"I want to be inde" (but we need to be 'interde' to be so)

(Hertfordshire PASS recently published User-Driven 3 a book containing articles written by users of PASS's WorkABILITY ( - preparation for employment), and employerABILITY ( - preparation for being an employer of PAs/carers) programmes. The book also contains a range of other articles, with the following being Nigel Fenner's contribution. User-Driven 3 is available from Hertfordshire PASS.)

I was sitting having my lunch and a staff member sitting next to me said "I want to be inde" to a colleague and because I was close by, I asked what he meant by this. He said he wanted to be independent, and that ‘inde’ was shorthand for saying so. I thought this was great, in that it reflects what PASS is aiming to achieve, as “a user-driven charity using employment, and ‘being an employer of PAs (or carers)’ to enable disabled people to live independently” – or inde, for short.

In addition to PASS encouraging young disabled people to use their own language to describe what they want, I hope too that this book, User-Driven 3, gives them opportunity to share their experiences in striving to be ‘inde’.

Given PASS’s aim, these experiences focus on disabled people using employment, through our WorkABILITY programme, or using ‘being an employer of PAs’, through our employerABILITY programme, to become more independent. These two programmes are featured at opposite ends of User-Driven 3, and in the middle, we’re sharing the experiences of some of our staff at ‘the crossover’ where employment preparation, and ‘being an employer of PAs’ preparation, intersect or overlap. So for example we have Patrick Fitzgerald sharing the experiences he’s had as Apprenticeship Co-ordinator in bringing apprenticeships to both WorkABILITY and employerABILITY. We also have Rob Voigt, Hanna King and Andrew Bird writing about their experiences of moving from WorkABILITY to employerABILITY, with Andrew also writing about how he has taken this to another level in creating his own award-winning social enterprise – and achieving this, in his own time.

In addition to the ‘added value’ in WorkABILITY and employerABILITY operating side-by-side, there are other exciting and innovative ‘crossovers’ taking place too in Hertfordshire PASS. For example the employerABILITY programme prepares young disabled people to be employers of their PAs at the same time as young people are being trained to be PAs. In addition we’ve always endeavoured to place disabled people on work experience with employers who have never or rarely ‘crossed-over’ or interacted with disabled people before ( - see for example pages 55 to 57 in User-Driven 2). We also endeavour to manage and drive Hertfordshire PASS using a cross-over between disabled and non-disabled people, using for example the ‘disabling experiences’ we all have, as a key resource.

So when the disabled people we work with strive to be ‘inde’, this is rarely achieved alone, as we all need cross-overs or interaction with other people to do so. So, in order to achieve independence, we need interdependence too – or perhaps ‘interde’ for short?