Mother: Catherine's 26 and we've got two older sons. The first one, Andrew is 35, he lives in Manchester . He works in IT. And Martin is 32, he will be 33 in October and he is a chef.

Father: Pretty good. She is capable of independent travel. She is very articulate, can hold a conversation with anybody on anything pretty well.

Mother: Usually she will start a conversation.

Father: Usually she will, yes. She needs to be doing something all the time, otherwise she gets bored and doesn't like being bored. She's not content with just watching the television. She will do that but it doesn't satisfy her for very long. So she does college courses. She does some work.

Mother: She loves listening to music. She's forever, when she's at the shop, browsing through CD's and she buys the latest things but I think that's probably her favourite.

Father: I think she would go to a disco every night.

Mother: She would if she had the chance, yes. She swims. That's her favourite form of exercise. She writes doesn't she?

Father: She does, a lot, yes.

Mother: Not stories, it's generally um,

Father: About life.

Mother: Yes about life. Things I would like to do. Things I have been doing and she uses the computer. She likes to put them on, print them out.

Mother: She's not very good at understanding money. She has improved quite a bit lately, but for instance if she has a £20 note she is not sure if she thinks something's going to cost say £2.35 she doesn't really understand how she can pay for that using a £20 note. We have to explain it over and over again.

Father: And it would take her a long time to work out how much change she needs so in that sense she's vulnerable.

Mother: And what else?

Father: Recently she has done a course at Newcastle and it was not the best of places to travel from by foot to get to the Central Station. And when we explained why we thought she should get a taxi it was because there are a series of underpasses. She wouldn't recognise when there are any hazards.
She would recognise the route and she would walk along it, but it wouldn't occur to her that there might be something around the corner or if someone walked up to her they might be up to some sort of mischief or whatever.

Mother: She's not as trusting as she was.

Father: No she's not but she's still very innocent and naïve.

Mother: Yes, naïve.