Leo
Leo lives at home with his Mum and is 23 years old. He has profound learning disabilities, epilepsy and cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair when out and about as he can’t walk independently. He uses facial expressions and body language to express himself.
He attended boarding school until he was 21 but now lives full time at home. His Mum is his main carer, but she has to work so Leo has professional staff who care for him and also to give his Mum a break on a Friday evening. He needs help with eating and his food must be cut into small pieces to avoid him choking. He loves spending time in his room with books and cartoon DVDs.
Our aims with Leo are based around increasing his self-confidence, particularly within social interactions. We aim to encourage him to express himself and to support his emotional well-being, offering opportunities for him to explore his sociability and positively influence whatever we are doing.
Leo seems to have huge capacity for fun and the spontaneity of his interactions often make us laugh. Recently, in a quieter moment with him, we used him and one of his cuddly toys as the subjects for a story. We had already noticed how much he enjoyed his books, and we wondered if creating a story using his current favourite character combined with what he was doing would capture his imagination.
The story began “Once Upon a Time….” and told the tale of Leo and his faithful friend Scooby the dog. Each time Leo touched or moved Scooby we included him in the story and therefore mirrored whatever Leo did. Leo really appeared to be listening. We decided it had captured his imagination when he looked over to us, made good eye contact, smiled, vocalised and pulled Scooby’s tail! We hope he understands he is influencing the story and that we are responding directly to what he is communicating.
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