Working in adult social care - video transcript

[Christian is at his home talking about his job.]

Christian: My name is Christian Narayan Singh. I'm a senior practitioner in a Canterbury and coastal safeguarding team.

[Amelia is outside a hospital talking about her job.]

Amelia: My name is Amelia Taylor. I'm an occupational therapist for social services in Kent County Council.

[Ann is in her office talking about her job.]

Ann: I'm Ann Redman, I'm the service manager for Ashford and Canterbury coastal. I also have continuing health care lead for the county of Kent.

Christian: We're looking to relocate from Manchester, so I started to look for a new job, saw an opportunity for a senior practitioner social worker and one of the locality teams which is based in Whitstable. We wanted to look at how we could live a different life in a more rural part of the country.

Amelia: I've always kind of been interested in anatomy and how people's mind works their psychology and things like that. I think occupational therapy (OT) it is just very well-rounded, so looks at the person as a whole within their environment.

Ann: Well I started 40 years ago this October and as a clerk. I wanted to make a difference, I developed into a social worker. I wanted to support people to live their lives as independently as possible and to reach their full potential.

Amelia: I like to think of myself as an advocate for people that maybe have difficulty sort of voicing what they want or feel like they're lost in the system a little bit. So that's a really positive thing about occupational therapy I feel that we have well equipped to do that.

Christian: The managers that I work with have a real good grasp of what it means to be a social worker and a practitioner who wants to ensure that people and the staff that work with us, have the best possible opportunities.

Ann: Kent County Council is always redeveloping itself and moving forward you have to be prepared to move through change, constant change, but government is all about change and people are about change and social work is about change so all of those things I think come together to actually make it a really interesting job and yeah I've been here a long time.

Amelia: When I applied for my degree, my manager was really supportive she wrote me a really glowing statement to support my application. My colleagues are amazing we work really well together.

Ann: You need to be able to spend time with your family as well as work and to get that balance as well as promoting your own wellbeing, but your health is important and Kent County Council takes all that into consideration.

Christian: As long as I can look to provide services that ensure that people's unique needs are met that they're safe and they'll have good quality of lives no matter what the background then I think we're doing something right.