Report transcript in: Darren's Volunteer Story

Please Report the Errrors?

great to be joined today by Darren,

who has been a volunteer with epilepsy action for seven years.

And he's also volunteered with other, um, various organisations, Um,

including scope.

Um So, Darren, you've got a lot of experience, um,

of volunteering with different organisations.

So I just wanted to ask you what made you want to become a volunteer?

Well, it goes back. I mean, I wasn't

I wasn't diagnosed with epilepsy till I was eight.

I was actually born without a disability, But when I was about 11 days old, I was, uh,

my parents.

Apparently, my birth parents had a very, um, violent marriage.

And it's thought that by social services

that I was thrown into a brick wall during an argument head first.

And as a result, I have left side

hemiplegic cerebral palsy.

My epilepsy was diagnosed when I was eight and I

was averaging maybe two or three petty miles a week

with weirdly enough four. Well, it was always four grand

mals every four.

Well, every four years I'd have a grand mal,

which seemed to happen on weird days like I

had one on my parents' silver wedding anniversary,

one on the day, Margaret Thatcher resigned, and one,

when the world 1994 World Cup kicked off.

Um, I had apparently eight grandma seizures in a 12 hour period.

And when I worked him in hospital,

the doctor wasn't very impressed When my first question was, did Brazil win?

And that's the most important thing to know, isn't it? Oh, yeah.

You need to make sure you know about the football.

And then in 2002, it changed, and I stopped having petty mouths.

But I started having complex parcel Caesars

about once a week.

Um, but in 2010, I had brain surgery. And, you know, so far

I've been fit free. But I am still using,

uh, my full meds

and I was so bullied at school

that, um it affected me quite a bit. But when I thought about doing volunteering,

I realised I could use my experience, uh,

that I went through at school to educate young people

disabled young people, especially on how to cope with bullying.

Um, you know that I know that Children struggle at school.

Um, there's still, um, you know, problems going to university looking for a job

you know, and that included all kinds of disabilities,

not just epilepsy or cerebral palsy.

And I thought by using my experiences, um,

that what I went through, I could help, Uh,

younger people especially cope with how to do these things.

How to move out of home, get a job, Uh, go

go through interviews and get into university.

Um,

you know this and I did that mostly at the time with those with, um,

visible disabilities,

but someone with epilepsy. I thought it would actually be good if I expanded that to,

um, the epilepsy group. And that's when I got in touch with epilepsy action.

Um,

and it was also something that, like, upset me was,

um I went to an event and there was a neurosurgeon there.

He was talking to a group of parents of 5 to 16 year olds,

and he was telling the parents about all the things that their

Children would not be able to do due to their epilepsy.

And I thought he he talked about going to school, going to university, getting a job,

moving out of home, having a relationship and how these Children

would not be able to do these kind of things

and I want to do in these workshops I wanted to show.

Despite what the neurosurgeon said,

it is possible for a young person to do these things.

I went to a normal school. I have a degree.

I have a master's degree and a full time job, and I'm married.

All these things the guy said, wouldn't be able to do

being bullied at school. Um, was also one of your motivations.

Can you tell me a little bit more about what happened? Maybe

as an adult, um,

when you'd left school, what happened

related to the bullying that made you also want to volunteer?

I think it was because II I cut off contacts with everyone I went to school with,

except for two people,

and I tried desperately to forget that I ever went to school.

But then the Internet came along,

and

for those that are old enough, there was a fr.

There's a website called Friends who united,

um, back in the nineties,

and I signed up to that,

and within a week or so, I had an email of the person that bullied me the most,

made my life, absolute hell at school, apologising

for the way they treated me.

And that meant a lot.

It kind of made me realise that actually, people's attitudes can change

and, you know, through volunteering, they can change. And then,

a couple of years later, something like 2008 I signed up to fr uh, Facebook

and I had within two weeks I had about 50 friends,

requests from people I went to school with

who bullied me, and a lot of them bullied me,

and a lot of them were apologising for the way they treated me,

and it showed me how people's attitudes could change.

And I thought, you know, volunteering could further that

and help more people's attitudes change because

these people made my life absolute hell.

I tried to forget they existed.

And now they're apologising to me.

Um, you know, we're friends on Facebook and we talk on Facebook, you know,

gone back 30 years.

I would never have wanted to see them again.

Now we chat.

And

do you use that?

Yeah,

So that's yeah. Again.

It's like as you said, it's like it's turning the negative into a positive.

So that's yeah, really good to hear.

Yeah, as I say, it was just

I If I don't know if I'd never got If I'd never got that email off that person,

maybe I wouldn't be so much into trying to use my experience like,

but that email really changed a lot.

A lot of things

has volunteering helped you in any way, personally?

Very much so. I mean, it allowed me to face what happened to me as a baby.

And, you know, actually being disabled. This might sound very strange, but,

um,

you know, being disabled could be one of the best things that ever happened to me.

You know,

I didn't stay with my parents. I was removed from my parents.

I spent two years in a Children's home

out or a hostel. I had multiple operations on my skull.

I was fostered, then adopted by a loving family. I've always known I was adopted.

My earliest memories are stuff that happened in a Children's home.

But in the early twenties, I de decided in my early twenties. Sorry.

I decided it was time. I traced my birth family.

I found my birth mother, who had an alcohol, alcohol and drug problem.

She actually had a conviction for drug smuggling.

My father was very violent towards his family

and speaking to my birth sisters.

They regard me as a lucky one because I didn't have

to deal with the fallout of both the physical and mental

damage that the parents' relationship,

um, had put on my three sisters.

You know, all of them had been in trouble, um,

during their school during when they're at school.

So I It might sound strange,

but talking about what happened to me and how I could have turned out,

you know, there's there's a Darren that's talking to you, who's been to university.

He's married,

has a full time job.

And then there's the other Darren, who,

considering the upbringing that his sisters had

probably wouldn't be in a position,

um, to be doing this kind of thing.

Um,

so I was able to pass on the experience to others

through my voluntary work. Um,

that, you know,

I could go through my experiences saying that this has happened to me.

Actually, it was a good thing that happened to me,

and this is what I've been able to do, and I want to show you how to do it.

Brilliant.

from Yeah, So from what? You've just kind of said,

um,

what kind of ways do you think that your work,

volunteering and volunteering in general

can kind of Do you think it can influence people's perceptions of disability?

Um,

yes, it can. But I mean voluntary work,

you know, is

can take several different directions. There's two.

There's always been two things to me. There's a voluntary work

where you're helping an individual.

Um, say someone maybe you're helping, uh,

volunteering in a care home and you're helping a person

you know, to make a change to that person's life.

And then there's a voluntary work on a larger scale. Um, such as campaigning,

that it is not just an individual, but a group of people, which can have just as much,

if not more, of an effect.

You know,

changing the society's view of disability is promoting things

like the social model of disability through national campaigns,

projects on that work with employers and schools

and those kind of things.

If you work with people at that level on that bigger scale,

you can change a large scale of people's attitudes.

I mean,

you've got to remember that people's attitudes,

negative attitudes towards disability will never disappear.

You know, there will always be some negative attitude there.

But, you know, over the last couple of years, we've seen more disabled people on TV

in films. Um,

we've seen, you know, we talked.

There's been more people who have found employment.

There's buildings more accessible.

Um, you know, you can get out and do more, and it's by working with disabled people

in a voluntary role because they've driven this right.

You know, disabled people have driven them

driven this campaigns over the last couple of years,

and one of the things we need to look at is, you know,

changing the views of professionals.

So, you know,

this has been done, so it does change people's perception of disability,

but it's done over time.

It's not something we're going to change straight away.

It's a long, long process.

Yeah,

but it's that Well, from from what you've said, it sounds like your

you know, your voluntary work is helping to kind of, um,

you know, change those perceptions.

Um, and it's been really great to talk to you today, Darren,

and just hear about you know, your volunteer story

and how you have, um,

like, as you said, you had negative experiences,

but you've kind of turned them around into

positive, Um, and that's allowed you to kind of help other people,

um, that are going through, um, you know, things that you you know about. So

it's been just Yeah, really inspiring to to listen to your story.

So thanks very much for that. Thank you.

It was

good to talk to

you.

Thank you.

Thank

you.

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Posted By

Author

Cheryl Woods

Post date

07/11/2024