Senior support professional

Career journey

Tommy's working life began with a career as a professional footballer, playing for Leicester City, Grimsby Town and Birmingham City. After retiring from the sport, Tommy trained as a police officer and spent the next chapter of his career journey working on community projects aimed at reducing anti-social behaviour amongst young people.

On retiring from the police service, Tommy began to search for a new career challenge. He learnt about care roles through a friend who was working as a support worker at a day service. Tommy visited the service and started to do some casual hours. Tommy's background in the police and sports coaching meant that he had the perfect set of skills for the role and was quickly taken on as a fulltime member of support staff.

Tommy now works for Support & Connections, a day service in Melton Mowbray, as a senior support worker. Tommy's main role has been to expand the range of sports opportunities available to service users.

Since joining the team in 2013, Tommy has established an inclusive football team, tennis sessions, multi-sports sessions, cycling and golf. Tommy has recently coached a group of service users through a FA coaching qualifications and a Sports Leadership Award.

Day in the life of a senior support worker

The service that Tommy works for runs a weekly timetable of activities. Tommy's daily schedules usually include a mixture of leading group sessions and working with individual service users to support them with learning new skills and participating in fulfilling activities.

On a Thursday, Tommy leads a gardening enterprise session in the morning. During the session, the group maintain the gardens at Northfields Tennis Club in Syston. Each service user earns money for the work they do as part of the enterprise. After this session, the group have lunch and Tommy supports the group with tasks such as preparing food, personal care and deciding which activity to do in the afternoon session.

On a Thursday afternoon, Tommy runs a training session for the Syston Town Juniors inclusive football club. The team is made up of adults with a range of physical and learning disabilities. They compete in tournaments as part of the Leicestershire Inclusive Football League. Tommy's role in these sessions is to empower each individual to learn new skills, gain confidence and get maximum enjoyment out of taking part.

On two days a week, Tommy works 1:1 with a young man who has autism and complex needs. Tommy supports him to do activities such as sport, swimming, cycling, gardening and woodwork. This role requires an immense amount of patience and flexibility as Tommy must respond to the person's changing mood and needs. This can often mean changing activity plans at the last minute.

At the end of the day, Tommy helps people to get buses and taxis to travel home. He then works with the rest of the team to ensure that the facilities are clean. Tommy also completes record logs for the day's activities and records any issues that occurred during his sessions.

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