Scope (British charity)

Scope is a UK-based charity, that focuses on people with cerebral palsy particularly, and disabled people in general. Its aim is that disabled people achieve equality.

Scope was founded on 9 October 1951 by Ian Dawson-Shepherd, Eric Hodgson, Alex Moira and a social worker, Jean Garwood. Together, they wanted to improve and expand services for people with cerebral palsy and founded the National Spastics Society and in 1963 it merged with the British Council for the Welfare of Spastics to become The Spastics Society.

The Spastics Society provided sheltered workshops and day centres for people with cerebral palsy (commonly referred to as spastics at the time, despite spasticity being a symptom of only one variant of C.P.), who were seen as being unemployable in mainstream society. The Society also provided residential units and schools, as well as opening a chain of charity shops.

The term spastic came to be viewed as a general insult to physically disabled people (perversely, in part due to the Blue Peter programmes following the life story of Joey Deacon, during the International Year of Disabled Persons, in an attempt to show disability in a positive light) and the society changed to its current name on 26 March 1994. In November 1996, Scope AGM voted in favour of an individual membership scheme to give a voice to the 20,000 people that Scope and its local groups are in contact with every year - the first major UK disability charity to do so. In 1998, Scope individual members voted in elections to Executive Council and, since this time, the majority of trustees have been disabled people. However the first person with cerebral palsy to play a major managerial role was Bill Hargreaves, who had been elected to the Executive Council back in 1957.

In 2004 Scope launched the Time to Get Equal campaign to banish disablism, which it defines as "discriminatory, oppressive or abusive behaviour arising from the belief that disabled people are inferior to others".

The campaign has three aims:

To raise awareness of the problems and barriers faced by disabled people in their everyday lives

To demand an improvement in the attitudes and actions that disabled people experience

To build a mass movement of disabled and non-disabled people campaigning and working for equality.

High-profile supporters for the campaign include Nelson Mandela, Bill Clinton and former Prime Minister Tony Blair.

With over 3,500 staff (nearly 20% of whom are disabled people) and an annual turnover of around £100 million, Scope continues to create independent living, education and employment opportunities for people with cerebral palsy and related impairments and to campaign for equality for all disabled people.