The Back Trust received an honourable mention in last week’s bulletin for their sterling work helping people with spinal cord injuries reach their full potential. This week we’re going a little more in depth and speaking to Andy Adamson who is a member of the Back Up team.

He first became involved with Back Up when he himself sustained a spinal cord injury about 6 years ago and became a wheelchair user. Impressed with their services, he soon joined their team of volunteers and before long he was taking what he’d learned and passing it on to others. In his time as a volunteer, Adam did a bit of most things for Back Up but he really specialised in Wheelchair skills. “We teach people what they need to get around. We start off easily, focusing on proper pushing technique and posture, and later we can look at more advanced stuff like dealing with ramps or descending stairs”. The wheelchair skills course, as well as other courses run by Back Up, pays close attention to the needs and wishes of the individual. You only do what you feel you need to get around and no-one is ever forced to try something they don’t want to. “We’re there to help you, so it’s what you want to do that matters”. And to keep things interesting, wheelchair skills are often not the sole aspect of a course but instead serve as add-ons to most of their popular courses. These include the multi activity courses that allow people to try things like archery, kayaking and abseiling. One participant describes it as “very liberating” and says that kayaking on the multi activities was the first time she felt “normal” after her accident.

Today Andy is a full-time employee for Back Up where he work s to coordinate the volunteers and the service users, and also helps organise the activities and events that Back Up sets up. He describes the most rewarding aspect of his job as “dealing with the participants and seeing them right through to the end of a particular course. Observing the way they are before and after and seeing the change in confidence after the course”.

One of the things that Back Up prides itself on is its mentor service. A mentor is someone who will liaise with a person who has sustained a spinal cord injury, helping them to adjust to life with a wheelchair. The mentor is often someone who has also suffered a spinal cord injury, or they could be a family mentor who is closely related to someone who has. His involvement in other aspects of Back Up’s work has prevented Andy from being a mentor himself but it remains one of his top ambitions for the future. He describes it as one of Back Up’s fastest growing services and one of the most popular ones.

Although he hasn’t actively mentored someone, Andy has involved himself directly with Back Up’s back to school programme that helps young people return to full time education after sustaining a spinal injury. “I’ll sometimes go to the school and speak to the whole year group beforehand to avoid any awkwardness. Also sometimes I’ll go with the person to the school when it’s quiet so that they can practice moving around, opening doors, etc.”

His enthusiasm for his work is evident from the way he talks about Back Up. He feels strongly about the organisation’s ethos and purpose which he described as follows – “Back Up’s goal is to ensure that people with spinal cord injury right across the range can meet their full potential. If we could do that for someone it would feel like a great job done. It’s all about helping people gain confidence and independence.