This Learning Disabilities Week a volunteer at Essex Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust (EPUT) has shared how she is using her personal experiences to improve patient care.
Donna Robinson, 38, shares her experiences of living with learning disabilities as part of the Trust’s Buddy Scheme which gives health and care students a unique opportunity to learn from people with lived experience of services.
Student mental health nurses and allied health professionals are paired with a buddy to listen to their experiences and understand how they can improve the care they provide others.
Donna, 38, has Cerebral Palsy, mild learning disabilities and, at times, has struggled with her mental health.
She has been working with EPUT for six years to ensure patients do not face the same barriers she has throughout her life and recently began working with the Trust’s Lived Experience in Education team to deliver the Oliver McGowan training on learning disability and autism to staff.
The training has been rolled out across the NHS and aims to save lives by ensuring health and social care workers have the skills and knowledge to provide safe, compassionate and informed care to autistic people and people with a learning disability.
Donna said: “I love being a Buddy and helping with the Oliver McGowan training because it allows you to talk to different people. I don’t just share my experience, I learn from volunteering as well – that could be learning about myself or learning new skills.
“I’m proud to be part of the Oliver McGowan training. I’ve not experienced anything like it before and I know that it does a really good job and will help health professionals gain new skills and learn how to support people with learning disabilities and stop them making assumptions.”
Donna has overcome a number of challenges in her life and is determined to use her experiences to ensure others always received person-centred and compassionate care that best meets their needs.
She said: “During my time at school, I needed a lot of support with reading, writing and using mathematics because of my learning disabilities. I knew that I wouldn’t achieve many GCSEs and this led me to have a lack of confidence in myself.
“I wasn’t sure what I really wanted to do when I left school. I had an idea that I wanted to work in a preschool supporting young people but I faced barriers because I couldn’t write very fast and struggled with spelling.
“I nearly got kicked off a course because I couldn’t keep up with the teacher writing notes on the board, even though I had told my course tutor what I needed support with and why.”
Donna began volunteering in 2015 when she took on a role with Sport for Confidence, a project that aims to reduce barriers for disabled people and those with long term health conditions to participate in sport.
Since then she has gone from strength to strength, sharing her experiences to support others and improve care and opportunities for people with a disability.
She said: “I’ve loved my time at EPUT. When I’m sharing my experiences to help others I forget that I didn’t achieve much in school. Lessons don’t always matter, it’s the person, and I have even learned to see past any labels I was given growing up.
“I love volunteering because I am not judged and it gives me so much in return. I give 110% and I get 110% back.”