Today (Saturday the 3rd of December) is International Day of Persons with Disabilities and as I have Cerebral Palsy and Hydrocephalus I wanted to celebrate it.
As I have mentioned so many times in my blogs I use a wheelchair because I was born at 25 weeks (15 weeks earlier) weighing just half a bag of sugar.
Since I wrote the 2021 edition of this blog to celebrate this incredible day a lot has happened in my life.
2022 started off productively for me when I worked with ITV News Central to highlight why I believed that the counties roads were an accident waiting to happen.
As a result of Itv Central’s filming Herefordshire Council agreed to meet with me in February this year to discuss the issues I raised in the piece with regional news.
Then In march I was named a community champion by Aston Villa football club’s foundation for my work in co-producing the Herefordshire FA Youth council’s podcast series called ” Listen in with the youth council”.
As mentioned in a previous blog on the podcast series we spoke about issues such as Disability and Mental Health.
There is still a final episode focusing on Hate Crime to be released as part of the series featuring ex England and Great Britain Cerebral Palsy football captain Jack Rutter.
On the 5th of July I was one of 9 batonbearers for the final ever queen’s baton relay as it visited Hereford on it’s way to the opening ceremony of the Birmingham 2022 commonwealth games.
This was an incredible day of media interview’s that included 2 live interviews on both the lunchtime and evening tv news.
Saturday the 6th of August saw me verbally abused by a fellow rail passenger as I travelled home with a friend on the train from the commonwealth games in Birmingham.
I have now written to the UK Home Secretary following this incident to ask for a review of laws covering Hate Crime.
My 4 year battle with Herefordshire Council finally came to an end in September when they started a countywide pavement review which led to them installing a total of 17 pairs of drop curbs across Herefordshire.
I have now written to the leaders of Coventry, Birmingham, Worcestershire, Stoke on Trent and Wolverhampton county council’s to urge them to consider conducting a county wide pavement review on behalf on there wheelchair and mobility scooter users.
October saw the annual Hate Crime awareness week and I was given the opportunity by a local secondary school to deliver an assembly to there year seven’s.
When I successfully won my battle with Herefordshire Council I vowed that I would ask central government to conduct a national pavement network review on behalf of wheelchair and mobility scooter users.
In early November I finally wrote to the ministerial team at the Department of transport urging them to consider conducting this review.
As I have said in previous blogs on this subject I believe that if a national pavement review is not conducted by central government then the lives of the disabled community who rely on the pavement network will be put at risk.
As you can tell from the content within this blog I have had an incredibly busy year and I am very much looking forward to seeing what 2023 has in store for me.
As I do with every single one of my blogs I would like to end by thanking my readers and followers for taking the time out of your busy schedules to read this latest blog.
Cam
Leave a Reply