Imagine you are, on holiday about to embark on a well-deserved week off, but then you realise you’ve forgotten to pack them all-important care consumables. What do you do when you are 5 hours away from home?
Skiggle was inspired by Will’s story and is run by Helen (Will’s full-time carer) and Christine (Will’s mum and full-time carer).
Christine was a few hours away from home on holiday when she realised that she’d forgot Will’s (who has life-limiting quadriplegic spastic cerebral palsy) feeding milk. She contacted an out-of-hours doctor and a regional Children’s Hospital but with no luck, they had to drive back home.
This really got Christine and her husband thinking about ways to get care consumables wherever and whenever needed. In which Skiggle was founded.
“Skiggle is a nationwide online charity network of UK-based disabled people, family carers and health professionals.”
Skiggle
Skiggle provides multiple online communities where people can help one another by providing specialist disability equipment and care consumables in unexpected times:
- SOS- Through Skiggles website here you can request the essentials supplies you need free of charge (all stock comes from members home supplies).
- Marketplace- Skiggle also provides a Marketplace here where items can be offered again free of charge or bought and sold (again all stock comes from members home supplies).
- Facebook- Skiggle also provides a supportive online community and network where families and careers can have conversations.
Please note that Skiggle does not hold any supply themselves.
Skiggle now helps and supports over 10,000 people via social media and has a community of over 6000 members with 585 SOS messages that have been sent out. That’s so many people that have been helped, reassured, and found a friend in time of need. This charity is so significant to many people by providing such a vital service.
This charity shows us how beneficial the online community is and how much support this can provide. I raise awareness of online communities because of personal reasons such as how it’s helped me to become the person I am today. But Christine and Will’s story takes the power of the online community to a whole new level and it makes me look at my #VirtualOTPlacement in a different light. This story just fires my passion even more and I will continue to raise awareness and strive to make the benefits of the powerful community more known in the professional world.
Thank you for reading,
Georgia
@georgiavine4213
@GeorgiaVineOT
