🖋 SWANK Dispatch | 24 November 2024
I’D LOVE TO GO TO THERAPY—IF ANY OF YOU UNDERSTOOD ACCESS.
Also titled: “The Community Doesn’t Include Us Because It Wasn’t Designed To.”
Filed From: Flat 22, 2 Periwinkle Gardens, London W2
Author: Polly Chromatic, Director, SWANK London Ltd.
Filed Under: Therapy Refusal · Disability Adjustment Failure · Mental Health Access Denied · Community Barriers · Verbal Communication Misconduct · SWANK Institutional Access Register
🪞 WHAT I SAID (CLEARLY—AND IN WRITING):
“I’d love to go to therapy but no one will provide adjustments for my disability needs, and this limits my ability as well as my kids’ ability to integrate into the community at all.”
“It is not our problem. It is your community’s problem.”
“You keep expecting us to behave like people who don’t have a disability—and we can’t.”
“I think someone needs to call the mental health practice and help them understand that I can’t explain everything verbally, since they couldn’t understand when I told them, apparently.”
🧠 WHAT THAT ACTUALLY MEANS (FOR THE ACCESS-ILLITERATE):
I’m not “resisting support.”
I’m excluded from it—on architectural, not emotional, grounds.
Access isn’t an attitude problem.
It’s a planning failure.
Your services were not built for people like me.
So don’t perform shock when I walk past your inaccessibility and say: no, thank you.
📎 ACCESS STATEMENT (INCLUDED. IGNORED. ARCHIVED.):
“I suffer from a disability which makes speaking verbally difficult. I prefer to communicate telepathically to minimise respiratory strain; however, email is fine.”
You require verbalism like it’s a sacred rite.
I offer clarity in writing.
You respond with silence—or blame.
📣 CLOSING REMARK FOR THE LEGALLY AND SOCIALLY UNTRAINED:
You do not get to bar entry and label us disengaged.
You do not get to erase exclusion by reframing it as refusal.
You do not get to design failure and pin it on the disabled.
This is not a therapy gap.
It’s a compliance gap.
—
Polly Chromatic
Director, SWANK London Ltd.
Flat 22, 2 Periwinkle Gardens, London W2
🌐 www.swanklondon.com
✉ director@swanklondon.com
⚠ Written Communication Only – View Policy