I love my job as a therapy assistant within the community learning disability health team, supporting the allied health professionals (AHPs).

My role is varied, and I am proud to work with the AHPs, who provide unique and specialist input.

On a typical day I might start off by making some Easy Read resources for people, such as communication keyrings; to enable people to express themselves more easily, or something to help someone with sequencing in their job.

I might then go and visit a service user who struggles to maintain a healthy weight; I monitor weight losses or gains and advise the dietitian of their progress. Some people’s families might need an opportunity to talk about issues within their caring responsibilities, and I am glad to be able to offer support to them too.

I might then go and visit a service user to enable them to identify their goals; for some people it may be that they would like to develop skills in certain areas (such as cooking, for example), or they may want to increase their independence in using public transport, and work with me using a graded approach to getting to and from different locations on their own. Or I may observe how someone carries out a particular task and make recommendations for how they may modify it, to make it easier and or safer for them.

Back at base, I might then need to complete an Easy Read discharge report for the physiotherapist to send to a service user that they have just finished working with.

This is just a small snapshot of the kinds of things that I do in a day!

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