'I now feel people see the ability beyond the disability'

First person: Working at Westmeath Community Development

By Breda Hussey

I was born in Castletown Geoghegan. I am the fourth of a family of six. My father Jimmy Hussey was a farmer, and my mother Brigid was a housewife, and I have three brothers and two sisters, I was like an normal child, healthy and happy, but one Sunday morning when we were getting ready to go to Mass, I was two and a half years old, my mother saw that I couldn’t stop crying and how I was turning a shade of blue. Immediately, my parents rang the doctor, and when he saw me, he told my parents to take me to Mullingar hospital.

They did tests then I was taken up to Beaumont hospital. I stayed there for a few days then I was transferred to the Mater hospital. I was in the care of Mr Nelligan and his team. I was diagnosed with a hole in my heart as well as other problems.

Not only had I a hole in my heart, but the pulmonary valve and the aorta the main blood vessels in my body were in the wrong place and did not work correctly. Dr Nelligan told my parents that I was too young and had to wait until I was older to have an operation done.

So, when I was eight years old, I had another operation to correct the condition, which is called Transposition of the great arteries. Thankfully it was a success, and I am here to tell my tale.

My primary school years were spent in a boarding school in Coole Hospital in Castlepollard, as, due to my health, I could not attend mainstream education.

When I was 11, Coole Hospital closed, so my parents were really worried that I would not get to finish my education. After meetings with social workers, it was decided I would attend Presentation School in Mullingar, and again my health went against me, and I developed scoliosis, so again I could not attend school for around a year. When my health improved at the age of 14, St Brigid’s school for people with disabilities had opened in Mullingar and I finished my education there.

As a young adult, I attended courses doing word processing and IT. I attended Siol Resource Centre, as it was known a daycare centre for nine years, I left Siol to attend in The Fresh start Programme with FAS in Presentation House in the mid 1990’s where I learned more computer skills.

Texas Tom

It was in 2002, I started working in Texas Tom when it was in Mullingar, doing sales assistant, until it closed down and I was given redundancy. After leaving Texas, I didn’t know what to do next, I was told about Irish Wheelchair Association at the centre in Springfield and in 2010 I started going there three days a week, where we did lots of different activities and day trips. It was really enjoyable.

I wanted to move on and do something else I heard about National Learning Network in Mullingar and made an appointment as I felt it was the right time for me to go back into education.

The following week I met programme co-ordinators David Dunne from Fresh Start and Oliver Kennedy from Turas, who spoke to me about the different courses they run and the modules I could do.

A few months later in 2019 I started in National Learning Network Fresh Start Programme. As part of the QQI level 4 course, I learned internet skills, communications, health and safety along with other modules that would help me to progress to employment.

Unfortunately, due to the Covid pandemic, we had to continue our courses from home through Zoom. The disadvantage of that was I missed the classroom-based environment and I felt quite isolated, as did a lot of people with underlying condition, as we were not allowed to leave our homes.

I got great online support from the staff at NLN. When we got back to the class the Fresh Start programme was almost finished and they encouraged me to progress to the Employability Training programme run by Amy Quigley.

The aims of this course were to do more modules and to go into the workforce doing work experience in North Westmeath Hospice for 10 weeks.

I loved doing that, and the staff were very good to me and gave me all the help that I needed. I got great support from all the tutors in National Learning Network. From doing my work experience with the North Westmeath Hospice, I have become a volunteer and I am now their assistant secretary.

Befriending

service

I was due to finish the employability programme in June 2022 and Amy and Oliver organised for me to meet a supervisor from Westmeath Community Development to see if there was anything I could do next with the skills I had gained from my courses. At the meeting I was told about the Community Employment Scheme working in the befriending service run by WCD.

The befriending service is a programme that on a weekly basis elderly people get phone calls from somebody friendly and sometimes it is just for a chat.

I was really interested and felt I would be the right person for the job as I would have no problem with the reporting and record keeping, along with making the calls and building relationships.

After starting work and building relationships with the older people, I came up with the idea of asking them their dates of birth as I hand-make cards.

When I approached Martha with the proposal that we send birthday cards to all of our clients, she thought it was a great idea.

With the support of Amy from the Employability course, I applied for the Community Employment Scheme and got called for an interview with Martha McMahon, coordinator of the befriending service, and Geraldine Morrissey, CE Supervisor.

Thankfully I got the job of the befriending service operator and when I started in November 2022, I met Eddie Newman, assistant CE supervisor, who explained all the rules and said if I continue doing training I can stay with CE for at least three years.

Since I started, I have built great relationships with all my work colleagues in Westmeath Community Development, and I get great support from the CEO Frank Murtagh and The CE supervisors. I feel that it is brilliant that people with disabilities have a chance to prove that they are capable of working in mainstream employment and would hope that more organisations will open their doors to the opportunity.

In my own experience people with disabilities get left behind as people often see the disability and not the person behind it.

For me because of my perseverance I never allowed myself to be just a disability and I always knew I was capable of more than I was been allowed.

Since doing my courses and starting work in the befriending service, I now feel that people see the ability beyond the disability.

I would like to thank Westmeath Community Development for giving me this opportunity.