Changing Faces is a British charity supporting and representing children, young people, and adults who have a visible difference to the face, hands, or body, whether present from birth or caused by accident, injury, or illness or medical episode. It campaigns to change public opinion and combat discrimination, and to help and support those with a visual difference.
History
The charity was founded in 1992 by James PartridgeOBE, who sustained severe burns in a car fire when he was 18 years old. He wrote about the experience in a book, Changing Faces, in the late 1980s, and was persuaded to set up the charity after speaking about it with doctors from University College Hospital in London.
Operations
The charity provides psychological support for people with disfigurements, by providing advice, information, counselling, and workshops across the UK. It also provides advice to health professionals, teachers, and employers, by running training courses and study days that enable professionals to develop effective clinical services, inclusive school curricula, and equal-opportunities policies. While modern reconstructive surgery and other medical treatments can make disfigurement less noticeable, some scarring, asymmetry, or change in complexion usually remains. Changing Faces complements medical and surgical interventions by addressing the psychological and social challenges posed by disfigurement. Its services are based on academic research and informed by service users, including a Young People's Council. In 2012, the British Red Cross transferred its Skin Camouflage Service to Changing Faces. The service "helps individuals to regain self-confidence and independence", and now operates at more than 120 locations throughout the UK.
Campaigns
The charity's Face Equality campaign aims to ensure that people with disfigurement are treated without prejudice or discrimination. The campaign targets employers, schools, health care professionals, the media, policy makers, and the general public, and has used posters featuring adults and children with facial disfigurement. In November 2009, Partridge presented the lunchtime news bulletins on UK television channelFive. The What Success Looks Like campaign seeks to transform the treatment of disfigurement in the workplace. Through employers and industry bodies, it aims to inform business leaders and human-resource managers about disfigurement. It also serves to help people living with a visual difference to overcome barriers. In 2017, the charity released a set of educational resources to help school teachers raise the topic of facial disfigurement among pupils. These resources were launched to coincide with the UK release of the movie Wonder, which tells the story of a boy born with a craniofacial condition. In the same year, the charity collaborated on a series of portraits taken by photographer Rankin, to challenge conventions of beauty in the fashion industry. In 2017, the charity released Disfigurement in the UK, a report into the experience of people who live with a condition, mark, or scar affecting their appearance, with consideration of the issue against school, work, relationships, health care, and crime. The report was released on the charity's Face Equality Day.
