Enable Me

Dear Diary

4th March 2010, Children & Family Centre, Billingshurst.

Observing again today but this time it was a training session for adults, scary!  Caron and Nik are running today’s session so I knew that the whole group were in safe hands. 

A lot of the same stuff that we did in the secondary school was covered but in a third of the time and minus the wheelchair basketball.  One third of the time was a good thing because we only had half a day to fit it all in.  The training included a large segment on the medical & social models of disability and the legal definition of disability.  If you ask me, the DWP(Department of Work and Pensions) and the medical profession should sit in on this training;  they make so many decisions for us, but do they really understand what it’s like to be us?  

Oh dear, I’m a little negative today.  The whole training went really well Ithought, and there was lots of praise afterwards.

Daily evaluation:

Health:  No biscuits today,  v.good, but the most complicated tea machine I have ever seen.  That’s saying something for a photographer, who before I lost my eye sight, was a wiz at photographic studio construction.

Emotional Status:  I’m feeling a little negative about the people who were meant to be around when I was first diagnosed with MS. If they knew just half the stuff I learnt in half a day today, it would have made my new life easier to adapt to. As well as training staff like today, Enable Me should run courses for those who are newly disabled to attend, to help with the legal and medical maze you need to work through.  I may suggest that to Nik next time I see him.

Today I thought was going to be really hard as we were training adults and I have had some bad experiences with adults in the past, but this group were great.  Let’s hope my bad experience was just a one-off!!

Nina Bawden

Dear Diary....

Wed 10th Feb

Hazelwick Secondary school today with Enable Me. What a rollercoaster of emotions that was!  I was only meant to be observing as I haven’t finished my training yet, so as I woke this morning (two hours earlier than normal!) I was excited about having something other than, ‘have a cup of tea with Phil and Holly’, to do.  Shortly following that excitement was fear. My mother was driving me to Crawley, and I reckon that even now I’m blind I am still a better driver than she is!  

Once I got there (luckily in one piece!), the first class I sat in on was an exercise on a whole range of disabilities: Visual (the pupils were wearing glasses with a range of visual impairment), Hearing and the signer (one child had ear plugs in and the other child in the pair had to communicate with them), Sensory (they had to thread a needle wearing gloves) and Mobility (they had to use a wheelchair).  It was great to see the children really getting into it and trying so hard, but upsetting for me as it was a harsh reminder that my life is really that difficult now.  The children seemed to get loads out of it. 

The second class was using wheelchairs in the gym. Nik went through all the safety points when anyone uses a chair. As a part-time wheelchair user myself, it was embarrassing to find out that I didn’t know half of what I should do!  At the end of the exercise, as the only wheelchair user in the room, all the questions came flooding my way;  I didn’t mind that coz I love to talk!  The kids asked questions that most adults are too afraid to, like ‘how’s your social life now you are disabled?’,  ‘Is it contagious?’,  and ‘how much does a wheelchair cost?’

The next class was on disability and bullying. Hugh asked the class to call out negative words and names that they may have heard regarding disability.  Most of the names brought up were names I call myself on a regular basis!  ‘Cripple’, ‘lazy cow’, ‘freeloader’.  Is it possible to bully yourself??!

Daily evaluation:

Health: Too much tea and way too many biscuits but lunch was healthy so counteracts that - and everyone knows that there are no calories in digestives if they are offered by someone else!

Emotional Status: Dizzy from the rollercoaster of emotions gone through today but have landed with a smile on my face!

 Would I do this again?: You betcha! If they’ll let me loose on the kids!

I think the kids all learnt a lot today but to be honest I think I learned more...

Nina Bawden

Captain's Blog 2010 - stardate 18.2.2010..

Hi Everyone,

Well - it's been a long time since we've posted anything here on the Blog page - not because we've been lazy mind you, but because we've been so busy!

So, in advance of updating our News & Links page, here's a brief update of what Enable Me has been doing recently and what exciting activities/projects we have coming up!

In Autumn we won the Aiming High for Disabled Children contract that we bid for last year and as a result, we will be delivering a series of After School Clubs, Holiday Clubs and Inclusion Days across West Sussex between now and March 2011. It's a really exciting project which will provide up to 12 different disability sports for disabled children & young people in mainstream secondary schools. We'll be working with the Sports Partnerships across the County and will be starting the first sessions in May!

We are still working on the Learning & Skills Council funded 'Learning 2 Work' project in conjunction with Chichester College and four other colleges in the South East area. We are working on this very closely with The Aldinbourne Trust, Powerful Trainers and Work Aid and together with the colleges, we're aiming to help adults with learning difficulties find a progression route out of college and into training & work.

With both Learning 2 Work and Aiming High we've been funded to make DVD/Toolkits of the project so that we can share the good practice with other partners and also, help make the projects sustainable..

As if that weren't enough, we've also managed to recruit and train some fantastic new volunteers and we are looking forward to them working with us in schools, colleges and various training projects in the future!

We're not quite at the 'Warp Factor 9' stage yet, but it's finally beginning to feel like we're getting there!!

Regards

Nik

Enable Me, Project Manager

Good Morning

Tuesday's here already and we have an Aiming High for Disabled Children meeting this morning, to see whether we can work out a way to successfully provide disabled sports activities in schools for young people who've never so much as had a chance to participate!

Aiming High is a national initiative..for further information have a look here:

http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/everychildmatters/healthandwellbeing/ahdc/AHDC/

The cases we know of in schoolswhere there are real barriers, aren't not so much about excluding young people by design, but more about excluding them through lack of knowledge or expertise within the school setting in how to run activities safely.

Within Enable Me and through linking with partners such as 'You Can Do it' for example, we hope to be able to design a programme that helps to spread good practice...

Today should tell us whether or not Enable Me can help develop ways to overcome this lack of knowledge and understanding!

Nik

Enable Me Project Manager

Well - time to try and write a very first Enable Me 'blog' and in doing so, it's making me think of the first Star Trek series (the best one of course) when at the start of each episode you'd hear Captain. James. T. Kirk say:

"Captain's Log Stardate 10 August, 2009....etc, etc"

Anyway, so here goes...

Hi,

I'm back today on board the good ship Enable Me after two weeks off, which was really nice and much-needed and in the meantime, our volunteers have been busy working away doing some great things for the project! Have a look at this:

• Developed presentation/training materials for our Learn to Work project with The Aldingbourne Trust & the Learning & Skills Council
  
• Created an Enable Me Newsletter
• Attended West Sussex County Council's 'Aiming High for Disabled Children' training sessions
• Submitted some funding applications for new projects we're planning

How great is that!

Whenever you hear people praising the amazing contribution that volunteers make to their local communities, it's sometimes easy to let it go over your head as 'stuff we've all heard before', and not pay too much attention to it..

But having time away really does give you another perspective and now I'm back I really can see afresh what a fantastic team of volunteers we have at Enable Me and I'm very privileged to be able to work with them!

And if for any reason, we ever have to go head-to-head with some Klingons or Romulans (or even those scary folk at WSCC), then I've no doubt that we'll somehow win the day!

Nik Demetriades

Enable Me Project Manager