Clare Harvey - Video Profile
Transcript
I originally trained when I left school as a nursery nurse so I've always enjoyed working with children. I then went on to university and did a teaching degree and I realised at that point that teaching really wasn't the career for me. But I'd always been quite interested in the field of social work so I did some voluntary work for a year with a family centre to gain experience of working with children and families. I then applied to West Sussex as an Assistant Care Manager. I think West Sussex provide excellent training opportunities and I was able to train in social work, which is where I originally started. The support I received was excellent and I had very good encouragement from my line managers and also my colleagues. I think there has been a lot of change in West Sussex but I think it's actually been a positive change. I think the new re-organisation and the structure that's been put in place is more geared up to working with different client groups. I have seen, in other teams, individual budgets high on the agenda. I have also done some work in a child disability team that used individual budgets and they were very successful, giving the young people and children much more control over the services they provided. Colleagues I work with are extremely supportive, with a range of different experiences so, for example, if I have an issue that I might not be able to resolve I know that I can access support from my colleagues who might be able to give me the right advice. In the team I currently work for, we're very much young person driven rather than process driven. We do have a new electronic recording system in place but we're very much centred on the young person rather than the process of what we work to.
