My name is Jill Singh and I started with the Trust as an Associate Educator: Learning Disabilities and Autism in April of this year. Following a successful bid to The Burdett Trust; a plan was put in place to improve the Trust’s LD training program. This included more use of co-trainers and a temporary Associate Educator post; which I was recruited into. Training in these areas is currently voluntary but will soon be mandatory.

It has definitely been interesting starting a new job in the middle of a worldwide pandemic and it helped that I knew the people in the Learning Disability (LD) Liaison Team and Derriford Autism Service really well beforehand. I have worked alongside the Trust since 2010 as an Independent LD Advocate and run the Derriford User Group.

My new role involves supporting the teams to review and develop their training frameworks and facilitate face to face training with staff. When COVID hit we had to rethink our plans so I learnt how to shoot and edit films so we could still offer sessions in a safe way. I have recorded one hour sessions with Saoirse Read and Kate Bamforth and two six minute clips with Dave McCannon our co-trainer with a LD so we could still have user involvement with follow up workshops.

Like many members of staff I have had to master MS Teams and have become an administrator on ESR and OLM so I can book colleagues onto courses. We will be coming around the wards with promotional posters advertising dates for our sessions between September to December. Tiers 1-2 are covered in a short e-learning presentation and quiz and Tier 3 is a MS Teams session.

In the New Year we hope to offer Masterclasses exploring different themes. For more information on any of our sessions please contact the teams, look on our StaffNET pages or check our team Facebook accounts @DerrifordT  and @DerrifordAutism

Jill Singh
Associate Educator Learning Disabilities and Autism