I’ve been volunteering here for six years and my initial interest in the group was supporting adults with learning disabilities (LD), which was a background that I already had in working with older teenagers with LD and enabling them to become independent learners and look after themselves when they no longer had the support of the school or social services.
I don’t think it’s essential to have that background for volunteers here, but a passion for helping people with LD is necessary.
I absolutely love volunteering here. I’m very much in favour of trying to make people as independent and self-sufficient as possible, even if they have LDs. Allowing them to see how that’s possible and enabling them to do it whilst appreciating the constraints of their own lifestyles is so important.
I’m most proud of the work we do with the food sessions. They came not able to do very much, but now they’re enthusiastic, they have all the basic skills, they understand about healthy eating, they’ve made changes to their own lifestyles, they follow up what we’ve done, they shop more wisely and the people with diabetes have really improved their lifestyles. Listening to how they could do that in going to the shops and looking at possible alternatives has really helped them.
I’m just proud at how independent and accomplished the group I’ve worked with have become. They’re now able to stand in a field of people at Northfield carnival and without any help run a stall where they have to sell to the public, handle money and handle food. They’ve just come on leaps and bounds and it’s fabulous to see.​