Training and consciousness
I’m the service supervisor at Cygnet Social Care’s Outwood facility, a beautiful 10 mattress residential service within the suburbs of Horsforth in Leeds the place we care for people with studying disabilities and complicated wants.
This week is Learning Disabilities Week (19-25 June). This yr, the goal is to point out the world the unbelievable issues folks with a studying incapacity obtain, smashing misconceptions about what folks can do and shining a light-weight on the stigma many nonetheless face on a regular basis. The aim of the week is all the time to coach folks and lift consciousness, ensuring extra of us obtain an understanding of what life is like for folks with studying disabilities.
Right here at Outwood, we assist all kinds of individuals right here to do all types of actions – swimming, schooling and work based mostly provisions, adaptive biking, horse driving, the cinema, meals out, native walks, climbing, museums, journeys to the seaside, theatre, sensory rooms and holidays within the UK and overseas. The care offered is as person-centred and significant to every particular person as doable. All actions are based mostly on folks’s wants and their likes. If one thing isn’t appropriate, we all the time adapt and discover a answer to allow us to do it in a enjoyable and protected manner.
I’m unsure there are essentially myths about folks with studying disabilities, however I typically really feel the folks we assist might be vastly underestimated. The resilience, self-regulatory methods and challenges they overcome every day are implausible. All of the people we assist are able to development, studying new issues and discovering methods to beat anxieties and challenges.
Creating calm within the chaos
Duties we might discover easy can create sensory overload, trigger nervousness, inconsistency and unpredictability. One thing as pretty for many individuals as Christmas might be robust. It means the outlets shut, all over the place is busier, there might be sensory overload, extra occasions going down, and it creates nervousness that issues won’t be the identical.
Small diversifications and provisions, like giving superior warning of an occasion or change in routine, could make the world of distinction. This may embrace permitting entry to quiet areas to regroup and self-regulate, offering accessible data or further time at appointments. Generally, one thing so simple as fidget toys and ear defenders might help folks lead completely satisfied, significant lives.
A implausible instance is our pretend store, which we created when the native store closed down. One in every of our residents finds the opposite outlets round us too overwhelming. Moderately than cancel the exercise, the workers recreated the expertise subsequent door and the resident may get pleasure from that a lot wanted a part of their routine, minus the nervousness.
Progress and success can are available in many types and I’m continually amazed by the achievements of the people we assist. Probably the most detrimental thought course of we are able to have is ‘that’s the best way we’ve all the time achieved it’. Aiming excessive and placing easy provisions in place could make all of the distinction and allow a profitable intervention. It is all about constructive danger taking and making an attempt new issues.
Progress might be something from accepting a vaccination or medical appointment after a desensitisation plan, making their very own meals with assist, or studying to make use of one or two new phrases or Makaton indicators. All progress is individualised and each achievement celebrated.
I’m very proud to run a service with a staff dedicated to the event and wellbeing of the people we assist. Their dedication, acts of kindness, creativity, and ‘above and past’ perspective are humbling. They may all the time come collectively in occasions of want. I stay up for supporting folks to attain extra within the coming years – we’ve holidays overseas deliberate, returns to schooling, medical interventions, events to organise, Makaton to study and new people to welcome into the house.
