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Marwa’s story

Attends: Reach Mansfield

Marwa is 27 years old. She has cerebral palsy and a learning disability, which affects her speech and restricts her physical movement. Marwa grew up in Syria and moved to Mansfield where she now lives with her mother and sister.

Marwa has been coming to Reach Mansfield for six months. She attends for one full day a week. She faces significant barriers to communicating with others due to lack of speech, physical difficulties, and only understanding Arabic. Without support, she is potentially at risk of isolation and Reach Mansfield are providing Marwa with opportunities that should help her to participate in society more independently.

We have taken time to get to know Marwa and her family in order to tailor activities to her individual needs and interests. We have worked hard to facilitate communication so that Marwa can fully participate in sessions and enjoy them. We have been supported in doing this by the Speech and Language Team and Marwa’s social worker. Marwa’s translator visited us to increase our understanding of how we can meet Marwa’s needs from a cultural and spiritual perspective.

Understandably, when Marwa first started at Reach Mansfield, she felt shy and lacked confidence. Over the past 6 months, she has grown in confidence and is visibly more relaxed. She has built relationships with other clients who clearly really enjoy her company. She has begun to sign her needs to staff and clients and will now enter and find a seat independently as she feels more comfortable with others in the group. Her family have told Reach that she “counts down the days” until she next attends Reach and she is very proud of the work she does at Reach Mansfield.

Working with Marwa has helped us as a staff team to develop new creative communication approaches that benefit all our clients – for example through clearer facial expression and demonstration. After the success of our recent signing course that Marwa took part in, we are using signing more which Marwa appreciates and responds to by signing herself. Marwa and staff have developed her communication book by adding images that will benefit her work here at Reach.

Marwa enjoys preparing food and serving others. It has been great finding out about Syrian culture in sessions. We have researched, made and tasted Syrian food and listened to Syrian music. Marwa’s mother prepared Syrian treats to serve at our summer celebration.

Initially, Marwa was attending Reach with her mum. She is now preparing to to be supported by Reach Care which will help her progression towards greater independence and provide her mum with respite.

Reach Mansfield Team

Val has been coming to Reach Mansfield for approximately 3 years. She attends for four days a week and enjoys taking part in a variety of sessions. Val has Type 2 Diabetes and took part in Reach Mansfield’s Diabetes six month pilot project in 2017.

Val can describe how she has made changes to her everyday choices to help her be healthier and to reach her own health goals. She has achieved her main goal of reducing her use of vending machines. Since she set the goal she hasn’t bought anything at all from the vending machine. She explains: “I stopped it because it has chocolate in and that is fattening so I don’t have it… I don’t have the crisps out the machine either.” The Diabetes nurse has told Val how she is very happy with her progress.

It is clear Val knows exercise plays a very important role in staying healthy and by attending Reach Dance, Fitness and Nutrition, and Swimming classes, she is improving her fitness and activity levels. Val is keen to point out that she always shares any cakes and desserts she takes home from Make and Bake!

Becky has been attending Reach Mansfield for over four years.

Becky has increased her activity levels through attendance at several courses each week that help to get people moving and improve mobility and co-ordination – eg Dance, Boccia, and ‘Active Me’. Through the ‘Active Me’ course she has had the opportunity to try out the gym equipment at local leisure centres eg the treadmill, as well as play basketball and table tennis. Becky also attends ‘All About Me’ and ‘Crafts’ which enables participants to build confidence, self-esteem and feel more part of society – these are things that are so important to our emotional health and wellbeing.

Becky also enjoys coming to Lovely Lunches which has helped her find out more about how to eat more healthily. She feels she has made real progress with this – she has cut down on chocolate and swapped to sugar free or no-added sugar drinks. She explains: “I asked for plain fruit salad instead of the sugary pudding…because I don’t want my teeth to rot. Also we have Quorn mince because it’s better to eat and lower in fat”.

Becky would like everyone to know that making simple swaps or just cutting down a bit means that you can still enjoy food and don’t have to miss out. Making small changes really can make a big difference.