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My name is Gail Carter, I work at Homefield College
and I’m the Social and Life Skills Coordinator.
I have a son who has autism as well as other learning difficulties.
I felt that I had a skill that I could use to benefit other people within the community.
At Homefield College we have various students with different diagnoses.
The majority have a diagnosis of autism.
We *** the students to see what skills they need to develop
to go into supported living after their placement with us.
When they first arrive we do our baseline assessments with those,
To ascertain what skills they've got or perhaps haven’t got,
and the skills they need to learn within their time with us.
Once students have achieved their goal, then we move them on to another skill,
for them to then progress.
We design courses specifically for students.
Everything is individualised and they learn at a rate to suit them.
We don’t all learn in the same way, we don’t all have the same needs.
So, by doing the assessments quite regularly we are able to adapt the students’ learning,
to incorporate their needs and wishes.
Homefield College is a vocational college.
We teach the students the skills they need to go out and work in the community.
We have various enterprises for them to use;
We have a horticultural section, we have a café in one of the local villages.
The community come into the café and they can buy things like old fashioned types of sweets,
or they can have a light snack which the students prepare.
The students are encouraged to communicate with their customers,
and with the resources that we make for the students
they can record what the public would like to eat or drink
and then they can go away, get their order ready and then serve the public.
Also at college we teach the students various life skills,
Which are probably skills which you or I might take for granted,
like being able to cook their own meals,
to be able to shop, to be able to get the various groceries for those meals; laundry, cleaning.
With those skills the students will hopefully be able to go on to live in supported living
and possibly for some students, they may even be able to go on and live independently.
The benefit of keeping our personal development moving forwards
is very important within our job role.
We cannot afford just to stand still; we have to keep developing our own skills
to be able to transfer that to our students.
I've developed my own practice by starting the Diploma for the Lifelong Learning Sector.
Within that we learn various ways of teaching various types of student,
whether they have learning difficulties or not.
I’m always after the new ideas which may benefit me at home with my own son,
or actually at college with our students.
I get great job satisfaction from working at Homefield.
Just seeing the tiny steps forward that each of our students make has great rewards.
If anybody was thinking about working in the Further Education sector,
I’d say, “Go for it, give it a go. Knowing that you have a skill
with which you can help somebody else succeed”.
Whether it’s a small step or a huge leap, it’s absolutely fantastic.