Coppermill Care

I have worked within the health and care social industry for 22 years. It has been quite a journey and working through ranks consistently has been key to my professional development.

I become a carer in 2002, whilst also pursuing my career as a student. Through constant personal and professional development in a field that I am so passionate about, I was promoted to Team Leader, Group Care Leader, Assistant Manager and Deputy positions over the years.

For the last 2 decades, I have been working in residential care homes, offering mainstream care, for individual who live with dementia and learning difficulties.

I became a Registered Manager in February 2017 and managed a small size care home in Harrow, London. I then joined Coppermill Care, in Harefield, Uxbridge, in December 2022 as the Registered Home Manager. My philosophy in care is to work closely with individuals that use our services, as well as the stakeholders of the company, to ensure we are building a quality care system that provides the best care for our users.

Building staff confidence and the right team culture and attitude is key to ensuring we provide a safe and comfortable environment for our residents at Coppermill. This is why I work closely with all the staff and ensure we always maintain a positive culture with a "can do" attitude.

Residents views are heard and their empowerment is key to our service provision and ensuring that we are meeting their individual needs.

As a Registered Manager, my vision is to support staff development and collaborate with residents and health professionals, to maintain and support the residents’ wellbeing at Coppermill Care.

Having an earlier background in the police service, I started working in the healthcare field since 2016 and I'm proud to say Coppermill Care was my first Care Home.

It was always my aim to grow professionally at Coppermill Care and also develop my skills and deepen my knowledge in the health and social care environment.

Coppermill Care offered me the first opportunity to become Health Care Assistant and that was when my journey started. As my passion grew and I became more experienced, I had the opportunity to achieve an internal promotion to Senior Health Care Assistant. Later in my career I was promoted to Head of Care at Coppermill Care and then interim Deputy Manager in the absence of the Registered Manager. In 2023, I became the Deputy Manager of Coppermill Care. It has been such a great journey and I am so proud to be in this position, making a direct positive contribution, to the lives of our residents.

Professional development has always been my aim and I have always strived to achieve further academic knowledge in parallel to gaining hands on experience. This ambition has led me to pursuing my Health and Social level 5-6 (BA) degree and my future plan is to become a Mental Health Care Consultant and Specialist.

Finally, I am passionate about individuals’ wellbeing. I maintain professionalism and work equally with staff and other health care agencies to ensure that person centred care for all of our residents is achieved. My main belief is in fairness, openness and transparency in all aspects of care and this defines my integrity.

I came to the UK 9 years ago hoping to provide my family a better life. Working in Coppermill Care gave me the opportunity to evolve and build my professional career and my self-confidence day by day. The process of becoming the best version of myself was not easy from the beginning, coming here from a different background with English as a second language, encountering challenges and new situations everyday, dealing with ideas and perceptions - all of these contributed to the person who I am today and I am so proud of everything I have established and the opportunity for growth whilst at Coppermill.

I started as a carer with no experience. Since then, I have studied and completed level 2, 3 and finally level 5 in Health and Social Care Management and today I am the Head of Care. We all work for the same purpose, to support and meet our residents needs, therefore helping people is at the core of our values.

I have been in hospitality for 9 years and have to say cooking has always been a source of comfort and joy for me. I find comfort in the kitchen and I love the process of transforming ingredients into something that is beautiful and delicious.

My experiences have allowed me to be able to focus on efficiency, cost savings, customer satisfaction, food safety and sanitation, problem solving, experienced kitchen equipment knowledge and most of all team work.

I chose to move to England because of the fantastic food standards and health and safety laws where I believe I will be able to excel in my career and specifically Coppermill Care where I know I will be supported in my journey.

My academic achievements include a Bachelor of Hotel Management (BHM) and this has resulted to increase my self-esteem and self-confidence as well as professional development.

When I started working at Coppermill I have always felt positive and happy and am excited to continue working hard to continuously increasing my knowledge.

Accepting the job offer at Coppermill care and activities coordinator was
the best career decision I have made so far. I started this role in March
2024 and have not looked back since. I look forward to going to work every day.

I have 27 years of experience working with in the fitness industry, initially as a
fitness class instructor, writing the fitness class, and activity programmes, and
arranging community events. I later progressed to assessor and tutor within my
role which led to a promotion of “Area Group Lead” Where I oversaw and wrote
the activities and fitness class programmes for 7 leisure centres.

My specialism and my passion throughout my fitness career was always towards
older adult fitness and wellbeing. I taught older adult fitness classes, falls
prevention, and chair fitness classes at within centres and Libraries for the
London Borough of Hillingdon and Age UK.

In 2016 I made the decision to train to become a Carer, which turned out one of the best decisions I had made. Supporting people, enabling people to live their lives in their own homes, and seeing the difference I was making was very rewarding.

My 104-year-old grandfather had inspired me as he was still living independently in a sheltered accommodation facility and frequently told me all he wanted was his independence. Unfortunately, after frequent falls, and for his own safety my grandfather moved into residential care, which turned out to be not one of the best, visiting my grandfather opened my eyes to many things, and I decided I wanted to make a difference and work in this in this type of setting. The opportunity to work more closely with residents daily, and build relationships was becoming stronger.

When I saw a position at Coppermill Care Home advertised and I applied. As soon as I walked in, I knew I wanted to work here, it was totally different to where my grandfather had been - it was warm,
welcoming, and everyone engaging and they were happy! I remember thinking my grandfather would have been happy here.

I am a “people person” I care about people. My mission is to make each one of our residents smile each day and to help make our residents lives as happy and as fulfilled as possible through meaningful activities while respecting their dignity, independence, their choices, and opinions. My approach to designing activities for our residents is person centred and I consider the needs and goals, and individual likes and dislikes or each of our residents where possible. I believe in team work, collaboration, and community engagement I will continue to develop my own skills and leverage the experience of others within the Coppermill family and listen to our residents and
their families.