Case Studies
Jess’ Story – From Shy to Flying High
Trudy & Potiki – Stepping stones to success
Brent
Brent was born in 1971. At age 10 Brent won a Nationwide Art Competition while he was attending Central School Special Unit. Brent’s artwork was presented to Norman Kirk.
Brent was born in 1971. At age 10 Brent won a Nationwide Art Competition while he was attending Central School Special Unit. Brent’s artwork was presented to Norman Kirk.
He then joined bowls and won ribbons, medals and cups.
At the age of 13 years Brent was in the Special Unit at Karamu High and while there gave David Lange a landscape painting when he came to visit the school.
When he turned 14, he became a grand mal epileptic which left parts of his brain non-functioning.
On 21st August 1988 Brent was awarded the highest honour – the Queens Man in the Boys Brigade (see attached PDF). Sadly, Brent was unable to join Boy Scouts.
In the 1990s, after leaving school, Brent joined DRC’s Sheltered Workshop. With the introduction of the Government initiative “Pathways to Inclusion”, DRC changed it’s services to Vocational Services with a contract for Community Participation in 2003.
Brent continued with his art and has successfully sold these over the years.
With the advent of Turning Point, Coordinators started to look at different ways of working with clients. In January 2012 the Enabling Good Lives report was released. This report proposes that the current centre-based model for day and community participation services be incrementally transitioned to a facilitation-based support model. The focus of facilitation-based support would be on enabling disabled people to do everyday things in everyday places’ in communities, rather than on provision of ‘special’ places or activities for disabled people.
As an incremental step towards this ideal, Turning Point Coordinator (Karen) worked 1 on 1 with Brent and discovered his love for music and his amazing knowledge of musicians. When Brent was asked if he’d like to someday be on air over the radio and introduce songs, he was most interested. In 2012, the coordinator helped Brent to select some songs and write a script out for a music show – to air on Radio Kidnappers. This then became his own show.
As his confidence grew, he slowly took on more responsibility for his Radio Show and in 2013 Brent is now able to work independently selecting his own music and writing a weekly script for his Radio Show Called “The Brent Rules Show” which airs every Saturday at 6.30pm.
Brent has also joined a monthly radio show with other DRC clients where he presents music reviews and interesting facts about famous musicians and movie stars.
Brent is now confident to fill in applications for funding his Radio show. Brent would like his next step to be flatting.
Michael
Michael has been attending the Turning Point service and he started 10-pin bowling in 2011. The attached newspaper article appeared in the Hastings Leader on Wednesday 20th November. Everyone is very proud of what Michael has achieved in this sport. We look forward to seeing many more medals for Michael in the future.