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Shadow Minister at Aspire

Mark Harper, the Shadow Minister for Disabled People, visited the Aspire National Training Centre to find out more about Aspire and the work that we do. He left with a promise to use some of what he had learned to look to improve things for people with spinal cord injuries, both in his constituency and across the country.

During his visit, Mark was given a tour of the Centre by chief executive Brian Carlin. He was particularly impressed with the accessible fitness facilities and couldn’t understand why commercial leisure centres aren’t making a bigger effort to attract disabled members.

Mark also spoke to several of our service users about their experiences, and was taught to use the tracker-pro system in our assistive technology suite. Tracker-pro allows computer users to control the cursor using head movements and is perfect for people with higher level spinal cord injuries.

We’ll be following up much of what we discussed with Mark over the coming months as we continue with our campaigning work to ensure that everyone in the UK with a spinal cord injury has the opportunity to go from injury to independence.