Are you passionate about serving children, young people or adults with disabilities?
A voluntary service with disabled people very often takes place in a disabled home. Some of these homes function with shift work and external nursing staff, but there are homes in which staff and disabled people live and work together.
In this case, it is more difficult to separate clearly work time from leisure time, but it is at the same time a very deep experience. A volunteer’s tasks are roughly the same in both forms of homes.
Furthermore, a volunteer could work in integrative nursery schools or schools, in family support, daily support, living groups, residential homes, sheltered workshops, etc.
Some have severe disabilities and e.g. cannot speak properly or only eat or breathe through medical instruments.
This is why the caring and support is done in a very individual way.
At the beginning, it is often a new and sometimes difficult experience for volunteers to be confronted with the clients’ syndromes.
But usually volunteers get adapted soon, are well integrated into the community and feel enriched by meeting and living with the disabled people.
Possible activities
For you as a volunteer, there are various possibilities to get involved, e.g.:
How exactly a day is structured and which tasks you carry out can be negotiated within the placement, and can be adapted to your own preferences.
These activities define the daily schedule in this field of work, which depends on the home’s meal times, on the occupants’ working times in their workshops, and on their leisure time.