Learning & Development has NO LIMITS!

Sadly all too often being given the label that you have a learning disability leads others to believe this means you have already reached your potential to learn new things and as such there are restrictions or barriers in place to prevent further learning and development. However this is often not the case only that the method of learning might need to be different or the materials used may need to be adapted. This is something we at Culmside have struggled with since taking on James who has a mild learning disability to work in the gardens and provide peer support to individuals attending our Day Services. At Culmside we are keen to give James every opportunity to develop and grow within his role but most of the training he has received has been either online with support from another member of staff or in-house with the rest of the team. However when Culmside decided to change how we do our First Aid training by bringing in an external trainer rather than sending staff on courses we felt this would be a perfect opportunity for James to join with the rest of the team to learn some practical skills in emergency first aid and gain some recognition for doing it as well. We found a trainer (First Aid Devon) that was happy to be flexible enough to allow James to take what he needed from the course without placing any restrictions on how long he needed to attend or which areas he needed to cover and as such he would a receive a certificate of attendance in First Aid awareness.  The result, however blew us away, he proceeded to fully immerse himself in the practical’s including learning how to attach and use a defibrillator as well as making meaningful and positive contributions to the questions asked to the group. By the time he was ready to leave, the trainer (First Aid Devon) had already come to the decision that he had shown that he was well on his way to achieving more than an attendance certificate and as such without creating any additional pressure he altered his timetable in order that James could complete the syllabus to pass his Level 2 Award in Basic Life Support!!! No Barriers! No restrictions! No Limits! Well done James!