Our Voice: Celebrating co-production

Through ‘Our Voice’ and other activities people who have Down’s syndrome are involved in the planning and delivery of services, decision making at all levels of the organisation and evaluating our activities. We think the best ways for people to participate is by creating things, and making decisions together; through co-production.

• ‘Our Voice’ from the Down’s Syndrome Association
• Down’s Syndrome Association and co-production
• Sam talking about one year of the One Voice project

The Our Voice team meet weekly on Zoom to talk about important topics and work on projects together. Due to the coronavirus pandemic we started hosting weekly update webinars to inform people of important change and work that was happening to protect the rights of people who have Down’s syndrome. 28 were held in all. The Our Voice team have regularly presented at these events and shared their stories or discussed updates from the group.

Emotional wellbeing

The ‘Our Voice’ team helped in the development of lots of resources including the hugely popular Emotional Wellbeing resources with the aim to help parents, supporters and people who have Down’s syndrome to support emotional wellbeing. Emotional wellbeing is about how we think and feel and how we cope with life events. It is also about how we deal with our own emotions as well as those of others.

We hope the resources will help people who have Down’s syndrome to feel good about themselves and give them ways of coping when life is challenging.

• Down’s Syndrome Association: Emotional wellbeing, depression and bereavement
• One Voice video: Meet the team