A celebration of people bringing positive change to Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire
WeToo! Magazine
Phionna McInnes' fight for inclusivity in Aberdeen
“I don’t want to make people cry because this is not a sad story, this is a story of choosing your attitude, this is a story of empowerment”.
That is what proudly states Phionna McInnes when talking about her journey to create “WeToo” (previously “MeToo”), a free quarterly magazine that supports children with additional support needs and their families in Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire. The magazine includes a “what’s on guide” of activities as well as benefits advice, relevant interviews and parents to parents tips.
Phionna McInnes ©WeToo!
Phionna has two sons with additional support needs and felt frustrated that information about available activities for her sons were hard to find. She realised that charities organising these activities were not communicating with each other because they were worried that their ideas would be stolen. “As a parent, I don’t care”, claims Phionna, “I need to know whether you can help these families or not”. She started getting in touch with the charities, and because she was contacting them as a parent and not an organisation, they told her what was happening around the city. She finally pieced all the information together in a “What’s on guide” during the summer 2015: “By doing that, I realised there was actually something on every single day”, Phionna says. She had enough savings to print around 600 copies and, with the financial help of the Aberdeen City Council, eventually managed to send the magazine to 9000 families around Aberdeen.
WeToo magazine spring 2020 ©WeToo!
Her youngest son, Declan, was the inspiration behind her idea. One day he turned to her and said: “what about me mum?”. What he meant was that he wanted to be able to play with the other children and do the same things they were doing. While creating the magazine, Phionna analysed what kind of activities were missing in the city. She realised that most charities were not really being inclusive: “Organising an afternoon play session with only children with down syndrome is not inclusive, they’re not integrated within the community”, Phionna shares, outraged. She decided to approach Codonas, Sport Aberdeen, Aberdeen airport and Innoflate among others, asking them to implement sessions designed for children with special needs but that are also open to other children: “If you truly want inclusion, everyone should be in the pot”, she states.
Phionna managed to convince some organisations and businesses to have inclusive relaxed sessions with very little changes necessary other than having the music at a lower volume and dimer lights. Everyone who participates is informed that there might be some people with additional support needs in the room so that their expectations are managed if anyone is having a meltdown or a sensory overload, Phionna explains. WeToo! also worked with Aberdeen Sport to create green bangles that can be worn by individuals with hidden disabilities at sports centres and swimming pools to inform people around them that they might need to change the way they’re communicating. Phionna says that one success story of the use of these bangles is a man who has early dementia and who sometimes forgets to put on his trunks at the pool: “He has a human right to swim, he just needs support”, Phionna explains. The bangles allow him to keep doing what he loves while alerting other people that he might be behaving in an unusual way and might need some help.
Other achievements from WeToo include the creation of a lanyard for people with hidden disabilities at Aberdeen Airport, the implementation of relaxed sessions at the theatre organised by Phionna herself, and siblings’ courses to teach them how to help their brother and sisters with complex needs with day to day issues.
Phionna has recently been named regional champion by the High Street Heroes Awards campaign organised by Scotland Loves Local. She has been recognised for the help she gave to the community during the lockdown by delivering homemade boxes to families around Aberdeen. As for the future, “when it stops being fun, I stop”, Phionna assures, “it was just meant to be a one-off summer edition for me”. She wants to pass the baton to someone else in the next five years as she thinks the charity sits in its own right and that someone with younger children should be in charge.
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Article written by Clara Maurillon