Barry & Stephen

Prior to his retirement, Barry was an aircraft maintenance planning engineer and had the good fortune to work in a number of overseas locations before returning to his home in the Cardiff area. His wife suffered a stroke in 2018 and although her illness was not as severe as it could have been, she went along to a friendship group to meet other sufferers. When attending the group with her, Barry witnessed first hand the needs of those who have had this life changing event happen to them and learned about the additional communication difficulties that those Aphasia sufferers in the group had.

There was clearly a need to offer additional support to them but having been robbed of the ability to easily communicate, they could not do this for themselves. It was at this point that Barry became involved with the set-up of a support group for the Cardiff area to help peer leader Stephen create and run the group.

This endeavour has been greatly helped by a Speech and Language Technician at a local hospital who has people she supports that are also attending the friendship group. Through her, a venue for the group to meet in has been arranged, contacts made and with Say Aphasia providing support material, the group has everything needed to make it all happen.