Over the past few months, our long-term client Markham Strange has been working with his occupational therapist at Optimal Therapy, Therese Sullivan on an important goal. Markham, who previously had a stroke in 2016, was invited by his support provider to present at their Annual General Meeting and share his story. Markham was keen to give this a go, however, was worried about delivering a verbal presentation in front of a large crowd. Markham has difficulties with word finding and information recall and was worried that this would be a barrier to successfully completing his goal.
Over a two month period, Therese worked with Markham to identify alternative methods to help him achieve this goal.
The solution: an audio video PowerPoint presentation in an interview format.
This meant Markham could still share his story, preparing ahead of time and still attend the AGM. Markham and his occupational therapist developed a presentation in an interview format. This format provided prompts to Markham regarding what he would be talking about as well as breaking the speech up into sections that were easier for Markham to verbalise. Therese set up the computer to have the content of Markham’s speech prompting on the screen, whilst the webcam recorded Markham talking.
The end result was a heartwarming five minute video, reflecting on Markham’s journey since his stroke. Markham conquered his fear and even introduced his presentation on the night, and he was then able to sit back and enjoy with the rest of the audience. There was a lot of positive feedback from the audience and Markham’s family. It was a wonderful evening and great to see Markham’s goal come full circle. Even better, he now has the presentation on hand to look back and reflect on in years to come.
We look forward to supporting Markham on his next goal of walking a section of the Bibbulmun track, which requires lots of strategies for planning and problem-solving.
