Today I was looking for another document and quite by chance came across our expedition, report from summer 1980. The whole fountain penned report is there from our cycle trip, using YHAs in the Thames Valley. There are photos stuck in and reports of the churches visited and the architecture of each! Plenty of notes about the food we ate; seems to have been marmite sandwiches mainly. The report includes notes on planning, how we got on (all right) & how we learned to make sure we did not lose anybody as we cycled at different speeds.
But the main thing the award scheme gave me, as I reflect now, is actually what the volunteering gave me. I volunteered at my local hospital on a Saturday morning. in the late 1970's. It was different then, I did bed baths, made beds, even was the first to realise that someone had died in the day room. But I also learned about the long term effects of psychological trauma; the RAF nurses in white uniforms were not to nurse those older women with dementia who had been in service as young girls in the early part of the 20th century. The white reminded the patients somehow of "cook" and the fear in those girls of the person with the most power in the household from their point of view. Cook who might have beaten them and been in a place to bully and hire and fire them. I have never forgotten that my pink nylon volunteer overalls made me someone who did not make them fear. Awareness of the possibility of trauma has stayed with me. I also spent time with a girl who lived at the hospital, after a brain injury. She could not talk or move on her own. For many years now as an SLT I have worked most with people who cannot use speech, and who need to use alternative methods. I remember the spark in her eye as we played, her sitting on the oak doctor's chair as I span it around. This "spark" in a client now would reassure me that all the things we now know how to do could create much more quality of life and aspects of recovery.