{"id":9476,"date":"2022-06-10T17:13:55","date_gmt":"2022-06-10T16:13:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sense.org.uk\/?p=9476"},"modified":"2023-04-20T09:51:46","modified_gmt":"2023-04-20T08:51:46","slug":"breaking-barriers-every-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sense.org.uk\/blog\/breaking-barriers-every-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Breaking barriers every day"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As part of our Break the Barrier campaign, we caught up with Adam, a Sense volunteer and past Sense Awards winner. Adam not only faces his own barriers, but helps disabled people break their own barriers every day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I\u2019ve faced barriers all my life because of my disability. I can\u2019t read or write things, but when you try to explain that to people, they don\u2019t want to listen. When I was getting ready to leave school, the teachers said I wouldn\u2019t do anything with my life so I thought, \u2018I\u2019m going to, and I\u2019m going to show them\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that\u2019s exactly what I\u2019ve done.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve been a volunteer with Sense for over 20 years. 24 years with the adult service in Smethwick and 12 years with the children\u2019s service. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

People always ask me why I\u2019m a volunteer: it\u2019s because I enjoy it. When you walk into the building and you see smiles on people\u2019s faces, it\u2019s so exciting. I don\u2019t need anything else.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We break barriers by taking small steps everyday <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We do art sessions at the services. Sometimes, people will come in and only draw one line on the paper in a day. But it\u2019s not about the one line, it\u2019s what they do with it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The next time they come, they\u2019ll do another line so it\u2019s two lines, then three lines and then when you hold the paper up, it\u2019s a whole picture.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can\u2019t force people to do things, you\u2019ve got to keep on taking little steps.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n

We all have a duty to help people overcome barriers, however difficult. And you can start today, by pledging support for Sense\u2019s campaign<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Adam helps disabled people break their own barriers every day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":9463,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_searchwp_excluded":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"display_author":[],"class_list":["post-9476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sense.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sense.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sense.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sense.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sense.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sense.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9476\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sense.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sense.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sense.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sense.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9476"},{"taxonomy":"display_author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sense.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/display_author?post=9476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}