This week, after careful and thoughtful planning, we met our clients from AMK Minds for the first time. The people who are currently being assisted in AMK Minds are either intelligently incapable or lacks any form of independence in their everyday lives. Most of the people there, unfortunately, has down’s syndrome. This is a significant global problem as there are over 100 million patients with Down’s syndrome worldwide. Even though what I can do as an individual is not much compared to the whole world, but I believe when everyone does their part, the problem of mental disabilities can be greatly reduced. (LO6). They surprised me with how friendly they are, sometimes I found myself surrounded by those people with my hands shook and held in various directions. Even though playing sports activities with those people is not as exciting or intense as the ones we do in school, but it is interesting and inspiring in another way. During the games, I realised the importance of verbal and visual communication, as sometimes talking alone will not be able to get the idea across to those people, so you will have to shorten your sentences and pronounciate word by word. (LO2) Furthermore, you will have to demonstrate to those people how the activities are carried out, and with sign languages incorporated into it. Because those people are taking longer to grasp ideas, so most of the time, you will have to repeat yourself several times because they can really get what you are saying. This can be challenging at times when you have to manage between several different people and this requires a high level of organizing skills. All in all, even though this is my first session, I have learnt many skills and values that hopefully I will be able to use in the coming years of service.
