My dream come true!

Written by Jennifer Chung

When I was a trainee, it was important for me to learn new skills in different ways. This helped me prepare for becoming a member of staff, so that I would feel more confident doing my job and become more independent.

I have really enjoyed learning how to lead different meetings and meeting lots of new people. I have also learned how to teach people to use IT skills and how to network with different charities and professionals. These experiences have helped me learn more about businesses and the work that other organisations do.

Earlier this year, everything started to happen very suddenly. In January, when I came back from my holidays, I found out that I would be moving towards becoming a member of staff. This was kept confidential until April, when I started getting ready with all the paperwork. I officially started in May!

I couldn't believe it was all happening this year. My dream had come true! I felt very emotional when I received my staff lanyard. It was such a special day for me, and my family were very proud of me too.

Becoming a member of staff has been very different from being a trainee. We are now all colleagues, and lots of things have changed.

We are now helping to make a difference in the world. It means a lot to us that more charities are beginning to understand who we are and what we do. We want to help make things better by sharing our own lived experiences of having a learning disability or difficulty.

Every month, I am saving some of my salary to do something special in the future. I might use it for an emergency or save it towards a holiday. But with my first pay, I decided to treat myself to a box of my favourite toys LEGO! This was very special for me.

I am looking forward to building my LEGO when the evenings get darker during the winter. I might even buy another two boxes in December for my birthday or Christmas. Or perhaps they could be a special gift to myself to celebrate all my hard work this year. I'm not sure which is best yet!

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