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Jane Susan Campbell, Baroness Campbell of Surbiton, (born 1959) DBE, is a Commissioner of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC). She also serves as Chair of the Disability Committee which will lead on the EHRC Disability Programme. She was the former Chair of the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE). She was Commissioner of the Disability Rights Commission until it was wound up in October 2007.

Early life

Campbell grew up in New Malden, Surrey. Her father, Ron, was a heating engineer and her mother, Jesse, was a shop assistant. When she was nine years and Sharon, her sister, was 14 years old her family moved to a 1930-40s house in Wendover Drive. At the age of nine months she could not sit up and did not move a lot by the age of one year. Her mother went to the family doctor who referred her to the local hospital, Kingston Hospital, and then she was referred to Great Ormond Street Hospital, where she was diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy and given a prognosis that she would not live to reach the age of two years; however, it was her younger sister, Sally, who died of the same disease before the age of two years. The family were not given much support from hospitals or other services, as was generally typical at that time. As a child she was prone to getting severe chest infections 2 or 3 times per year, sometimes requiring hospitalization.

Education

Campbell went to a segregated school for disabled children where academic achievement was not the top priority. Her best friend, who had a hole in the heart, died at the age of 13 years. In 1975 she joined Hereward College, Tile Hill, Coventry, a special college for disabled students, where there was an academic environment, and where she was generally able to live the life-style of an ordinary teenager.

Career

In 1996 Campbell co-founded and directed the National Centre for Independent Living (NCIL) where she worked for six years before being appointed by the Minister for Social Care to chair SCIE. She is an active leader in the social care field and a campaigner and adviser for disability reforms.

As chair at the British Council of Disabled People and co-director at NCIL, Campbell saw these organisations through pioneering work in the field of independent living, civil rights, peer counselling and equal opportunities. In 1996 she co-authored a book called Disability Politics and was created a Dame in the Queen's 2001 birthday honours.

In 2003, Campbell was awarded an honorary doctorate in law from Bristol University and another in social sciences from Sheffield Hallam University. Currently, she is exploring the notion of a human rights perspective of social care.

In February 2007, it was announced by the House of Lords Appointments Commission that she would be made a life peer and will sit as a crossbencher. Her peerage was gazetted as Baroness Campbell of Surbiton, of Surbiton in the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames, on 30 March 2007.

Personal life

Campbell met her first husband, Graham, at Hereward College. He was a haemophiliac and died. She subsequently married, Roger, a businessman.

Campbell needs help to do almost everything, because her weakness and she needs a ventilator to help her breathe at night. She uses a electric powered wheelchair and has a computer on which she types with one finger. She gets a direct payment from the local authority for care, which enables her to employ five female carers, who help her with the routine activities of daily living.

References

1. ^ "The House I Grew Up In, featuring Baroness Campbell as participant". BBC Radio 4. 2009-09-01. Retrieved 2008-09-10. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

• "The Guardian".

External links

• http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/our-job/who-we-are/the-team/baroness-jane-campbell-of-surbiton-dbe/
• http://www.livingwithdignity.info

• Living people
• British politicians
• British social welfare officials
• Dames Commander of the Order of the British Empire
• Female life peers
• Life peers
• People's peers
• Politicians with physical disabilities
• Disability rights activists