Mum Of Profoundly Disabled Woman OUTRAGED by Oxford Student Union Clapping Ban
26 October 2019, 10:09 | Updated: 26 October 2019, 10:18
The mother of a profoundly disabled child reacted to the news that the student union at Oxford would ban clapping, in favour of jazz hands, to prevent certain students from being triggered.
Sophie, from London, said: "So, I really want to explain this quite clearly and I want people to understand this. I really feel like the disability movement has been hijacked.
"I have a 29 year-old daughter with a profound and multiple learning disability. She didn't walk until she was six and a half.
"She walks only inside a house, she walks a few steps. Outside of any building, she has to be in a wheelchair.
"She's non-verbal, she cannot speak at all. She needs all personal care, she's got a PEG tube in her stomach, she's got severe epilepsy. She has constant seizures. She has about 130 seizures a month.
"She was banned from a swimming pool, a public swimming pool when she was nine years old, because a family didn't like her being in the pool and asked for her removal from the pool.
"See, these are the issues that we should be dealing with and I happen to work with ex-military personnel as well who have amputations.
"I work with an ex-serviceman who's blind. We really should be caring and considerate to really some of the big issues that are going on in the whole world of disability.
I'm actually quite shocked, you probably hear that in my voice. I'm actually quite emotional talking to you about this."
Matt asked: "Because you think it's an insult, do you?"
She replied: "I do because where have we come, where we're not even addressing the problems of people with really profound disabilities, people who are haunted by blindness, by amputations, by being born with a disability.
"I've encountered problems with getting Rachel on a bus in a wheelchair where the driver wouldn't put the ramp down.
This is in London, we live in the suburbs of London where transport is very good. I've had to write to TfL about those issues."
Matt then asked: "So students should get a grip and stop messing around on the neurotic peripheries of what actually matters?"
Sophie said: "Absolutely. And jumping on the sort of bandwagon of disability, when there are so many really serious problems and issues, I find really quite shocking."
