by Denise Rogers, Recruitment Officer
I currently attend the NHS Pain Clinic run in Milton Keynes, held every second Wednesday. The Clinic is a fantastic resource for local people who have chronic pain, whether because of accident or long term illness. The group are quite close, organising meditation sessions, wellbeing talks, and visits to allotments among other things.
Towards the end of last year, we were chatting and discovered some members have difficulty in talking. They've looked into British Sign Language and found it too expensive. Someone mentioned the Makaton signing method.
I remembered a recent team meeting introducing Everyone Everywhere, when we were asked to think about how we can each help in our community. This gave me an idea and because we use Makaton a lot at MacIntyre, I volunteered to organise a Makaton taster session for the group.
When I got back to the office I approached Anita Taylor, one of MacIntyre's Best Practice Facilitators, to see if she was up for the challenge!
Anita was immediately excited about the idea, and decided to pair up with Iain, one of the MacIntyre Dancers, who also draws on our support and is keen to get more involved in training.
I worked with the group to sort out the practical arrangements. It all had to be done by email as ironically I'd lost my voice at the time - another great reason to learn signing!
Eventually we got the taster session booked in for the 12 March.
Anita did all the preparation. She knew exactly what was needed. I took a step back and let Iain and Anita work their magic, there was a lots of laughter and the group was amazed at how many signs that they had used before without realising.
The session went all too fast. We only had an hour, which was extended by 30 minutes by popular demand. Iain was a big hit and as I showed Anita and Iain out, I could hear a group organising a meet-up to watch the Dancers live to support them at a performance that Saturday.
The group would love Anita and Iain to come back and do a little more Makaton, they have ideas of what they would like to do next, such as a role-play. As the word gets round we are sure there would be more people who would be interested.
I cannot take the credit for anything except the initial idea, I just set it up and Anita and Iain did all the work. Once they left the group were all still raving and talking about the session and how engaging it was.
Many thanks to Iain and Anita!
