Interviewer

Could we start by me asking your name?

Karen Bowers

Karen

Interviewer

And your surname?

Karen Bowers

Bowers.

Interviewer

Thank you Karen. And what organisation are we talking about today?

Karen Bowers

BOPH.

Interviewer

And could I ask a very private question? How old are you?

Karen Bowers

58.

Interviewer

Thank you. So what gets you involved here?

Karen Bowers

I’ve always worked with special needs. Even when I lived in London, I worked in nurseries with special needs, and then into like reception. Then when we moved down here,  I was a PA to one of the clients that come here, Jody. And then I used to fetch her here and then Joan asked me would I like to work here, because she could see how I interacted with them. Because I think it’s a fulfilling job because you can see the achievement when they’ve done something right. Their face lights up, even though they’re adults, they’re not as such, and you can just see when they’ve done something right. The excitement. And I’ve just always enjoyed working with special needs.

Interviewer

So I feel like because we heard from Brogan that she was also a PA, and she got ‘’pinched’’ to be here as well. Yes?

Karen Bowers

I got her in because she was PA to Simon. He didn’t come here at the time. So she used to have to take him shopping, walking him back. He likes buying stickers and bingo things. And I said, ‘see if he will come here for a day.’  ‘You come here as his PA rather than walking the streets in the bad weather.’  So I approached his Mum, and said, ‘would you give him a chance to come in to see ‘ ‘Oh he wouldn’t like it.’  I said one day, ‘there’s no harm, he can just sit, even if it’s an hour.’ And he absolutely loved it. So Brogan started bringing him, and then Joan pinched her.

Interviewer

So it feels like Joan’s been good at spotting people, who are going to fit in here.

Karen Bowers

Yes. Yes. Definitely.

Interviewer

So how long have you been here?

Karen Bowers

2011. I started, Yes.

Interviewer

Okay. So moving towards 15 years then? Absolutely. So what keeps you here?

Karen Bowers

I just enjoy it. I don’t call it work, I just enjoy coming to my extended family. That’s what it feels like. You don’t feel like you’re coming to work, you just come here to, I don’t know. I enjoy it

Interviewer

And I get the sense I’ll call them clients, but the clients sort of come for years, and years. They don’t sort of just pop in, and pop out.

Karen Bowers

Yes. We’ve got some that have been here from day one, who come every day, and they just love coming here. Like when we are shut, and we’ve come back open, and they’re running in, ‘oh we’ve missed you. We’ve missed you’. They just love it here because they call it going to work, because obviously it’s a workshop so they call it going to work but they just, it’s the socialising because some of them live in homes.  So other than coming here, they don’t really do a lot. Some of them are sort of in their bedroom. When you say, ‘what do you do when you are not here?’  ‘I watch this in my bedroom’, ‘I watch this’. So coming here is socialising, and learning a skill at the same time. And I mean some of them that come here in their sixties now.

Interviewer

Oh are they?

Karen Bower

Yes. We’ve got Cindy, she’s 63. Sue’s just come in. She’s 63. And then we’ve got the younger ones who’ve come out of college who are like 18, 19. So there’s age difference on the scale. We’re all different.

Interviewer

But it’s interesting because I think, well you know I’m 60 and I don’t think I feel any different to how I did when I was 15. To be honest. And it must be exactly the same for them. They probably don’t see the age so much.

Karen Bowers

Yes definitely. Like with Simon, he’s quite funny because he talks about things “You remember, you remember”. And he’s going back 10 years ago but he thinks it was yesterday. He’s quite funny. Simon with these tales.

Interviewer

So do you have any favourite memories of anything that’s happened while you’ve been here?

Karen Bowers

I suppose it is when we’ve done like the special occasions. We’ve done a couple of parties of a night time to make them feel like they’re coming out. We had an Elvis night, and they just loved it. They were up dancing, and things like that,  when we used to get a lot of funding, like donations. We could do things like that. But now we don’t get as many donations, we don’t put on so many things for them. And we try and do a yearly trip if we can get enough for a coach. So their trips out is a highlight and, because some of them don’t go for days out, so we usually go to Brighton, and they absolutely love it. So we’ve had a lot of it, where I’ve taken them on the pier, and made them go on rides, that they wouldn’t have done. And it’s been, it’s fantastic. They love it

Interviewer

Must be a long day though.

Karen Bowers

We usually leave here about nine o’clock in the morning and they love it so much. They usually say to coach driver ‘six o’clock alright?’ ‘Yes you are paying for it, I’ll stay as long as you want.’ And even then when you say ‘right meet here at quarter to six’, some of them are dragging. ‘We don’t want to go yet’. because some of them don’t do much, other than come here or us taking them out.

Interviewer

No, that’s nice. It’s really nice. And do they have, when Simon came in, I saw him come in. He said he’d seen Ed last night.  So do they sometimes meet up outside?

Karen Bowers

At the Phoenix Club on Wednesday evening in the Paddocks. That is their special needs group. They have different entertainment every week for them. I used to take Jody to that. Brogan used to take Simon to it, but now he goes with somebody else. But they absolutely love that they’re coming here the next day, and then you hear what went on in the Phoenix Club last night. Who won the raffle.  Who won the bingo. Like Joanne comes straight in ‘’I didn’t win the bingo’’.

Interviewer

Excellent. So if there was somebody who’s listening to this, and they thought, I’m not sure if this is either for my loved one, it might be suitable for them or if it might be somewhere they might want to volunteer, what would you say to encourage them?

Karen Bowers

They’d have to come down for the day to see it for themselves. Because to explain it to people, what we do, and what it’s like, is totally different from coming in, and seeing it. Usually we do get phone calls. ‘What do you actually do there? What’s this?’ And I always invite them down for half a day, whatever, and see how we work. And like some of them say, ‘well he won’t sit still for lunch’. That’s not a problem. We are not at school, we’re a workshop. And they do basically what they want to do within reason. So I’ll encourage anyone to come, and see how we’re set up, how we work. And once they’ve been, they will want to come. Basically this, everyone that’s been in has loved it, like the college ones, they do work placements from college. Three of them we’ve kept, they finished college now, and they’re still coming in because they love it.

Interviewer

That’s good. That’s really good to hear.  So when you knew I was coming to see you today, is there anything you wanted to say to me you haven’t had the chance to say yet?

Karen Bowers

No, not really. No. Just you explained this morning what you were coming for. That was all. I didn’t know what it was for, but I didn’t need to ask you, because you explained

Interviewer

Thank you. Well it’s been lovely to chat with you. Thank you ever so much.