Let's Talk Disability

Let's Talk Disability: Series 2 Episode 1.

[MUSIC]

JACKIE: Hello, I'm Jackie Carter. I'm a professor in Statistical Literacy and the Academic Lead for Disability Inclusion at the University of Manchester.

I live with a disability and a long-term condition and often describe myself as deaf, dizzy and disabled.

Here's a fact of two. 24% of the working age population in the UK has a disability. 8% of disabilities are hidden or invisible, as are mine.

I started the Let's Talk Disability podcast series to provide a platform to raise awareness of what it means to be a disability-inclusive university.

The podcast is a series of conversations which I host on the lived and living experience of our colleagues and postgraduate students of being disabled or having a long-term condition.

On each episode, I host two guests. One is a senior leader at the university, a person with influence and responsibility. The other is a member of staff or postgraduate student who is open to sharing their disability or long-term condition.

The aim is to demystify what being disabled means and create a culture of sharing.

But, and this is important each episode moves from dialogue to deeds, from talking to action.

The senior leader is invited to commit to just one thing, an action they will take away as a result of the conversation.

The disabled guest gets to say what one thing would make the difference to their lived experience as a colleague or a student at the university.

So let's dive in and find out what today's guests want to share and what they will commit to to make our university more disability-inclusive.

Okay, so Happy New Year. This is the first Let's Talk Disability conversation of and I've not seen either of you in person, so let me wish you a Happy New Year.

And we start these episodes by me, Jackie Carter, who's the host of these conversations asking my guests, which are you two, to introduce yourself and say what your role is at the university and a little bit about why you're here. So, Gill, are you happy to go first?

GILL: Yep.

JACKIE: Thank you.

GILL: My name is Gill Bibby. I'm a comms and content officer at the Alliance Manchester Business School. I've worked here for nearly three years and my involvement with disability is that I am a mum to a nine-year-old girl who has cerebral palsy and autism.

JACKIE: Thank you very much for sharing that. And Michelle, who are you?

MICHELLE: I'm Michelle Carter, no relation. I'm the Director of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion at the Alliance Manchester Business School. And I've been there 13 months, and I met Gill actually through our EDI committee and also learned about your daughter through your post on LinkedIn.

And so, I asked you if we could talk today because I'm just really excited to talk to Gill about her experiences and see what we can do to help.

JACKIE: Thank you both very much. Thanks, Michelle.

So, Michelle, you and I have been talking for a while, haven't we, about getting you on to this series. And what's really lovely actually is given that we haven't talked about caring responsibilities before, we have the opportunity to sort of broaden and
widen the conversations that we've been having that still have an impact on our doing
our jobs at the University of Manchester.

So, we've already had a pre-conversation, as it were, before Christmas and we've got some thoughts about what we want to explore here.

But Gill, I'm going to hand over to you. So, we normally start by the person who's sitting in your seat talking about the lived experience of their disability. Now it's slightly different in your case.

So, if you're willing and happy to share with us what you want to, by way of being a mum to a daughter, a nine-year-old daughter with cerebral palsy. I think that would be a good place to start.

GILL: Yeah, of course. So, I haven't always been working full-time. I was actually made redundant while I was pregnant in my previous role. So, the first part of my daughter's life, I wasn't working and as we learned more about her medical needs, it felt like I probably wasn't going to be able to work full-time or at all.

I didn't know whether I was going to be able to work again because I didn't know what level of support she would need. And so there was a period of time not working and then part-time working and now three years into this role.

So this has been the first time I've been juggling full-time and being a parent carer, which is quite tricky.

When I came into the role, it was just sort of post-COVID times, still a lot of working from home, which suits me obviously. And as people have been more returning to the office, that's thrown up some challenges for me. But there's all different manners of support that my daughter needs, both physically and emotional support. So it's just a case of how do I balance all of these things on a day-to-day basis with varying degrees of energy and varying degrees of sleepless nights.

JACKIE: Okay. And Michelle, as an EDI lead and having contact with Gill through the Business School, what has it meant for you to become aware of the challenges that Gill faces?

MICHELLE: I think sometimes, particularly when we're thinking, I think we think first of all often about gender when we try to think about EDI issues and gender and race usually, much less we talk about disability. And I think much less than that even we talk about what it's like to be
a carer of someone with disability. And one of the things that struck me when I started work at the University of Manchester because I'd been in the United States for about years and over there for a lot, there's a lot of talk of not wanting to use the word disability because it, you know, other people or whatever. I can't remember why, but what struck me when I came and I was doing my training and things getting settled in Manchester was that notion that people are disabled, that it's not something they own. It's something that is imposed upon people by the circumstances in which they're trying to navigate life. And so it's in a way, it's someone like me making someone disabled. It's how I respond to someone that disables them.

And so when I first met Gill and connected with you on LinkedIn and I remember not exactly all of the contents of your post but I remember reading a post that you'd written about some of the difficulties that you encounter as a parent carer. And that occurred to me that in a way how we respond to you as a parent carer is disabling, can be disabling. And so as a carer, you're not just helping and supporting someone who has a disability but in a way you can be disabled yourself by the people around you. And so that really sort of resonated with me, really sort of struck a chord with me. And so I really wanted the opportunity to talk more with Gill about it.

JACKIE: Well, thank you so much for sharing that. And you're so right. We talk about the social model of disability, and that's something that we try to adhere to at the University of Manchester. And we're talking a lot more about it in some of these episodes and elsewhere on different platforms because it's society and the way that people treat disabled people that is disabling. Well, the effect of that is disabling. So you've brought that up beautifully.

And let me just go back to what you said. You found out about Gill's experiences on LinkedIn. So I'm going to ask you to talk a little bit about that in a minute.

But Gill, why did you decide, why, LinkedIn is a platform. So not everyone uses it. I use it. I find it a very supportive professional platform. I know that both of you use it. What made you decide to use LinkedIn to reach out to talk about your experiences of being a caregiver for a disabled daughter?

GILL: I think I've spoken in my sort of personal life a lot on other social media. And to talk about it on LinkedIn is very much opening up your work community to your life as well. So it wasn't necessarily something that I would have done lightly or perhaps even too early on into the job, because as we've spoken about previously it feels like something you have to disclose or not disclose about your life and what someone might think of you and your commitment to your role in work when they know that you've got all that going on in your life as well.

So I think the first time I posted it was because it was Carers Week and I was wanting to acknowledge that. And I started following other people on LinkedIn that talk a lot about caring and how employers need to do more to support carers. So it was really a decision to link up with that and that community as well. Didn't realise that Michelle was going to pick up on what I'd put, but I was very happy that she did.

I think it was, I'd put something like things you might not know about a parent carer. It's almost like a way to explain yourself a little bit, asking people to give you a bit of grace sometimes. You might not seem fully with it one day or you might not have had a shower that morning because you've had an absolutely crazy start to the day. I think that's where it started from.
And I don't post a lot, but I do think it's important to not compartmentalise yourself too much because I've been guilty of that in the past. And this is who I am. It's me all the time, which is what I was trying to say on LinkedIn today, I think.

So I don't switch these parts of myself off. I am always me, whether I'm at work or at home. Essentially, I want to be a good role model to my daughter. There was a time when she was younger where she thought that only men went to work because she wasn't experienced in me going to work. And she had quite not a lot of people around her. I've got quite a small family. And I remember thinking, that's terrible that she thinks that. Even at an early age, I need
to get a job and I need to show her that it's not just dad that goes to work.

So obviously that's changed for the better now. But yeah, I think it was just about not being frightened to show, not to be embarrassed either. There's nothing to be embarrassed about.

My daughter asked me this morning, she said, why are you dressed up? Because I usually work from home on a Tuesday. And I said, oh, I'm going to be doing this recording today. And she wanted to know all about it. And I thought, well, on the one hand, I want her to be proud of me for talking about this. However, she will want to listen to it. And then I thought, will that sort of affect what I say on it? I'll have to make that decision going forward about, you know, does she need to be that involved because she likes to be involved in everything. But yeah, it's the whole trying to marry up the different parts of my life.

JACKIE: I love that. I love that. The different facets of who you are make you the person you are. And you mentioned, we haven't talked about employer specifically but Michelle, you talked about 'we', and the 'we' there you were talking about was the University of Manchester. And you've talked about, you know, working at the University of Manchester. I suppose what I'd like to know from this conversation, so in my role as the Academic Lead for Disability for the entire university, what are we doing well to support you in your role as a parent carer? But also, what do we need to do better?

Michelle, maybe that's something that you could explore a little bit in terms of your role in one particular part of the university.

MICHELLE: Yes. So we've both said that we work in the Alliance Manchester Business School. And it's funny because we've just recently submitted our application for Athena Swan, the next award, hopefully.

JACKIE: Do you want to say for the listeners what Athena Swan is for those who don't know?

MICHELLE: No, you're right. Sorry, I've been living it for the last year and a half, so I feel like everybody knows. So Athena Swan is an accreditation for really, it's about supporting gender
equality within higher education. I think it started with academia particularly, but it's spread and recognizing that of course universities are not just made up of academic staff. And so now it's about gender equality writ large, academic staff, professional services staff, students because otherwise we're all in our own parallel universes, aren't we? And also now I think more importantly with the Transformed Athena Swan Charter a recognition that we are none of us just one thing, and this notion of intersectionality.

And as human beings, and I think it's really important what Gill said about this is who I am and who I am is more than just one component. In various aspects of ourselves and in various roles that we perform we have more or less positional power, more or less opportunity to affect change. And so there is sometimes someone who could be in a position of power in one regard could in another regard find themselves marginalized. And so this notion of intersectionality I think becomes really important because it would be really easy for me. I've met Gill a number of occasions to just view Gill as a colleague who is entirely competent and does her job in a fantastic way. And we've interacted with communication pretty much since I started at university last year. And for me just to sort of interact with you in that way, Gill, and just see that and think, oh, well, you've got it all going on. You've got everything sorted.

GILL: Absolutely.

MICHELLE: And so learning that actually there's your whole human being with different aspects to your life I think is really important. And it was a brave thing. I do think it's a brave thing on social media to share those aspects of yourself that make you feel vulnerable. Because I think it does.

GILL: I mean, I've been in situations where I've had job interviews and not said that I'm a parent carer because I've thought that it may well count against me and maybe it has. I mean, you never know for sure if you are told, you know, there was two candidates and that other person just had slightly more of something we were looking for. You have no idea whether that's true or whether they thought, you know, I think you're going to be a whole load of I don't want to employ you. You're never going to be here. You know, there's that sort of negative perception of, which some people have of parents generally it's talking like as Michelle's saying about intersectionality, you know, I'm female, I'm 44 years old and going through the perimenopause sort of point of my life and I'm a parent carer. And they're all different things that somebody could judge negatively for whatever reason.

Hopefully not at the university, but, you know, in life. But they're all part of me. Yes, they're all reasons why I might forget things. I might be super anxious about something, but they're still all part of me.

JACKIE: So can we unpack that a little bit more if you're willing to, you know, you've said you've been here for about three years, OK, in your role. I'm hearing, although you haven't said explicitly that there has been support for you, that you are able to, you're working full time?

GILL: Yes.

JACKIE: You're working full time and you're a parent carer and there are these other things, these other aspects of your life that I'm sure are challenging in addition to everything else you've talked about. So is there something, so I asked Michelle the question, but I'll ask it to you now, Gill. Is there something that the University of Manchester is doing well to help support you in your role? And if so, what is that? And then what can we do to improve that for people who perhaps haven't been as brave as you in speaking out about it and making sure that, you know, that good practice or best practice if it exists is available to everybody who needs it?

GILL Yeah, I think that's really important, Jackie, because there is a carers leave policy and there is opportunity to apply for flexible working. So I have a flexible working agreement that says that I work two days in the office and three days at home as opposed to three days in the office, which the rest of my team do. Originally, I didn't really want that. I didn't want tobe tied down. But in the end, that was the way I would have rather have done it a bit more ad hoc. But that was the way I was advised to go ahead. I also know of colleagues who are
parent carers who've had that denied. But obviously, I don't know all the ins and outs. I can't speak about other people's cases or whatever. So some of these things do exist.

However, the carers leave policy, I think it entitles you to seven days unpaid leave per 12 months. It doesn't seem that many people know about that. So I think that could be more publicized to help people out. If you've got extra appointments you need to go to or you're just going through difficulty with childcare or not necessarily if you care for someone who's not a child. But in my case, it might be over the summer holidays. So people that use holiday clubs, for example, my daughter struggles with things like that from a social perspective and the fact that when it's not school time, she doesn't want to be spending time at school at a holiday club or whatever. It doesn't make sense to her. There are some holiday clubs for children with additional needs and disabilities of which she's tried a few, but if she doesn't like it, she won't go.

So it's that sort of, you know, dealing with all of that sort of stuff. You might need that extra help in the summer. So there are, I think it's probably a little bit inconsistent. I think it's definitely more that line managers and certain managers know they're better at it. They know more about it and some are a little bit clueless, maybe need a bit more training. Sure, that's the same in every organisation, but it's just talking about is someone got to start talking about it and then these things come to the forefront and then change can happen.

So I don't want to be overly critical because I've definitely worked and had worse experiences. I think university is generally a caring place to work, but it's just about knowledge, isn't it, as well? And if a line manager doesn't know, then they need to know.

JACKIE: Absolutely.

GILL: And you're not saying anyone doesn't disclose,but it's good to know this stuff anyway.

JACKIE: Yeah, thanks, Gill. You're not saying anything that hasn't come up in many other conversations in the same space. Michelle, you were going to come in.

MICHELLE: Yeah, I want to, if I could just learn a little bit more about the challenges that perhaps we don't necessarily recognise. So, I mean, in terms of, yes, the university has policies around flexible working, carers leave policy, but I think you and I have in the past had some interaction about what happens if your daughter has had a bad night? What happens if there is an emergency and you need to deal with that first thing in the morning? Then what?

GILL: Yeah. So as kind of a standard thing, sleeping is not really, not a lot of sleeping going on. So generally operating from a tired place. In the whole, when there's been difficult, like a standard class is a standard difficult morning, still come into work, everything's normal. If there was an emergency, I mean, I've had that. I've had to take her to A&E, for example. That's fine. You know, discussion was had over what type of, you know, is that compassionate? That didn't cause any problems.

The difficulty I have in my role is that I organise events. And if I'm not there, that causes a problem for everyone else in the team if there's no one else to cover it. So it would depend on what kind of day and what kind of work I wasn't there for, if you see what I mean. I'm not a senior person. At the end of the day, I'm a grade five and there are people that can cover for me. But it's not, it's not, I mean, I'm touching wood, I'm touching the desk. It's not really, that's not a lot of our experience.

So for some people, they might have more hospital emergencies and stuff. We don't tend to have that. It's more about the difficulties of the mornings. There's a lot of negotiation going on, separation anxiety, difficulties that I feel I should probably stay a bit longer and help with. So I'm not just running out of the door and leaving my husband to deal with it. But it's that sort of starting the day off and you already feel like you've done a day's work, you're drained. And you've got to somehow park all of that and start thinking about work. So sometimes that's easier than others.

Working from home, there's less of a transition, I guess. I find bus journeys when I'm in the office to be the time where I start as much as I'm saying, you know, this is all of me. I still have to transition in some state from thinking about, oh, I need to order this medicine
to, right, I've got an event today. I need to do this, this and this. But I'm always worrying about, am I going to forget something at work? Or am I going to forget something at home? And how do I remember everything?

And the reason I mention about sort of perimenopause and stuff, that sort of anxiety of forgetting stuff, it seems to be worse. And I feel like I'm not particularly organized anymore. I mean, people I work with will say, oh, Gill, you're really organised. You know what you're doing. You can organize a conference. It's all fine and everything. But I know that I was better before. I was more organised before. My head was clearer. So I have to. This is my reality now. But I do feel like there's always something I'm forgetting to do. And that's not a very nice feeling. And I haven't got used to it. Maybe this is it now forever. I'm going to feel like this. I don't know. But I don't feel like I've got my life together in perhaps the same way.

JACKIE: I think you've been really honest. Can I jump in on your question, Michelle?

MICHELLE: You can.

JACKIE: I'm sure you will want to respond as well. But I think that question was really important, OK, because it was about, you know, what is your lived experience? What's your day to dayness of being a parent carer and working at the University of Manchester? So it's the intersection of those two things, given that all of this other stuff is going on, which you've shared bravely with us. And I suppose my question is, so as an employer, we have duty of care to you, OK to make sure that you can do the job that you've been appointed to do. And I'm wondering to what extent the university, not the Manchester Business School in particular, but the university current policies and practice enable you to do the job.

So, yes, we've got the policy. Yes, we've got the seven days leave you can take in the summer through different mechanisms, compassionate care, whatever you need. But is there more? Right. So, you know, there's lots of things we don't talk about. Menopause is increasingly rising up the agenda in terms of how it affects women and how it affects them being able to do their job. And you've described a multiplicity of things that are happening. So in terms of your personal dealing with, let's say, coming into work rather than working at home you said the transition was different at home, coming into work on the bus, presumably not just decompressing from one situation to get ready for the next at work. So culturally changing your mindset, but thinking about the things that you've got.

Is there more that we could be doing, for instance, in training line managers, in making people aware of what this means? And so that's the big question across the university that I have. And then I'm thinking, but what would that look like, Michelle, in your school? You know, these conversations are about unpacking not just what we are doing OK at, but what we could be doing better at?

GILL: Indeed, there is a carers network at the university. I think we could probably do a lot more with that. I don't. I mean, it sounds silly. Perhaps everybody in the carers network like me is like, oh, God, I don't need anything else that I need to be organising and doing. You know, someone else can do that. But it's like being more clear about what some of these staff networks are for and what they're not for.

So, for example, I had a meeting when I was sorting out my flexible working. I had a meeting with HR, sorry not HR People and OD. And as I thought, I know I'll get somebody from the carers network to come along as an advocate because I was feeling anxious about, you know, just what this meeting was. What if it wasn't what they're going to say no to my flexible working and I was unsure about it. And I reached out and nobody replied. And I thought, oh, that's not what this network is for. But it could be, you know, we could be more advocates for each other. It might not be the sort of network where it's easy to meet up in person because we've all got other stuff going on. But there's definitely room there for improvement.

JACKIE: Thank you for sharing that. Michelle and I have been nodding our heads.

MICHELLE: I feel like a bit of a nodding dog. I just want to just go back briefly to
the scenario that you mentioned about, you know, traveling from home to work. And I just imagine you arrived at work on one of those mornings and you met by a colleague, by a line manager. Anybody, what could what would be the ideal situation on a day like that when you've not had enough sleep? You're already tired. You maybe even haven't had time to have a shower. You've had to tear yourself away from home. You arrive at work. What would be the ideal welcome to work that that you could encounter?

GILL: Well, obviously, that would be different for different people. I can only answer for myself, but I think a good line manager would know, that the individual person and what they need, because I was thinking about this question yesterday. And the first thing I thought of was, you know I need from people? I need consistency because I don't have that at home. I need consistency at work. And then I thought, you know, actually, that's not 100% percent true because on one day I could come into work and want to be treated completely normally, forget about everything else at home. I want to talk about my weekend like everyone else does.

And on a different day, I might want a bit more. It sounds silly, but a bit more sympathy to the fact that I've not had a normal weekend. It's not been relaxing. There's been lots of meltdowns and raised voices and plans that never happened that should have happened. And then I want someone to buy me a cup of tea and say, let's go and have a chat.

So perhaps it's a bit hard to expect because nobody lives inside my head, other than me to know what I particularly need. But in an ideal world, you know, I mean, it's the same, though, isn't it? For lots of people, you say, how are you? How are you really? And all of that because I'm as guilty as anyone of saying, yeah, yeah, I had a great weekend. Great Christmas break. Yeah, thanks. Yeah. Because maybe sometimes I don't want to talk about it and I don't want to be the piece. Oh, don't ask Gill about the weekend. God, you'll just depress everybody. You know, I don't want to be talking negatively about things and have that sort of aura about me because there's some conversations that people have about their children and you think, yeah, that's not really my experience.

And some where it is and there are and you can't expect everyone else to think, one of my colleagues has a daughter who's a teenage daughter, really into athletics, really good, competes for the county. And he was telling me that about her achievement and you could see he was like, oh, you can still tell me about this my daughter's, not particularly good at sports, but she tries. And it's not it's not upsetting to me that you're telling me this. However, the day that we found out she had cerebral palsy, I might have reacted differently, had a long time to get used to that. And also, how can you expect other people to know this? It's a really tricky thing.

I mean, I'm not consistent. So why should anyone else?

JACKIE: But you picked up something really important. Michelle, that question was fantastic, because what you're saying is you want to ideally work in an environment where your needs are met. Let's just sort of encapsulate it like that. But your needs are different on any given day, depending on what's happened and also how you feel about talking about them and getting that support from people. And, you know, that's the nature of being human, isn't it?

But if we are a caring organisation, an empathetic organisation, it ought to be okay to come in and decide, choose whether or not to say on any particular day, actually, I need a bit of space, I need a cup of tea, can somebody take me out without it being a big deal.

OK, and actually, as a cancer survivor in cancer circles, we never ask, how are you? We ask, how are you today? Because the today word makes all the difference, because every day is different and every day is different than the one before and will be different than the next one.

So what I'm hearing you say is, yes, you work in a supportive environment with supportive colleagues, that you are open about sharing your experiences as a parent carer online, but also in your team. And we don't always get it right all of the time. And what I'm hearing Michelle asking is, so what can we do for you, Gill but also for other people that might be in this space to be more likely to get it right? And if that is the, you know, what's your morning been like today? How can I help? Is there anything I can do? Then that sort of opens the conversation to say, no, I'm fine, it's been alright, or I really could do with a cup of tea or 5 minutes to myself. I mean, that shouldn't be beyond the realm.

MICHELLE: No, and that's kind of what I was getting at, because I was thinking that, you know, there are going to be days when you've, you know, walk into work and you're feeling fine. And in other days where you walk into work and you just kind of need a bit more time, a bit more just, you know, and sometimes I don't know. I mean, I think generally my own life, you know, you're right, you've done something. Regardless of circumstances, we all can feel at times alone in our own heads and like containers, right, that no one else can penetrate.

But in order for us to talk to other people, we have to feel that we are in an environment where opening up will be met with compassion and when we need it and, you know, that it's not going to be like someone chalking up, oh, here's Gill, that's the fifth time this month that she's looked a bit tired and, you know, and because what I hear, what I'm hearing, and tell me I'm wrong if I'm wrong, but what I'm hearing to a certain extent is that as supportive and caring as people are, and I do think we have great colleagues generally speaking at AMBS, that you can't quite trust that there won't be kind of marks against you in a way, in a sense of, oh, well, just there's another time. And so I worry a little bit whether you are concerned about how you move from grade five and up. And that's what I'm hearing a little bit. And I want to ensure that we try and address those concerns a bit.

JACKIE: Thanks, Michelle. I think that's important. Do you want to respond to that again?

GILL: Yeah. So I think I brought this up at an Athena Swan workshop with you, Michelle, in the past about, I certainly had this conversation on the workshop sort of table I sat on about I came into this role. It doesn't sound particularly, it's not a good feminist mantra. I came into this role and I thought this job sounds great. I can do this job. I don't need to be thinking about getting a promotion or career progression or anything, because it's almost as if I'd written all of that off, like that's just not going to be possible for me.

So that's fine. And then as I've been here for a bit, you know, three years in April, thinking, well, why not? Why did I write that off? Why did that seem so unachievable? And also, again, not a good role model to my daughter to be like, yep, that's me. You know, I'll do the same job for 20, 30 years, however long it is until I retire.

So I don't know what the answer is, but there's no, I certainly wouldn't like it said to me the other way around. You know, well, there's, you know, you're not never going to go for a grade six job, are you? Because you just, you can't because of your life and everything else you've got going on. But at the same time, I'm saying that it could turn around that my daughter suddenly starts refusing to go to school. I mean, she's already saying she wants to be homeschooled and I'm thinking, well, I won't have a job then. If you're homeschooled, that's
just not going to happen.

So I'd like to believe that that's not the future. But a huge part of all of this is constant anxiety about what's going to happen in the future immediately and long term. What's going to happen when I'm not here anymore? Who's going to look after her then? And my husband's not here anymore. We came into parenthood quite late in our lives because it took a long time to get there. So, yeah, we're not young spring chickens with a small child. But yeah, I'd like to think and I do think that there's the scope for career progression. But again, if you've laid all your cards on the table, you're then putting your trust in people that they won't hold that against you. And you just don't know.

I mean, I know, like talking to someone like yourself or Michelle, that's just not a thing. That wouldn't be a negativity. So you're saying I'm brave for talking about this. I'm being open, seen as a good thing. So you could, you know, I could potentially go and work in a different area where I didn't feel like that at all. I can only talk about where I am now.

JACKIE: And I'm really grateful you've raised that actually, because yes, you're talking to me, Michelle. And yes, we've been talking about people and we've been talking about, you know, the tenacity that you've got, but also the ambition that you've got, Gill, to be able to progress through your career at the University of Manchester. And it's invested in roles like mine and Michelle's and other people in this space to ensure there's equity of opportunity for all.

So one of the things that I can say hand on heart that I know we have strong belief and values in, but also so does the new leadership of the university is that we should not be putting barriers up in people's places because of their circumstances, whether that be, you know, their own personal disability or caring for disabled people, we need to be an inclusive organisation.

And we can only do that if we know what the structures and systems and policies and processes and practices need to be in order to support people, which is why I've kept moving from policy to practice and to, you know, what can we do more of to really shine a light on where we have, if you like, pockets of weakness that we need to improve at.

And so you talked about Athena Swan, but my particular area is disability inclusion. So everything I'm trying to do in this role and with these conversations is to reach out and say, well, this is our constituent of people who work or study here. You know, are we truly giving
equity of opportunity to everybody? And if not, why not? And what do we need to do to address that?

So it is great to have the conversation we've been having with you because you've shared an awful lot. But I hope you feel that you're sharing it on behalf of yourself, but also that group of people who, like you said, are in a similar position. And there is real strength and power in collective voice.

MICHELLE: I think it's really important what Jackie just said. I think because not everybody, you know, when we think about people, whether we think about parents or our colleagues, not everybody is. Has this perfect life and nobody has a perfect life, right? Generally speaking. but the thing is. In the same way that we always used to say, oh, no question is a stupid question, because guarantee that someone else is thinking the same thing in the same way. I guarantee those times when you've maybe felt concerned about sharing something or because of how cumulatively it may affect your career prospects.

Or the fact that this sense that I get from you a little bit of, well, because I don't know what my future holds, I therefore shouldn't go for something. I shouldn't be able to. You could guarantee there are other people around AMBS around the university, whether they've got elderly parents or whether they have spouses or partners who've got disabilities, who also are struggling with similar issues.

I think it's incumbent upon us to be not just advocates, but allies in this. We have to create a culture of allyship in the sense of making it possible that it's, I think we we're not doing great with disability. But I think we're doing a little better with people with disabilities than we are with people who are carers of those with disabilities. So that in some ways, I do think it's incumbent upon us to think about how do we create the structures so that people in the same position as you, Gill are not afraid or concerned to speak up about what they are experiencing on a daily basis.

And so without feeling like, oh, well, maybe that's going to negatively impact me six months down the line, a year down the line when I want to go for something.

JACKIE: Yeah, we need to open up those paths. And I know we could talk for a lot longer and I know there are other things we haven't quite covered. But this is the start of a conversation.
And in the interest of time, I'm going to suggest that we draw this to a close and continue to talk, obviously. But at the end of each of these conversations, we move from dialogue to action. And each of my guests has the opportunity to ask the other what action will they commit to as a result of having listened to and responded to what we've talked about today.

So, Gill, are you happy to start?

GILL: So, Michelle, in your role as EDI director for AMBS, what is one thing that you will commit to doing in the future?

MICHELLE: Well, the first thing that I'm going to commit to doing is talking to our P&OD partner about what we currently have in place for carers and how we can improve, what positive steps that we can implement, what quick wins we can implement, what ways we can improve incrementally to do better.

That's the first thing.

The other thing I commit to doing is to be bringing this up at our EDI committee and talking about, perhaps, again, we've talked in the round about allyship and building a culture of being allies. I really want to see that happen.

And I think how do we ensure that we can be allies for people in different situations in
areas where we have positional power, how can we be allies for people who in that aspect of their life don't? I mean, you can be an ally for people in another aspect of your life, but in this aspect, how can you get that kind of allyship that you need?

JACKIE: Thank you, Michelle. And I will be coming back and checking out where that's gone, because as the Academic Lead for EDI Disability, one of the things I'm trying to do is share practice across the university. So if we have something working well in one part, we ought to be replicating it elsewhere. So now you get to ask, Gill, your question.

MICHELLE: What's my question?

JACKIE: Your question would be, what one thing would make a difference to your lived experience?

MICHELLE:So I know this is a difficult question for you because you've already said today that...

GILL: I'll try and answer better.

MICHELLE: That's why the question kind of went out of my...But what one thing?

GILL: You can ask from a different place, though, can't you? What would change?

Well, one of the things that we've talked about in the past, I think it was in a place where you worked previously, was about having...I mean, this isn't an easy fix, by the way, but having a pool of leave that you could potentially, if you'd worked here a long time or you were going to carry over a lot of leave, you could put it into a pot. And then somebody who doesn't really get that much leave at grade five could buy that or it was donated. I don't know how it would work. That would make a huge difference to me because I do not ever carry any leave over. I'm always scrabbling about trying to work out, like from childcare and obviously I do go on holiday.

How do I fit all this together? That's a constant sort of thing. And then there's appointments and then looking at high schools for my daughter at the moment. I took a day off just to go and look at school. Appointments are always in the daytime because apparently if you're a carer, you can't possibly have a job. So all the appointments are in the daytime in the working week. So, yeah, that would make a huge difference to me.

MICHELLE: Isn't that something we could start? Because it is something I brought up previously in a meeting. Isn't that something we could look at at the university level that where people have leave left over?

It's not an extra cost to the university because the university's already made that. So if someone doesn't use all their leave days that we can put our leave, we can donate our leave days that we do not use to a pot for the benefit of people who need them.

JACKIE: It just is such a brilliant idea because it's about community pooling, right? It's about people who don't have the need, donating, offering the untaken leave to people who do need the leave. So it's really a case of unmet need, right, for people who need it.

And I think that so if I take away an action from, I don't tend to take away action, but I will take away an action from this, is to speak to, it's the Director of People now. It's no longer People and OD. So I wanted to talk to Eli Morrissey, who's the Director of People, to see whether there is an opportunity that we could collectively as an organisation find
a leave pot that people who need leave there might have to be some very fair way of a system of allocating that leave.

So it is fair and transparent, of course, but we understand that. I think that's such a brilliant idea. And I am so glad you got that in before the end of this conversation, Gill, because we talked about that previously. And I remember thinking we've got to capture that.

So thank you very much. It just reminds me for me to say to both of you, thank you so much for being guests today. It's been of all of the conversations I've had, I'm just going to say this has been one of the most enriching in terms of what I've learned that I've never really had to
step back and consider before.

So thank you, Gill for everything you've shared and for teaching me a lot and giving me ideas to take away from my role.

Michelle, thank you for everything you do. And thank you to both of you for being in this space.

GILL: Thanks, Jackie.

MICHELLE: Appreciate it.

MICHELLE: Thanks, Gill.