Claire Morgan 24/11/2023 Member Stories

I’m Richard, I live in Swansea and I’m a Trustee of Your Voice Advocacy.

I live with my father and care for him – taking him to appointments and things like that.

I was the AWPF National Council rep for 18 months for Swansea and I do miss being part of that.  I enjoy taking part in the AWPF activities and wish I could do more.  I particularly enjoyed the Strategy Day recently.

I do lots of volunteering for my local self-advocacy group and raised £2,000 just before Covid by counting my steps and walking up Pen y Fan. I love fundraising, this year I took part in the Mr X appeal to help children that don’t have as much.

Sometimes I get thrown in the deep end and have to help out when someone is off sick – I do enjoy it though.  I’d love to have a paid job working with them.  That would be my dream.

At the moment we have a cookery group on the go – we’ve made soup, chilli, shepherds pie and curry.  We’ve submitted a funding application to do more and I’ve achieved my Food Hygiene level 2 qualification.

I help out with Easy Read too – I’ve been Louise’s ‘go to’ person to check her Easy Read translations for a number of years.  I make sure that documents are straightforward enough for as many people as possible to understand.

I enjoy playing football and I support Man United.  I use public transport a lot and a little while ago, Kara and I managed to get the train from Swansea all the way to north Wales on our own for a National Council meeting – that was quite an achievement.  We have had a few members who have had trouble renewing their bus passes, but I haven’t had any difficulty yet.

My latest qualification is an accredited qualification for museums and heritage work –like photography skills and designing and making a sensory area at the Dylan Thomas Centre. My profile photo is one that we took as part of this project.  It was a great success.