The last year’s been a difficult one for everyone – but it’s presented some particular challenges for disabled people. Here at Touretteshero, the COVID-19 pandemic’s meant we’ve been focusing on providing direct support for our communities, in particular disabled Londoners, and also people with Tourettes and associated conditions across the UK.…

Back in November I wrote about the risk matrix we created to help make quick decisions on how we work in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic and our own capacity. The matrix builds on our initial COVID-19 statement from March last year which explained why we’d be focusing on essential work only.…

Last week the Government announced another national lockdown that will be in place into early December. In what is starting to feel like a brief intermission between lockdowns, we did some company planning to help us understand and deal with the risks we’re facing during these uncertain times.…

A lot has happened since last autumn when I wrote about the Elevate funding we’d received from Arts Council England to help the Touretteshero team grow and make new plans for the future.

Our plans included recruiting for a General Manger, a role that we urgently needed to meet the demand for our work.…

It’s the end of the month and that means it’s time to hear from resident guest blogger Serena. This month Serena’s sharing her experience of job hunting as someone with Tourettes. While job hunting is stressful for lots of people, I’m very aware of the added pressures that having Tourettes can bring.…

Today, out of the blue, there have been a series of announcements about travel in London that are seriously concerning many disabled people. Moving about this vast city as a disabled person can be tricky with a transport system that’s already far from equal.…

On a Friday exactly two months ago, my working week was drawing to an end. It’d been a busy week, full of meetings and rehearsals for a forthcoming tour of our stage show ‘Not I’.

With hindsight there were a few things that might have hinted at the cataclysmic changes that were around the corner, but at the time I was caught up in work and hadn’t paid much attention to meetings being cancelled or re-located, and all the elbow-bumping instead of hand shaking.…

A month ago, at the start of lockdown, I wrote about the huge amounts of extra time and labour I was having to expend just to meet my basic requirements for safety, health, nutrition, finance and logistics.

I’m re-visiting this, 28 days later, for a quick update on how my issues have been resolved – or not – and to highlight the ways disabled people are still falling through the gaps during lockdown life.…

Exactly one month ago, on 23^rd March 2020, the UK entered ‘lockdown’ to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. This means everyone stays at home except for essential travel, food shopping and exercise.

As a disabled person with additional high-risk factors, I took the decision to lockdown a week earlier when it was clear that the situation was escalating and posed a significant threat to my health.…

In just a few weeks, many of the assumptions we’ve taken for granted for generations have been totally transformed.

While this is undoubtably a surreal and scary time, we’ve seen how quickly systems can be transformed when the right approach is taken and when adequate resources are in place.…