Within the CLF role, much of our time is spent out in the community, accessing a wide range of activities. Therefore, every day we are in a position where we interact with the general public and demonstrate our facilitation skills. Over a period of time, I experienced a positive change in the way that staff members in shops etc. respond to people which (hopefully) was as a result of witnessing Great Interactions.
Every Wednesday I support John to shop for lunch ingredients. This is a great opportunity to develop his independence. John, navigates his way through the supermarket using his shopping list that he creates the day before. I ask John questions as we walk around the supermarket, such as ‘What section would we find the chicken on?’ I give John all the time he needs to respond as he often requires time to process the information. Once John is ready to respond, he signs confidently where we should go to find the chicken. John leads the way to the correct section and then selects the item.
Once we get to the till, the interactions continue, however, in the early days I noticed a barrier between John and the cashier. I would encourage John to take his wallet out of his bag and see if he could find the correct amount of money to hand over. Once he found the money and passed it over, the cashier said thank you but only made eye contact with me and handed the change and receipt back to me. I felt disheartened by this but made the decision not to flag up the concern I had with them not returning the money back to John. I reflected on the situation and thought it’s more important to model our interactions and hopefully in turn they will be able to identify with these interactions.
In the coming weeks, I continued as before, I spoke to John in short, clear sentences which he understood, giving him the time he needed to respond and in turn he responded positively. The cashier continued to hand the change back to me despite taking the money from John. A few weeks down the line, John chose not to go to the cashier and instead used the self-service machines. This continued for 2 to 3 weeks. On the fourth week, as usual, I gave John the choice of whether he wanted to pay at the till or at the self-service machine. He first looked over at the self-service machine and then over at the cashier on the tills who smiled and waved at him. John pointed to the cashier and walked over to pay there. As usual, I prompted John to select the correct coins from his wallet and he then handed them over. The cashier (who was the same lady who served him in the weeks prior) took John’s money, gave him eye contact and said ‘Thank you John’ and returned his change to HIM! John turned and smiled at me, he wasn’t quite sure what to do as he was so used to the money being returned to me.
This experience really hit home to me the popular Great Interactions phrase of ‘It ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it’. The way in which we interact with the people we support is paramount to developing their independence and at the same time it gives an opportunity for those in the community to learn as well.
The name of the person in this blog has been changed
Laura Edwards
Community Learning Facilitator
No Limits, Bucks
Click here to view this month's MacIntyre Story, 'Does he take sugar?' by Paul Jenkins