How a chance meeting at Special Olympics and a shared love of golf tee’d off a great support relationship.
To celebrate World Down Syndrome Day, we have a chat to two of our users, Jamie and Pat.
“He’s a good person, he’s fun, and he’s a cool guy,” says Jamie of his support worker, Pat.
For Pat, the feeling’s mutual. “We have common interests: sport, rugby, going out. I enjoy pub grub, burgers, pizza, we’re both young so it works well. We go to the RSL for dinner, we’ve been to putt putt golf and to the movies for Hireup shifts.”
Jamie and Pat first met at Special Olympics nine years ago when Pat started as a volunteer through his school’s Duke of Edinburgh program. Pat still volunteers every Wednesday, teaching golf to Jamie and his friends. “I was meant to do 10 hours of volunteering seven years ago and I never left,” says Pat.
Since meeting at Special Olympics, and particularly once Jamie finished school last year, Jamie and Pat have worked together on Hireup, doing a number of ‘out and about’ shifts together.
“I like to do filming and watch movies. Pat and I have gone to the movies, then had KFC afterwards. And we’ve done golf,” says Jamie.
For Jamie’s mum Lynda, finding the right support means the world to her and her family. “It means I can sleep at night. What you want for your kids – whether they have a disability or not – is for them to go out with people they can connect with and have fun with and would treat them as they’d treat anyone else. When you come across someone who does that it makes you feel good about sending them out.”
“Jamie looks forward to going out, and it’s nice for him at 18 to be going out with age-appropriate people doing age-appropriate activities.”
So far, Pat has enjoyed the opportunity to do support work in more than a volunteer capacity through Hireup. “I think everyone should give support work a go. I happened to give it a go and fell in love with it. I do things I enjoy doing, with people I enjoy hanging out with. Everyone has the right to do these things whether they need support or not.”
