The second Alf Morris lecture was held in London last night and guest speakers, political television presenter, Andrew Marr and his wife, renowned journalist, Jackie Ashley, talked about their own experiences and ideas regarding the support available for disabled people.
By Tom Jamison
Andrew Marr survived a stroke in January 2013 and with help from his wife and a host of healthcare professionals continues to recover, although there are still a host of challenges to overcome.
Interestingly, the lecture was given just a day after George Osborne’s spring budget announcement that there would be further cuts to disability benefits. Marr, as a BBC correspondent is unable to break political neutrality but Ashley weighed in early on in the talk to suggest that “I think the things I heard yesterday were pretty shameful”.
Appropriately, Jackie Ashley is the daughter of the late Lord Ashley of Stoke who worked shoulder to shoulder with Alf Morris in pushing for civil rights for disabled people, culminating in the pioneering Chronically Sick & Disabled Persons Act, 1970. It was clear that Andrew’s stroke had affected his wider family and in particular Jackie, who explained that she had devoted a year to becoming his de facto carer before suggesting that more needs to be done for stroke patients after their initial treatment saying: “This country is brilliant at keeping people alive. ‘We’ve kept you alive – now off you go’. It needs a switch of emphasis after coming out of hospital.”
The lecture was the first time that Jackie and Andrew had spoken publicly together – and certainly the first time they had publicly discussed their personal experiences regarding Andrew’s stroke and his subsequent disability which affects his ability to speak, breathe, walk and use his left arm and hand. Indeed, Andrew not only advocated the “Importance of knowledge (and) danger of ignorance” regarding stroke (the signs and importance of action and intervention in the immediate aftermath) but also, in his case, how challenging he had found returning to home (and the workplace) after being treated in hospital for two months, whereupon he was, as he put it: “Hit with a whole raft of problems” not least in his home, using cars and simply getting to the doctors surgery for the inconvenient but necessary monitoring of blood pressure controlling medication on a regular basis.
Andrew has clearly had time to reflect on his triumphs and setbacks post stroke and advocates the successes as being down to rigorous sessions of physiotherapy which he suggests are the basis of his recovery so far. He went on to explain that this should be made available to far more people (and for far longer than they already receive) given that he feels that he is only just experiencing degrees of progress, saying: “Most people are released without nearly enough physiotherapy. The vast majority of people cannot afford neurological physiotherapy”.
Throughout the lecture, both Jackie and Andrew were both positive about the progress they had managed together. It was clear however, that Andrew Marr, having been used to a frantic life of tight deadlines and the pressures of his high profile, was at least frustrated, saying: “There is never a morning that it turns out that you haven’t had a stroke after all”.
