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