What a day!
On 15th October 2026 members of Together4Change, ARC England's advocacy and co-production group, came together to celebrate five years together.
Rod Landman and Samantha Leonard welcomed everyone.
We talked about what the group have done in the last five years and what they would like to talk about and work towards next.
Tiannha and Carla from Community Integrated Care remembered their friend, colleague and Together4Change group member Jamie Potts, who died recently.
We worked in groups to talk about the topics of Health, Employment, and Access and Transport. People spoke about what is good, what is bad and what we would like to change.
Lunch was provided by the MacIntyre Cafe staff.
A giant Colin the Caterpillar cake was shared between everyone.
In the afternoon, outgoing Together4Change Co-chair Matt Lester was presented with a card and some presents by his Co-chair SuiLing Tang to say thank you on the behalf of the group for his work.
David Symes, Activism Coach, Mencap, led a session about how to be an activist and how to campaign for change.
Each group put forward their most important issue:
Health: One records system with all of a person's details in.
Employment: The right support for everyone who wants to work
Transport: Accessibility should come first and then everyone benefits.
We voted on which issue to work on next. The votes were equal so we are going to talk about all of them at our next Together4Change meetings.
Want to join Together4Change? Email [email protected]
