This fantastic group has now been running since June 2023, featuring a wide selection of guest speakers, entertainment, activities & more. Everyone involved has had a wonderful time.

To highlight the successes and importance of the group, we've decided to look back over the last 6 months or so of Hear Us Heroes.

Here's what we have been up to...

June

• DanceSyndrome came to our first meeting, we agreed some ground rules and voted on the name of the Group. 
  
  
  
  
  

July

• The Deputy Mayor Councillor Sylvia Liddle attended. We held a quiz about Blackburn with Darwen and announced the ‘Hear Us Heroes’ name. 

August

• Jenny from Re:Fresh attended and we did exercises to music. Elizabeth Fleming and Caroline Aspinall from the council came to ask us to complete a questionnaire on ‘The Big Plan’ and choose 2 or 3 priority areas that were important to us. 

September

• Linda Preston came to show us how to do some Chair Yoga. Elizabeth and Caroline came back and fed back that they’d received 35 responses from us about ‘The Big Plan’. Notes from our last meeting. 
  
  

October

• Hafeeza and Ahmbreen from Lancashire and South Cumbria Foundation Trust came and we did mindfulness. They showed us 2 techniques for relaxing. 

November

• Beverley Ormerod from Neurodynamix came.  We did crafts and made a heart with beads. We shared what activities we enjoyed going to locally and said that new members would be very welcome. Everyone agreed they knew a lot more about what was happening locally.

December

• We were entertained by a wonderful local magician, Darren Bland.  Darren amazed us with his tricks.  We looked back on the last 6 months and decided that we wanted to do more and tell our stories to more people.
  
  
  
  

What we would like to do in 2024…

Everyone enjoyed the mindfulness and wanted more stuff like this.

We want the Job Centre to come along to help people into work.

We want to encourage younger people to attend the meetings.

We could make videos to show people what it is like to have a disability and get the messages across.

We want to have meaningful volunteering stuff to do and help to make the borough a disability friendly place to live and work.

Get involved...

Our Hear Us Heroes group meets monthly, and is for local people, carers and/or family members of those in Blackburn with Darwen with lived experience of Learning Disabilities, Autism and Neurodiverse Conditions.

If you'd like to join us, please contact our team via: