Malcolm
Product advisor Vernon Jones has travelled thousands of miles for Toby Churchill. Although having flown to the Orkney Islands, he had never been to the far north of Scotland before. This was rectified recently with a visit to Lightwriter® user Malcolm Moodie, who lives just a few miles from Dunnet Head, the most northerly point of the British mainland. Malcolm has had a long association with Toby Churchill and has been using a Lightwriter® for many years.
Malcolm suffered a brain injury and lost his speech after a major road traffic accident in 1991 and was in hospital for over 3 years. At the time of the accident he was a production manager for a local deep freeze manufacturer.
One of the company directors contacted Toby Churchill while he was in hospital to see if they could help. Money for his first SL30 was raised by the managers and the 330 strong work force. Over the years Malcolm has upgraded his machines twice.
More recently KEY Community Support has been providing part of Malcolm’s support package and were concerned that he could not contact their worker base directly from his home, or if he was out and about, should he require their support. Malcolm’s brother Willie, who is his main carer, contacted Toby Churchill for help. After a flight to Inverness and a 120 mile drive to Castletown, Vernon finally met Malcolm and Donald, one of the KEY support workers.
During the demonstration Vernon said Malcolm picked up the new features very quickly, like the predictive text, where the machine will recognise and store words and phrases. Vernon said, “This could save a lot of time for Malcolm.”
Support worker Donald explained, “Although there is a help call system in the house it is connected to an emergency hub in Aberdeen. We at KEY wanted a system where Malcolm could speak directly to our base just like all the other people we support. The old Lightwriters have served him well over the years but the speech function has not worked for some time. The new Lightwriter® SL40 Connect will fit the bill perfectly.
A few of the other lads we support come out to visit Malcolm for a game of dominoes or snooker. One or two had difficulty reading the text on the old Writer. Now they will be able to have a conversation with Malcolm without a worker having to relay what Malcolm has said. This will make such a difference to them as well.”
Once the demonstration was over, as a thank you, Malcolm and Donald took Vernon a short sightseeing tour before he went south to catch the flight home. This included visiting the 300 foot cliffs at Dunnet Head. Even with the poor visibility and what seamed to be a howling gale Vernon was still impressed. Donald told him on a clear day you can see the coastline right across the north of Scotland and across to Orkney. While travelling along the coast to John o’ Groats, Malcolm had a further chance to try out the trial machine as he pointed out the landmarks, including the Queen Mother’s former home at the Castle of Mey, along the popular tourist route to John o’ Groats, on the way stopping off to speak to some of Malcolm’s friends.
As Donald explained, we live in a small community and most people know Malcolm either by name or as the man with the fancy box that speaks. I hope people will still recognise him once the new machine arrives with the new posh accent!
For more information about the services KEY Community Supports provides, please click here.
