Earlier this year, the broadcaster talked to blogger and campaigner Nicola Clark about how her family has been affected by her sister’s learning disability…
‘I don’t think that people have an idea what caring entails, I really don’t, because, you know, it is utterly exhausting. Someone probably like yourself or like my mum and dad, they have Frances 24/7 so just little things like she does not like them to watch television. So the new Sherlock is on or something like that and everyone else goes “great, let’s watch Sherlock”, and you will have Frances going, “No don’t watch telly, no not watch telly, don’t watch telly”. And they can’t because she is so insistent. And Sleeping as well, so there will be nights when Frances just does not go to sleep until half past five, or she won’t go to sleep at all, and you imagine that night after night after night. I think it is very, very difficult for the majority of people to understand quite what that’s like.’
…
‘I think because there aren’t any people who will stand up and speak out for people with learning disabilities. it has never been the coolest thing in the world, the coolest charity to support, it just hasn’t. And they haven’t got a voice, they just don’t have a voice and so you need people to speak up for them and defend them and make points because they can’t do it for themselves. When I see some of the young men and women who come to the nightclub, we run a, my mum set up a nightclub and it is the just best gig that I ever do I go there and see people there and it is just the best time of their lives and then knowing that the next day they will walking the streeets of where they live and they will be picked on and they will have bullied in their day to day living. It makes me so angry, it really does, it is heartbreaking, they are such good people and they don’t deserve that.’
The full trancript is well-worth reading. This, and the 7-minute video clip of the interview, are available here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/feb/22/talking-about-disability-jo-whiley-transcript