Nelson Raposo by the Holiday tree

It’s been an exciting time at the Self-advocates Council at Community Living Toronto. As we head into a new year, we reflect on the advocacy work we’ve been doing and what we want to do. Nelson Raposo sat down with me and shared some of his thoughts on how things have been going the past year, and what he’s looking forward to coming up in 2018. Nelson is the current Self-Advocates Council representative on the Board of Directors.

Words spoken by Nelson Raposo on the year ahead:

As a mentor, I’m up for the challenge of being the Self-advocates representative on the Board at Community Living Toronto. It’s nice because I’m treated like a human being on the Board. The Self-advocates Council pushes the agency to new heights. Being on the Board is giving me a chance to push   together for a common goal: to make things better for people labelled with intellectual disabilities – out in the community, or whatever they want to do.

I also love continuing to go to the SAC meetings as a mentor. I always learn something new – especially from the new members who are coming out now.

I love helping the new Self-advocates get familiar with self-advocacy. It keeps growing at the agency. When I first started many, many moons ago, the Self-advocates Council wasn’t that big. Then we got bigger and bigger and got the word out. Now we can hardly all fit in the Boardroom. We are having more and more different people from different programs coming to meetings and learning how to advocate. It’s so  amazing. We also have such a diversity of people showing up – from Passport programs, to employment programs, to day supports, to Adult Protective Service Worker (APSW) programs and group homes. It’s so great!

We help people supported by the agency who have griefs with the agency, and we help solve those griefs. At the end of the day, we want everyone to get what they need and deserve.

People we support are coming forward with their   grievances because they are comfortable with the  Self-advocates Council. I’m proud of people learning to stand up for their rights and share their stories with us. They are getting comfortable to talk about stuff and we keep it a safe atmosphere. We can tell the agency how to change things.

We welcome everyone and we try to make it  comfortable for everyone in the agency. They might not be comfortable only talking to staff – as Self-advocates can relate to the issues. People are more comfortable talking to their peers, and that’s what we’re here for.  The issues we talk about are all up to the SAC – they choose what we talk about and what we should work on. Right now, they want to talk about the Toronto   Police and how they treat people. We would love to work with them. Francie Munoz is coming to speak with us next month and we can’t wait to hear her story about how she stood up for her rights when the police said not good things about her! We watched that video and felt pretty upset for Francie.

We’ve been talking about how the agency handles abuse reporting. That’s super important for us to know!

The conversations are not easy, but we need to have them. It’s our life and dignity we are talking about.  People need to treat us with respect.

We are interested in talking about our access to health care – both mental health and physical health. We’ll keep you posted on what we get up to with that. We would love Self-advocates to come out and talk with us about what’s important to them. We are welcoming all new Self-advocates to come to our meetings as guests.

Please come and join in the fun!

For information about the SAC, please get in touch with our coordinator:

Sue Hutton at

shutton@cltoronto.ca

Download the full newsletter here: Newsletter December 2017 – January 2018