Jo McCausland & Jodie Bradley
Jodie Bradley
Jodie Bradley is an Expert by Experience. She has been working for Speakup for 18 years.
"I started working at Speakup in 2007 as I had lost my part time job. I had been working in that job for two years, with it ending in 2006.
It was thanks to a friend, that I found out about Speakup. I started as a volunteer, and in 2008, I got offered a job.
I have a learning disability and autism but that doesn’t stop me from having a job and feeling valued like everyone else.
Whilst being at Speakup, I have done lots of things that I never thought that I would do in my life. I have spoken in front of large audiences at conferences and other meetings. The largest audience I’ve spoken in front of is 250 people, at a conference in Manchester.
Myself and a few other colleagues have attended a 3-day conference in Toronto, Canada titled Intimate Citizenship. It was a brilliant conference. I met some new people and told them what we did at Speakup. I also led on a project called Healthy Surfers. This project was about internet safety. Altogether, I trained 250 people via this project.
Along with a great team, I have helped to put together the Employment is for Everyone project. It was myself who came up with the name! I’m really passionate about people with learning disabilities and/or autism having a chance to be employed. Being a co-founder for this project has made me feel even more valued, inspired and motivated to help others to gain employment."
In 2024, Jodie won ‘The People’s Award (Individual)’ at the National Learning Disability and Autism Awards in recognition of her exceptional encouragement and support for individuals with learning disabilities and or autism in providing support services and or personal development and inclusion.
Jodie is also an approved ‘Co-trainer’ for Oliver McGowan Mandatory Training for health and social care staff and helps to ensure they understand more about learning disability and autism and how they can work with people with a learning disability and autistic people get the best care and support.
Jo McCausland
Jo has been a project manager working in health and social care for many years and since January 2024 has also been working as an approved ‘Facilitating trainer’ for Oliver McGowan Mandatory Training.
Her last contract as a project manager was with South Yorkshire Integrated Care Board’s Learning Disability and Autism Team. One of Jo’s projects was the ‘Partnership for Neurodiversity in Schools’ (PINS) project which is part of a national project, lead by the Department for Education and NHS England, working with participating primary schools to support those schools to be more inclusive for neurodiverse children.
As a result of making a bid for some additional funding from the ICB’s Learning Disability and Autism budget, Jo was able to commission Training2Care to take the Autism Reality Experience on a ‘road trip’ around South Yorkshire visiting PINS schools and a selection of other venues. Jo is now an ARE bus ‘fan girl’!
Jo is currently a freelance trainer for Speakup Self Advocacy delivering Oliver McGowan Mandatory Training to health and social care staff alongside ‘Co-trainers’ like Jodie who have lived experience of learning disability and/or autism. Jo loves delivering the training and hearing great examples from participants about how they modify what they do to support people with a learning disability or autistic people. She also loves working in partnership with ‘Co-trainers’ and believes that, through involving people with lived experience in delivering the training, ‘the whole is greater than the sum of the parts’.
Speaker Session Title: Oliver McGowan
Jo & Jodie will be speaking about Oliver McGowan. They will be speaking about who Oliver McGowan was, what happened to him, how the mandatory training came about, and why and how the training is delivered.
Oliver’s story is one that every single person in society needs to know about to understand why it is so important society becomes a more inclusive place, making this film one of the highlights of this year’s conference.
