UNISON Ulearn Northern Ireland

I work as a HCA in outpatients. I’ve always been involved in caring, helping with caring for extended family and working as a private care assistant. I started in the Mater about five years ago and joined UNISON almost straight away because everyone else was in UNISON. First of all I went on a course with UNISON in the Ashton Centre to learn computers. It was great, I went after work and the pace was just right for me, because I knew nothing at all about computers.

And I also did a course on Bullying in the Workplace. That was really interesting, a lot of points came out about how bullying can be very subtle. We had lots of discussion on how to deal with bullying in a confident and professional way, and also how to support someone who is being bullied. Bullying is often something you are aware of, but you never get the chance to talk through all the issues surrounding it.

I’ve just started the Open University K100 Understanding Health & Social Care course. When I heard about it, I immediately wanted to apply, but I was thinking that maybe at near 50 I was too old, and I’ve never been good a spelling and that has held me back before. But I reckoned that this was too good an opportunity to miss. I’m on my own and I’m not in a position to go back to education full time, besides I wouldn’t want to be in a class full of young ones. One of the things I liked about the K100 was that it could lead to different things, I’d really like to be a social worker, and perhaps with this qualification I might be able to apply for something like a social work assistant’s post, then go on and do a social work qualification. In the meantime I’m really enjoying the discussions in the class, we’ve been talking about how everything in the hospital is so geared up towards a biomedical approach, just curing people, rather than looking at other social factors are affecting their health such as poor housing. The best thing is that we’re discussing things that I know about – about patient care, about health in a broad sense. I’m very grateful for the chance that UNISON has given me to help me develop personally and professionally.