As part of our ongoing learning and reflection, we held a workshop with Asking You! volunteers, who are all adults with learning disabilities, to explore how we use communication in the annual review process for Citizen Advocacy.
The workshop took place on Monday 13th August. We had a large group of volunteers who came along and were more than happy to take part and share their views.
We were interested in exploring the different ways people communicate, what works well and what things can act as a barrier when communicating.
The day involved a range of role play activities, and working with non-verbal forms of communication. Communication was really challenging, but highlighted some things that worked well – like using pictures and mime.
One of the key things that we learned was how important context is when communicating with people, and we are going to look at how we are able to use the context of volunteer advocacy relationships and storytelling to capture the impact volunteer Citizen Advocacy matches have.