Scope (British charity)
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SCOPE is a UK based charity, that focuses on people with cerebral palsy particularly, and disabled people in general.
SCOPE was started in 1952 by Ian Dawson-Shepherd, Eric Hodgson, Alex Moira and a social worker, Jean Garwood. In 1952 it was known as the National Spastics Society and in 1963 it merged with the British Council for the Welfare of Spastics to become The Spastics Society. They provided sheltered workshops and day centres for people with Cerebral Palsy (commonly referred to as spastics at the time, despite spasticity being a symptom of only one variant of C.P.), who were seen as being unemployable in mainstream society. They also provided residential units, and schools, as well as opening their own chain of shops.
The term spastic came to be viewed as a general insult to physically disabled people (perversely, in part due to the Blue Peter programmes following the life story of Joey Deacon, during the International Year of Disabled People, in an attempt to show disability in a positive light) and the society changed to its current name in 1994.
Despite its claim to support disability access through things such as the free to pee campaign, as of December 2005, more than a year after the relevant section of the Disability Discrimination Act came into force, many of Scope's shops are still inaccessible to disabled people.