 Good evening, my name is Sarah and I work in the community ravenment service. So we are a team of occupational therapists and physiotherapists now and we work as part of a regaining independent service, so it's a short-term fast-paced service and we provide support and coordinate sort of long-term care plans for adults in West Sussex across the county. Historically we're split into different teams but to my knowledge we're now in a sort of situation where we're sort of covering cross county which has a lot of benefits to people because obviously we're spread out across the county living in different locations and now have a mix of home and a bit of office working so it's been a really interesting team to join. I joined West Sussex last year, I qualified in 2019 having previously worked in the acute setting and I've been pleasantly surprised actually how well suited I feel to the social care role and I think any experience you gain whether it be through practice placements or in your first role as qualified I think there's never any team you work in where the knowledge isn't then taken forward to your new role. I think my experience working in acute has really informed my understanding of bridging the gap between health and social care so I found that really to have been good stead for for my role as a social services OT. So as I said I work in RIS which is Regaining Independence. We're a team of OTs and we have one physiotherapist now and we work in partnership with Essex Care's Limited the care provider that cover care for adults within the whole of the county and we have very much goals focused short-term fast-paced so we're trying to really establish from from day one when we receive a referral to establish what's important to customers what is meaningful to them and really focus on reablement and determining what needs are longer term if they have needs identified. We work very closely with the social workers and we work towards assessments that are connected to the social care act so social care act is our bread and butter go to for information in terms of how we assess and well-being and putting customers needs and wishes first. My experience to date since joining the team eight months ago nine months ago now is it's been incredibly supportive I can't fault the team really in terms of their flexibility the professional approach to supervision absolutely oodles to support with in terms of learning if there's anything you want to learn the sky's the limit really I think there's plenty of scope to if you have a particular interest within community OT and whether it be moving and handling whether it be a condition-specific training yeah the sky's the limit I think if you express an interest in a particular area I think the management and supervision has been very open to supporting you in your interests and I think just mentioning before about flexibility of working I mean life happens people have commitments outside of work and health needs and personal needs and I can't say that I haven't ever been supported with that so yeah really open to managing work and life and being realistic about trying to be the best practitioner you can sort of really understanding well-being for ourselves as practitioners in terms of early practice support so I'm due to start the early practice framework next week and I've had time to to actually take on and learn about my role first so I've taken on a case load and really get myself stuck in and really understand more about the role before starting that I didn't have that opportunity in the NHS it was very much a preceptorship from month one and I think it's nice to really find your feet first and then take the opportunity to embark on further training so that's been really really good application I think really swatting up on again the CareRats as I mentioned earlier thinking about social care resources that are available online and also just making reference to some of the adaptations without delay documentation from the Royal College of OTs found that guidance really helpful to to support me in the interview questions I had when I applied for my role and have a good take measure I use my take measure almost every week so yeah definitely have a good take measure all sorts can come into my emails or from a telephone call I think we have a couple of different pathways so we have our community reablement customers that come in we also have a discharge to assess pathway the customers are discharged from hospital settings into the community and require ongoing assessment social care assessment and also customers that come our way that have got long-term conditions that sometimes need packages of the care starting and need some initial assessment to support before we refer on to the independent living service a very very case load every week's different learning every day and thoroughly enjoy the challenge and I quite like the faster pace of it so having that sort of variety but also being quick on your feet to to make some of those decisions I think for me a big a big challenge initially was stepping away from the stage of the acute acute setting so having professionals help professionals at your fingertips and having that supervision to hand informally and I found that quite quite a challenge initially in terms of stepping back and being more autonomous in my role and obviously with new ways of working we've relied heavily on on being home-based and having to book meetings in and times to speak to people in the team and but again that will change through the year as things begin to open up but I think it does give you the opportunity to really work on your time management skills being more autonomous practitioner and also your resilience as well managing your case load and I think there's always support there so it's never never feel like I'm too overwhelmed if the numbers are creeping up in terms of wait times and I feel like as long as you communicate regularly and manage your time well I think I think there's always support available