What I did next - by Mark Daly

Autobiography - 2

After a much needed break and getting the diagnosis, I decided to look for a job again, so i phoned my job coach again and although for a while things were quiet, he eventually rang and said he was on to see me and said that he had a breakthrough.

He arrived armed with a manila envelope, inside of which were six charitable companies, Alzheimers Association of Ireland, frontline defenders(which sounds like a superhero movie, bodywhyse in stillorgan, St Marys nursing home, the royal hospital Donnybrook and Amnesty International.

I went methodically went through them all, between one thing and another(not being able to find them, the work not being appropriate or other reasons)  I had to pass on them all, Indeed from some of them I never heard anything back from them, So i was at a dead end.

One day I got a call from my job coach(this was april 2005) who asked me had I heard of St. Josephs. My father told me that my mother used to give a hamper to them every year for years.

I emailed the contact  and she told me how delighted she was that I was interested. She went to say that they were the relatively new national Braille production centre and from 2005, that is what I have been doing. I am home text editor which involves scanning books into my computer, after which i edit the scanned text for corrections and provide this to the centre for translation into Braille.

Towards  the end of 2005 I wrote to the dyspraxia association and asked them, what they were doing for adults and they told me they were doing something. In April 2006 they announced that they were setting up a support group. And we had our first meeting and second one in July. We had more meetings after that. Then we got together socially. Went bowling. Adult members come from all over Dublin and we some outside Dublin.