Tara Flood: Do it Yourself

Transcript

From quite an early age there was a real – alongside this – the fixing you interventions. There was also a real heavy focus around doing everything for yourself, particularly personal care and dressing. And I remember groups of us used to have to sit there once we’d been got out of these cots – we were in these cots until we were transferred over to the school side, so, what, kind of six, seven? Yeah, weird. Once we’d got out of bed we were then sat on the floor, which was concrete flooring, with a pile of our clothes next to us. And I’d say the group that I used to sit regularly with, there was about five or six of us, boys and girls, and we were left to get on with it, essentially dress ourselves. And I remember the terror of being found out if we were caught helping each other. And for those kids that couldn’t, the humiliation around failure was just terrible.

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