Kirsty and Lauren are swimming in an outdoor 50m pool in London ..... This is a 24 hour challenge!!

Over 24 hours (7am to 7am on 7th June), we will be taking it in turns to swim 1km (21 lengths) every hour.

This will be a gruelling endurance challenge especially when swimming through the night.

Oh dear... wish us luck! Or even better donate your next coffee money!

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Kirsty and Lauren have both witnessed the huge impact the charity has on its members with aphasia and their relatives. Both have second-hand experience as Lauren's father, Colin has aphasia, who is the founder of the charity. Kirsty is a speech and language therapist working with people with aphasia. 

Before Say Aphasia existed, long term support for people with aphasia was hard to come by—just like spotting a dolphin while swimming in Brighton sea. Some are out there, but you have to be in the right place and the right time.

While aphasia can never be fully cured, long term support can help to improve people's communication abilities over time. We noticed that during the pandemic when our members were socialising less, their communication had declined. It wasn't until they started attending Say Aphasia groups again that their speech continued to improve.

Kirsty and Lauren have seen how a safe and welcoming social group for people with aphasia can drastically reduce isolation and loneliness. People with aphasia can often feel very alone with their condition, especially as their friends and family (and themselves) do not fully understand it at first. The person with aphasia cannot explain what they are going through, or how they are feeling. And so meeting others with aphasia is a revelation!.. "A place where others finally understand what you are going through."

Kirsty and Lauren have also seen members regain confidence to live more independently again. Similarly to waking up in a hospital bed with aphasia, imagine suddenly waking up in a country where you do not know the language. You cannot understand what others are saying, you cannot say the right words for others to understand you, and you cannot read or write the words. Not only may you feel distressed, frustrated or confused, and disconnected from the world but you may feel uncomfortable going anywhere by yourself in fear of constant misunderstanding.

But then you start to think differently, and work out how you can communicate in other ways - you may point at pictures on a restaurant food menu, you may use Google translate on your phone, you may need written text in short concise sentences to help get an idea of what is written.

With the support of Say Aphasia, many of the members have learnt how to live better with aphasia, with tactics to overcome communication barriers and also with the help of technology.

As you can imagine, living this way can be exhausting.

Say Aphasia exist to help provide relief of all these negative emotions.

Long term, peer led support groups provide a place of support where aphasia is understood - where their struggles and communication barriers are understood. A place to thrive despite communication barriers.

The groups are positive, and remove any sense of hopelessness. These groups are a life-line for people with aphasia.

Please, please help us to continue providing these vital groups for people with aphasia. There are over 350,000 people in the UK with aphasia and so there are still many areas in the UK in need of a support group. Help us reach those people.

Thank you.

 

Lauren Leake