Hi readers, Emily, Kerry and William here, discussing dates to meet Alfie, a nice journalist who’s just written about ‘Not Lost’, the book we’ve written with Cat, about Susie the cat.
We want to interview Alfie for this column, and discuss my Kerry, and his, shared experiences of having cerebral palsy. Although Alfie doesn’t have a learning disability like us, we’ll share our collective thoughts on how disabilities (mental health, visually impaired etc) affect people in their daily lives. Oh yes, Alife and me, William, like football, so that might feature too!
This week though we’ve noticed how people keep getting our charity name wrong. It’s People First Dorset. Not ‘People First’ or ‘First Dorset’ or even ‘Dorset People First’. Which, to be fair, was our former name. Is People First Dorset hard to remember? We got thinking about solutions, our favourite being shortening it to PFD, as well as People First Dorset. A bit like NHS and National Health Service, M&S and Marks & Spencer or RNLI and Royal National Lifeboats Association.
Do you think we’re punching above our weight, a tiny charity doing the same as these giants? But if we do nothing, people will still get it wrong. As we discovered this week, it’s frustrating when ‘PFD’ is called the wrong name, like it’s not important, which is often how people with a learning disability feel.
Another question. What else is abbreviated to PFD? We found a few - ‘personal flotation devices’ (buoyancy); ‘process flow diagrams’ (engineering); ‘prevent future deaths’ (legal, coroners); ‘pelvic floor disorders’ (medical); ‘primary flight display’ (aircraft). We don’t think these would affect us being known as PFD, especially as Charities Aid Foundation, abbreviated to CAF, is also abbreviated to ‘common assessment framework’ (safeguarding) and ‘cyber assessment framework’ (security)! What do you think, readers? We’d love to know!
The writers of the Our View column are supported in their editing by People First Dorset - a charity led and run by people with learning disabilities with support from staff
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