“Giving Back and Making a Difference: Adaptive Care Team’s Rewarding Volunteering Experience with Epilepsy Society”

At Adaptive Care we are committed to making a difference to social engagement and charitable initiatives, and our corporate volunteering days play a big part in that.

During these recent corporate volunteering days we supported the Epilepsy Society, volunteering our time and resources to makeover Queen Elizabeth House and Croft Cottage gardens, which were in need of some TLC.

The units provide a small homely environment for adults with complex epilepsy, associated impairments and learning disabilities. With complex care being at the heart of everything they do at the homes, the gardens – although loved by residents – and its associated maintenance is not a priority for staff, and that is where we stepped in.

With gardening tools and paint brushes in hand, the Adaptive Care team spent two days transforming the garden spaces from tired and overrun to lush, vibrant havens for residents and their families to enjoy.

It was an immensely rewarding experience for the whole Adaptive Care team, and to hear from the Queen Elizabeth House and Croft Cottage teams with what a difference it will make to the residents’ lives was truly the icing on the cake.

In addition to transforming the gardens, we are delighted to share that we exceeded our fundraising goal and have raised a fantastic £546 for the Epilepsy Society!

This money will go directly to The Epilepsy Society, supporting the charity’s work. If you’ve been inspired by our work, there’s still time to donate to this fantastic cause via our Just Giving Page.

We want to say a huge thank you to everyone who offered their time and to those who have already donated, we look forward to keeping you updated with our future projects.

‘‘Thank you so much for organising an absolutely amazing and ever so hard-working group of volunteers. They excelled all my expectations by doing what was agreed and so much more to a very high standard. The garden looks amazing, is tidy and looks well maintained. We are really grateful.
It means so much when groups take time out from work (and travel such a distance in some cases!) to give our gardens a makeover.”

Gosia, House Manager of Croft Cottage

“We have a lot of outdoor space but our prime reason for being here is looking after people and because we’re complex care, that takes up 95% of our time, so having a nice outdoor space is fine, but we end up neglecting it. So it’s really nice that people are out there that are willing to come in and just give us a bit of help to spruce it up back to the way it should be, because we just don’t get the time to be out there doing the gardening. If we’re in the garden it’s because we’ve got people out there and we’re doing stuff with them. So it’s really important that you’ve come in to do this, because it helps the guys when they go out there to see a nice space as opposed to weeds. And it gets picked up by the families of the people that live here too and it makes it a more welcoming space for everyone”.

Steve, Queen Elizabeth House

Epilepsy Stats

• There are over half a million people with epilepsy in the UK, so around 1 in 100 people. 
• One in 20 people will have a one-off epileptic seizure at some point in their life (although this does not necessarily mean that they have epilepsy).
• One in 50 people will have epilepsy at some time in their life (not everyone with epilepsy will have it for life).
• Around 87 people are diagnosed with epilepsy every day.
• Over 600,000 people in the UK have epilepsy. That’s about one in every 100 people. There are around 60 million people with epilepsy in the world.
• Up to 3% of people with epilepsy will be affected by flashing lights (called photosensitive epilepsy), so most people with epilepsy do not have seizures triggered by flashing lights.

Calm. Cushion. Call.

Epilepsy can happen to anyone. Would you know what to do if you saw someone having a seizure? We’re giving people three simple but key instructions to remember in an emergency: “Calm, Cushion, Call.”

If you would like to find out about the different ways you can get involved with Epilepsy Society, click here.

If you’ve been inspired by our work, there’s still time to donate to this fantastic cause via our Just Giving page.