Vision, Mission & Values
Our Vision
We’re working towards a world in which our experience of disability is heard, believed and understood, our rights as disabled people are upheld, and our lives have equal value.
Our Mission
- Influencing decision making so that legislation works for disabled people with ELCI
- Ensuring policy and practice better reflect the needs of disabled people with ELCI
- Educating professionals and the public about the lived experience of ELCI and energy impairment
- Involving the chronic illness community in shaping policies and services through accessible engagement to ensure our voice is heard
- Changing perceptions of chronic illness
- Challenging the stigma of systemic disbelief
- Developing knowledge, through research and debate, about the roots of our oppression and the solutions for a fairer future, as well as understanding how of racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia intersect with ableism to create multiple disadvantages
- Empowering advocates and people with ELCI to achieve their rights
- Strengthening the collective voice of patient-led movements by building solidarity across different diagnostic categories of ELCIs
- Uniting with other Deaf and Disabled People’s User-Led Organisations to promote the equality and inclusion of Deaf and disabled people through the dismantling of socially constructed barriers
Our Values
Our key principle is Nothing About Us Without Us.
Our evidence shows that people with ELCI are a hidden group of disabled people united by shared experiences of energy impairment and systemic disbelief.
We hold that systemic disbelief is a manifestation of ableism, existing alongside other forms of ableism such as disability discrimination.
We champion social, structural and systemic solutions to the problems caused by chronic illness, rather than individual therapeutic solutions. This includes addressing healthcare inequalities and inequities in the allocation of medical research funding, as well overcoming social and cultural barriers to equal participation in society.
We oppose the diagnostic construct of Medically Unexplained Symptoms in healthcare, where it leads to medical harm, trauma and social injustice.
We speak up for all disabled people with ELCI, including the most marginalised in our community – those who are housebound or bed-bound and those with contested diagnoses, delayed diagnosis and no access to diagnosis who remain invisible to wider society.
