I've just got back from leading a Sense holiday. Sense, the national deafblind and rubella association, runs a holiday programme for deafblind people  and has done for 38 years. Every summer groups deafblind adults / children and volunteers go away for a week together. The majority of holiday makers have a dual sensory impairment and a learning disability, and the majority of volunteers are hearing/sighted and don't have a learning disability - although some holiday makers don't have learning disabilities, and some deafblind people volunteer on Sense holidays. I've been involved with them for thirteen years.

I started volunteering on Sense holidays in 1999 and led my first holiday eleven years ago. I took a year off, when my twins were born, but was unable to stay away. I've canoed down the Thames with deafblind people, gone on roller-coasters, sun-bathed, swam in the sea, slept in a yurt at Broadstairs music festival, recorded CDs, sat up in the night, abseiled, climbed, eaten ice cream, made bread,  and learnt about myself through other people.

Sense holidays have been an important part of my life and this week reminded me why. I went away with four deafblind boys (none of whom had been born when I started volunteering with Sense), five volunteers, and a rather decrepit minibus to a holiday cottage in Wiltshire. The ten of us were together for a week and in that time we made picked fruit and made jam, went swimming, went to a theme park, fed animals on a farm, and had a holiday together. Ten people who didn't know each other very much at the start of the week grew to know each other, respect each other, and learn from each other. We had a great time and everyone enjoyed themselves.

We sat round a table and washed raspberries that we'd just picked. We jumped into the swimming pool and laughed. We sat up late and enjoyed ice cream. We went on rides and got wet. We ate slowly. We laughed a lot. Sometimes we got up late - and sometimes early. We rode on ponies and fed lambs. It was sometimes fun, sometimes hard work, and always enjoyable. Everyone did things they liked, at the pace they wanted to, and in the way they wanted.

This doesn't just happen - it's supported and made possible by an effective and efficient back office team and by a tremendous amount of paperwork. I know I wrote about thirty different risk assessments, a detailed holiday plan, and a load of budget and medication records. Every volunteer is police checked and trained, leaders are also checked, trained, and supported. Volunteering and amateurism are not an excuse for laziness or for not properly preparing. Volunteering and the big society aren't free, and don't happen without a significant investment of time and effort.

It's also important to say that volunteering and Sense holidays  aren't a replacement for decent respite, adequate benefits, trained specialist staff, good quality social care, and all of the things that create a decent just society for deafblind people.

Sense holidays are something different. Two groups of people - volunteers and holidaymakers come together and learn from each others ignorance. We explicitly aren't professionals, we aren't the experts and we don't know the "right" things to do. Deafblind people with learning difficulties, like many people with complex multiple disabilities, are often supported by an array of professionals with extensive experience and great skill at creating programmes to help people learn and develop. This is undeniably a good thing, but an effective programme is not a life. Messiness, complexity, enthusiasm, and mistakes are part of life. Volunteers make this possible. Intelligent, capable, people who are not experts, are not professionals, are not working, but are committed, are positive, are trying their best, and are led by the experts - deafblind people.

Holidays aren't, and shouldn't be, the whole of anyones life - they are moments of intensity, of difference, of exploration. Sense holidays have done this for me and I hope I've made this possible for some of the people on holidays I've led.