How does alison lapper drive

The Tates were my parents. I refused to speak any more and scrabbled away as fast and as far as I could. The nurse immediately caught up with me, picked me up and dumped me once more next to the group. My heart was pounding but my body was frozen in panic.

I somehow knew this sudden awkward meeting was going to have huge implications for my life. And I didn't like it at all. The strangers were, in fact, my two grandparents, my sister, Vanessa, and my mother with her new husband, my stepfather, Alan.

They put me in their car and took me to Birmingham where my mother and stepfather lived at the very top of a council high-rise building. My mother. Where do I start? We've never talked about anything properly so I don't really know how she felt about me. This is how a social worker described our relationship in a report some years later: " Although Alison spent holidays with her mother and stepfather when she was a child, the relationship was not easy.

Mrs Barber had only limited affection for Alison, which was described as a certain admiration mixed with pity and revulsion. My mother, Veronica Barber, comes from a working-class family in Birmingham. She left school at 15 and worked in the Lucas car components factory as a machinist. She doesn't look like a factory worker, more like a beautician or hairdresser, and she takes a lot of care with her appearance. I've tried hard to imagine what it must have been like for her, having misshapen little Alison as her daughter, and I can understand that it was not easy.

I don't think she knew how to deal with the guilt and pain she must have felt when I was born, and, perhaps inevitably, she coped with all her mental turmoil by transferring some of her self-blaming to blaming me instead. By the time I was five, I had moved into the lower dorm, which was in another building. The nursing staff looked after us but it was auxiliary staff who supervised us.

I don't know anybody who has a good word to say about the time they spent in lower dorm. And why is that? It's simple. The staff abused us. They exploited us. They terrorised us. It's a sickening thing to have to write, but the children who were most impaired and most vulnerable, much more so than me, were the ones they targeted for the worst abuses and mistreatment.

I have to admit we were all cowards when it came to defending anyone who was suffering the attentions of those bullies. There was one auxiliary who was very physically violent. He would often begin his entertainment by play fighting with one of us, and then just step over the line so that it wasn't play any more. What I mean by "stepping over the line" is the point at which his slaps or kicks or punches started to hurt the child. Another of his favourite games was to pick us up and throw us across the room.

It was a sort of tossing game with a bit of aiming and hitting the target thrown in. He would stand with one of us in his arms at one end of the playroom then throw us in an arc across to the other side. I suppose the distance must have been 15 or 20 feet. There were some cushions on the far side of the room that he aimed for and we were meant to land on them.

Sometimes we did, but most of the time his aim missed the cushions altogether. When that happened we would hit the concrete and lino floor with a crack.

Unfortunately, we couldn't trust the nurses to help us because all the staff colluded with each other. On one occasion we did approach one of the teachers and she tried to intervene. The consequences for us children were typical. The sister in charge of our dorm told us off for telling lies and we all received early bed punishments for a week. Of course, not all the staff at the children's home were sadists. Some were wonderful and very caring.

But many of the younger ones and the unqualified ones didn't give a stuff about us. They seemed to enjoy being cruel. At the age of 11, I moved up to the senior section at the children's home - upper dorm. The oppressive system of heavy-handed discipline administered by unqualified staff came to an end.

I suppose rumours of untoward activities must have drifted up to the higher levels of authority at the home. House mothers were appointed for each dorm. They wanted to make it a more family-like atmosphere. These days, the children's home is a friendly place and the children are very well cared for.

However, for us it was too little too late. My final two years at the home were my best. In my last year, I was made head girl and Tara was my deputy. And we ruled the roost together. My school work improved, as did my self-confidence. I won an external art competition as well as two major school awards.

And my mobility was much better since I had an operation on my feet a few years earlier. My parents even came down from Birmingham for Speech Day to see me receive my two school prizes, and I thought I almost saw my mother on the verge of expressing some words of praise. It was a golden time, but it was drawing to a close. Every child had to leave the home when they reached That was the rule. I had already been there an extra year because of an operation and now that year was up.

It was time for me to go. That meant leaving all my friends, my familiar situation, my whole world. And that's where I was taken next. The centre trained disabled people so that they could live in the outside world on the best possible terms - whether living on our own, in sheltered accommodation, or in an institution, cared for by professional staff.

I didn't like Banstead from the first moment I saw it. It was an institution like my children's home, but somehow blander and duller.

I could tell immediately that this was yet another place where the staff exerted power over the residents and bowed and scraped to the hierarchy above them. There were 30 or 40 disabled young people there, but I wandered around in a daze and spoke to nobody.

I soon gained a reputation for being a snob. The staff at Banstead didn't like my attitude, and I was regularly called into one office or another to receive a talking to. Not long after my arrival I became depressed and began to think of only one thing: how I could leave. I had been in telephone contact with my mother and she knew I was unhappy there. She said that if I hated it so much at Banstead, why didn't I come home to live with her and Alan. I was so low at the time that moving back to my mother's home in Birmingham seemed an appealing possibility.

But as I thought about it more, it dawned on me that if I moved back home I wouldn't be able to learn to drive. I wouldn't be able to go to an able-bodied college, and my dream of living an independent life would be over. So I decided to give Banstead another try. My mother told me afterwards: "I will never forgive you for that. After that, things miraculously changed at Banstead. I started riding horses. I continued my education. It was going to be my first time doing a course in a normal able-bodied institution and I was petrified, but it was a beginning.

I was now 19 years old and on the verge of having something I had told myself was what I'd always wanted. But it scared me. After two years at Banstead they decided I was capable of living independently and my time there came to an end. When I moved to London - first to a bedsit and then a flat, especially converted for me, in Shepherds Bush - my life completely changed.

I quickly shed the persona I had at Banstead. There isn't anyone else to take Parys, there's me, and I think that had a lot to do with me needing to get through it, and I have, thank God. I've always had a drive, and maybe that's what's kept me going, I think, because I've always had to prove myself. For me, life is about looking forward. Where's my next challenge? That next challenge may well see her take on the government.

Lapper is dismayed by the way language around disability has changed, and she is sure this is a result of the cuts, and the way they are reported by some parts of the media. For a stark and shocking look at the way disabled people have been hit by the cuts, see the Centre for Welfare Reform's Counting the Cuts report. They always hit the people who can't fight back.

If I could get an audience with Cameron I would be in there like a flash. Come and live our lives for a week. Come and see what you're making people go through. It is something that I feel very passionate about. You're putting disabled people at risk — that's how serious it's becoming. People don't realise the fight to get what you need, and it shouldn't have to be a fight, it should just be there. Lapper earns a living as an artist for the Mouth and Foot Painting Artists organisation and thus hasn't been affected by the bedroom tax, but she is still furious that disabled people are being hit by it "What are you supposed to do with carers — they're supposed to sleep with you?

But the Independent Living Fund, which pays a proportion of her care costs — and supports thousands of disabled people to live, work and lead full, independent lives — will close next year and her needs will be reviewed.

It's totally inappropriate. She has been adamant from the start that Parys shouldn't take on her care at home. I felt, and still do, very strongly, that I didn't have a child to become my carer. He's got a childhood and a life to have, and it's important that he has that. He can't look after me and then be expected to do a day at school.

I know there are a lot of young people out there doing that and it's disgraceful. So it's not going to happen. Emine Saner. In , an inflatable replica of the statue was a centrepiece in the London Paralympic Games opening ceremony. She is a well known public figure and regularly gives talks about her life. You must be logged in to post a comment. Skip to main navigation Skip to main content Skip to footer Alison Lapper, —.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply You must be logged in to post a comment. Previous Post Peter Longstaff, —. At the age of 19, she obtained a driving licence and her own flat, and began to live her daily life independently.

Audiences at her talks range from the Royal College of Midwives to local voluntary groups. Please get in touch if you would like to arrange a talk with Alison.