Hear Us Heroes

2^nd April 2025

Notes from our last meeting: 

• 40 people attended our meeting on Wednesday 2^nd April 2025 - Autism Awareness day.
  
  
• Philomena welcomed everyone to the meeting. She said that we were celebrating Autism Awareness week. 
  
  
• Philomena introduced Victoria Braithwaite who is the new Disability Inclusion Manager to the team at Care Network.
  
  
• Before our fun activity, Lesley Heighway the Autism Board Chair shared some information about Autism and the Autism Board meetings. She spoke about people with autism being accepted, the Big Plan for Blackburn with Darwen and its aims and objectives. Lesley told us about the 3 proposed Sub Groups – Living Well, Staying Healthy and Being Safe.
  
  
• We welcomed Claire Grundy, from the Wellbeing Service and Re:fresh, who showed us some gentle exercises to music.  Everybody joined in and enjoyed doing the exercises.
  
  
• Philomena Strickland introduced Hannah Dean from Blackburn with Darwen Public Health. Hannah wanted to consult on an easy read document - 'Safer Sleep for Baby'.
  
  
• Hannah told us about Safer Sleep for Babies and said that they were looking to produce the easy ready guide to help promote to families and people with Learning Disabilities. Also she told us that a new guidance has been launched, along with a new 7 minute briefing on Safer Sleep and that they had translated the six steps poster into more languages and put information on baby boxes.  A new logo had been created and unsafe products removed from shops.

• Hannah then showed us a video – Six Steps to Safer Sleep.
  
  
• The group gave feedback on the document and Hannah thanked everyone.
  
  
• Philomena thanked everyone for attending and everyone was invited to the Autism Awareness event Care Network was holding in the afternoon following a light lunch. At the Autism Awareness event we had fun with the Re:fresh Team and Boccia, followed by Beverley Ormerod from Neurodynamix sharing about how the Autistic brain works. 

PLEASE NOTE THAT OUR HEAR US HEROES MEETINGS HAVE CHANGED DAYS, AND WILL NOW BE HELD ON THE FIRST WEDNESDAY OF EACH MONTH – DATES BELOW:

• Wednesday 7^th May
• Wednesday 4^th June
• Wednesday 2^nd July

ALSO THE TIMES HAVE CHANGED SLIGHTLY ALL MEETINGS WILL START AT 11.00 AM PROMPT

Please arrive at 10.45 am for a prompt 11.00 am start.

Visit our Hear Us Heroes main page