Mr. Peter Kearns:

In terms of decision reporting by staff, I would just like to tell a quick story about an intellectual disability nurse in the north west who was one of my disability equality students in St. Angela's College nursing department. She was in a residential home for more than 20 years and was dealing with a working-class woman of her own age. She hated working with her because the woman would not do what she was told. To come to the disability equality training, research and the role of disabled people's organisation, that woman was in one day and asked the disabled woman whether she wanted to take her medication. The woman said "No" so she recorded on paper that the woman had made the choice not to take her medication. For 20 years, she had been recording that the woman had been refusing to take her medication. That simple change in language changed her whole relationship with that woman. She realised that the woman was much more than an imposed label of intellectual disability and that she had quite an interesting intersectional background. The two of them started a journey together to build a healthier understanding of that woman's rights. It is not only about decision makers. It is about how those decision makers build capacity to recognise that people are not just an impersonal label but interesting in themselves.