Pat Griffiths

I come from a family of volunteers so started at an early age.

Both my Nan and Aunty were in the WRVS and received BEM and MBE for their long service I used to help during school holidays in the running of WRVS canteen in Walton Hospital.

Strangely enough my Nan was one of the people who was also on the Fazakerley Hospital League of Friends and helped raised money for the Neurological Centre there.

Who would have known all those years later, that I would help, along with an amazing team of volunteers to run the Headway branch here in Llwyngwril.

I had not heard of Headway until my husband’s stroke back in 2009 and we were referred to The Brain Injury Service in Colwyn Bay. It was here where it all began.

Due to giving up work to become my husband’s full-time carer I needed something away from my own caring duties. So, I have been the chair of Headway since 2015 and we were known as Headway South Gwynedd, a subunit of Headway Gwynedd and Mon.

We have now bitten the bullet in 2023 and have decided to become a separate new Headway branch – Headway Meirionnydd.  This has become possible due to the fact I have so many wonderful people to help me in the running of Headway Meirionnydd.

We have lots of different themes to our meetings, some of which we open up to the public in sharing our meetings, such as presentations, quiz nights and other fundraising sessions.

We also love our trips out in the summer and our Christmas Lunch, which is always a very jolly occasion with a young gentleman who is a relative of one of our members always bringing a tear to our eyes with his amazing voice over the past 8 years. 

I was also very humbled to give a ‘carers view’ of dealing with a Brain Injury survivor presentation at last year’s Headway Cymru virtual conference. I now also am a member of the conference planning team for Headway Cymru’s annual conference. We have started planning for this year’s conference, so watch this space!