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First of all I will introduce myself. My name is Parveen Chowdhury. I was born in Bangladesh in 1962. I came to England when I was five years old. In 1973 I went back to Bangladesh with my mum - she was ill with typhoid and had been advised to return. We came back to England in January 1982 when I was 19 years old.

I was married on 31 May 1982 but it ended after three months. What happened was he left me because his father was ill. I was sad to see my husband go, but he was not my type - my mother had arranged the marriage - and he used to beat me up. My father told him to get out of my life. He went to Bangladesh and never came back.


I went to Brixton College and I studied English. I had my own shop in Brixton Centre in south London. I sold clothes, materials, three-piece suits, saris, English dresses and cardigans, vests and T-shirts. Business wasn't good - people didn't want to buy clothes all the time, so the shop closed and I went to a day centre in 1985.

No one would give me a job. I went to several interviews. Unfortunately Iwasn't successful. I was unemployed for eight years. Then in 1989 I went to do voluntary work. I did some voluntary work in Shared Community, Age Concern and some other projects in The London Borough of Lambeth.

I was caring for some older people, looking after the house. They were mostly disabled people. I looked after people in their homes. And I would take care of the house as well. What they did was give me a set of keys. I'd keep an eye on the house and cleaned everything that needed to be cleaned.

I also worked as a volunteer at Lambeth Accord, a charity that promotes the integration of disabled people into society. I went there as well and did office work and catering. After that I started college. Here Ilearned about City and Guilds and NVQs and so on.


In about 1995 I joined Pathway Employment Service at Clapham Common in south London. It found me a job with Mencap. So Pathway did a lot of stuff for me. The workers were David Williams and Carl. Carl used to take me to St James Park to the education and employment service there. I did a six-week work trial but I never succeeded in that department.

Another worker at Pathway was Charlotte. She took me to Mencap's national offices and showed me around and what they doing there. Mencap gave me a job. For three and a half years, it was a successful job which I'll never forget. It also gave me a lot of support to do my job but after three years and a half they made me redundant. After redundancy, I am at home. One day a week I go to college but the rest of the time basically I am looking for work. Pathway suggested I went to college but the tutors there don't think I am physically able to do the computers. So it's one day at a time and see how it goes.

Parveen Chowdhury is a service user with a learning difficulty