Gordon

"I've been working for Dimensions since 1995. Having worked in retail for 20 years, I wanted to have a career change, and was looking into Social Work. However, after getting a little experience as a Nursing Assistant I realised that I wanted to be working more directly with people with learning disabilities. I began as a Support Worker at one of our services in Sheffield. Three years later I became their Team Manager, until I was seconded to work on a project developing our supervision system. As I was working with this I started to help out more and more with training, and I officially became an L and D Advisor last year.

"Most days I am travelling around my region facilitating training. One of the best things about my job is that I'm always on the move – meeting new people and getting to see things from their perspective. I feel that I have a good base of experience which means I can help people to achieve what they want to be able to, to provide the best support. I can't say I'm the font of all knowledge though – I'm learning all the time too!

"The most interesting project I've worked on was in partnership with Skills for Care - the development of a system called Our Way of Working. It helps our Managers to support our staff and show them what to aim for. It also gives us chance to recognise the good work that people are doing. It's a way that we really put people first.

"I think that the future is looking really exciting but it will also be a big challenge – as more and more people will be getting individual budgets and directing their own support, we'll have to change our focus from training staff teams, to training individuals based on the needs of the people they support. There are lots of changes afoot and we will have to be very adaptable and flexible in order to help people to really get what they want from life."

Last updated: 27th June 2008 at 11:06:12