What is your job title?

Graduate Development Officer

What does this involve?

A bit of everything – I am attached to one of the Directors so I work in several different areas in the North of England. What I’m doing tends to change from week to week depending on the development needs of different services. At the moment I am helping to set up day services in Leigh, Leeds, Warrington and Scunthorpe. These services will offer meaningful activities to people with learning disabilities and mental health conditions. As part of this I help out with marketing and I also liaise with healthcare professionals, partner organisations, service users and their families. I also help to plan events such as Christmas parties and days out; this is really fun as it’s great to see our service users enjoying themselves.

Since joining Creative Support I have gained experience in recruitment, finance management, auditing and service user consultation. It’s a great role as no two days are ever the same and you get loads of experience in different areas.

How long have you worked at Creative Support?

I started working at Creative Support in May 2012, so I am a relative newbie! I am looking forward to reaching my one year anniversary.

What is the best and worst thing about working at Creative Support?

The best thing is definitely working with the service users as that is what we are all about. As part of my role I sometimes spend time supporting people with activities and that’s really enjoyable and to be honest it doesn’t even feel like work. The worst thing has to be the occasional early mornings, but it’s fine once I’ve had a strong cup of coffee.

What is one of your favourite memories of working at Creative Support?

I really enjoyed the recent Christmas party we held in Warrington. It was great to see all of our service users and staff having so much fun.

By Josh Wharton, North West and North Lincs Development Officer 

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