Leonard Cheshire Disability
Leonard Cheshire is a major health and welfare charity working in the United Kingdom and running development projects around the world.
Leonard Cheshire's aims are to support disabled people to live, learn and work as independently as they choose - whatever their ability.
It runs residential, nursing and supportive living services as well as offering employment programmes for young disabled people.
[5][6] Group Captain Leonard Cheshire started the charity in 1948 when he took a dying man, who had nowhere else to go, into his own home: a country house called Le Court, near Liss in Hampshire.
People were inspired by Group Captain Cheshire's example; The Duke of Edinburgh described the work 'as one of the greatest acts of humanity in our time'.
The founder and his small secretariat in London helped the committees with their endeavours, including arranging well-publicised openings, all the more attractive to the public for Group Captain Cheshire's attendance.
Residents at Le Court benefited from a greater degree of 'self-help' but the home was still run locally along medical lines by the Warden and Matron.
This led to changes in the philosophy of the management committee at Le Court and other Cheshire Homes, and eventually to the formation of the Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation as Hunt, Wade and others started to explore and campaign for life beyond residential care.
[11] By 1969 there were 50 Leonard Cheshire services in the UK, 15 in India, and Homes in 20 other countries including Portugal, Morocco, Chile, Israel, Nigeria and Sierra Leone.
The 1960s produced much new thinking on disability and resulted in better training for residential care workers, personal counselling within the homes and the involvement of residents in management.
The first-day centre was established near Nottingham, bungalows for married residents were started in West Sussex and supported living flats were built in Tulse Hill in partnership with the Greater London Council.
[19] In 2010, Leonard Cheshire launched their Young Voices website and programme that supported disabled children around the world to campaign for access and their human rights.
[31] In March 2022 due to financial pressures, the charity began a redundancy process for job roles outside of its front line care and supported living services.
[33] Further measures to improve the charity's financial position included additional redundancies, care home closures and sales of services to other providers.
[38] As part of a call for new trustees in late 2022, Leonard Cheshire announced plans for a significant scaling back and a review of the make-up and direction of its social care services.
[49] He stated that 'the main reason you cease to be a Leonard Cheshire service user is death' and that charity donations would pay for 'private medical insurance of senior directors and management get-togethers costing £10,000 a weekend'.
[50] After a heated debate on BBC Radio 4, as well as 50,000 hits on the website, Leonard Cheshire submitted a complaint to the World Intellectual Property Organization.
