll tell you that yes, he does have a learning disability and he is autistic  – it’s in his Care Act assessment along with a bunch of other stuff, but it’s not something that has ever been on his radar, and he’s never mentioned it.

So, is that a problem? You could argue that there might have been an element of exclusion as it meant that he didn’t share any conversations on the day about the ins and outs of what good support looks like, or (I think) feel part of a movement of people wanting to make changes, or sensing that there is work to be done to enable Gloriously Ordinary Lives for everyone.

Talking about services and support made no sense – he doesn’t talk about support; he talks about his personal assistants who help him do stuff.

Being there as an Expert by Experience (which he had been introduced as, and which other learning disabled people introduced themselves to him as) made no sense, and I genuinely struggled to explain to him what that means.

He did join a group thinking about ‘who I am’ and drew an amazing picture of the people in his life and their Disney characters (some of you will see yourselves). He’s all about life, and to quote the wonderful Maff Potts and Camerados, friends and purpose.

The thing is, I know identity is a big deal for all of us.  Being a disabled person is an important identity for some of us. It’s just not one Ciaran has. That’s ok, I guess. Has going to mainstream school meant that he has less of an identity as someone with a learning disability or as a disabled man? I think so, as the markers for him in his school life were the same as for his nondisabled friends – from blue shirt to red shirt in Year 10, choosing GCSEs (or the subjects that he was going to be in the GCSE classes for), school trips and proms. We never used the T word (transition).

Who is he? ‘Ciaran James Cameron’, he reassured me when we were exploring this in a conversation that Ciaran humoured me to have. He then qualified it by reminding me that he’s also ‘a grown man’.

We chatted about the day in London and how it had gone:

‘Great fun speaking in London. Lots of people. New shirt smart and look nice. Get up very early train to London. meet Tricia at Sunningdale station. Tell people about jobs and hobbies and Flat 2 on my own at night and go to London Saturdays. Do more work telling story, people happy, great job.’

Today, I’ve had the confidence to press the send button on this rambling, as I was at an event talking to teachers from mainstream schools about inclusion. Ciaran had recorded several audio clips for me, sharing photos of his school life, and when I asked people to reflect on what had struck them, one person said, ‘Ciaran talked about his memories of school like any other young man might – remembering favourite lessons, playing with friends, school trips, a friend getting into trouble.’

That’s it really. Gloriously Ordinary. Maybe another reason to remember that labels don’t matter (unless, of course, they matter to you).

PS. Did you see? The Gloriously Ordinary Sundays Podcast episode 12 is here. I chat with chat with ⁠Maff Potts⁠, founder of ⁠The Association of Camerados⁠ and author of 'Friends and Purpose'.

We explore Maff's brilliant concept of 'front of house' versus 'back of house' - using the restaurant analogy to show how we often bring our very dehumanising policies, procedures, and language into spaces where people should feel human, comfortable and valued.