Assessments and Road Crossings

Monday April 10th – Remember my “Client” Richard Cranium (from Thursday’s Blog)? Well this morning we all went into town and met our various “clients” to practice doing an assessment and observing them walk in a familiar area. I met ‘Richard’ and a health food shop. His real name is Johan (or Joey, pronounced Yo-E). He did a good job of role playing my client who had many health and eye related problems. I did my best to gather all the information I would need to write up my assessment and recommendation for an O&M program. It took a couple of hours! I was a little nonplussed when my client asked me how he could identify “street walkers”, there was a long pause on my part where I tried to figure out if that meant the same thing in Australia as it did in the US (it does). I kept professional and politely explained that it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to work with him on this topic. Later Joey told me that he has actually had a few clients ask him this question and wanted to see what I would do! Thanks a lot, Joey!! It was definitely good practice and we now will hace to write the report, give it to our “client” then they will give us feedback from an instructor’s perspective.

In the afternoon we began road crossings under blindfold with our long canes. We began in a quiet residential area and moved to a busy intersection with audible signals. The photo posted shows Laura under blindfold with Simone instructing her in the crossing. It was actually a challenging crossing with three pedestrian islands and multiple lanes of traffic. We then moved back to the residential area and tried our hand at ‘block travel’. This meant we were assigned a house to pretend we lived in and our instructor would show us a route around the block and how to determine when we arrived back at ‘our house’. After walking the route twice we had to do it solo (meaning our instructor waited at the house for us while we went alone). I felt pretty confident during my walk until a passing car confused me somehow and I decided I was at the end of the block, made my turn ‘up the street’ and realized I had walked up someone’s driveway! I must have looked pretty silly, but I backtracked to the street, crossed my fingers and kept walking and found my actual corner a short distance further. Laura was my ‘instructor’ and I think she was more nervous than I was. We then reversed roles on a different block and I taught Laura. Boy was I relieved to see her make it back to where I was waiting!

There are a couple of clients in the building so the whole gang is back, which means it’s time for Ron’s Aussie of the Day! “Sticky” is the word used to replace look. So they will say “Have a sticky at this photo I took”. A person who is nosey would be called a “Sticky Beak”. I also learned about “Wagging” or “to Wag” this is what you call cutting class or calling in sick to work (usually when you aren’t really sick). So I might call my boss, Charles and say, “I won’t be coming in today, I’m wagging” (don’t worry Charles, I would never actually do it!)