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We’re celebrating Allied Health Professionals (AHP) Day 2022!

14 October 2022

Today Sheffield Children’s is celebrating Allied Health Professionals (AHP) Day!

We’re showcasing the amazing work and skills of our AHPs by sharing some of their stories – have a read about their roles, career journeys, and what they’re most proud of below.

AHPs make up the third largest clinical workforce in healthcare and work across 14 professions including: art therapists, drama therapists, music therapists, chiropodists/podiatrists, dietitians, occupational therapists, operating department practitioners, orthoptists, osteopaths, paramedics, physiotherapists, prosthetists and orthotists, radiographers and speech and language therapists.

Today is an opportunity to celebrate all members of the AHP community, including support workers, assistant practitioners, registered professionals, pre-registration apprentices and students.

A new national strategy for AHPs, called ‘AHPs Deliver’, has been developed this year to provide strategic direction to the AHP community across England. The strategy is designed to help AHPs and those they work with maximise their contribution to the aim of improving health outcomes for all, providing better quality care, and improving sustainability of health and care services.

Yvonne Millard, Chief Nurse and Executive Lead for AHPs at Sheffield Children’s, said: “I joined the Sheffield Children’s team only a few weeks ago and am really excited to begin working alongside my AHP colleagues in delivering outstanding care to our children, young people, their families and our community. Joining in with the AHP Day celebrations will be my first step on an exciting journey and I wanted to say as a nurse, and your Chief Nurse, that I am personally grateful every day to have such inspiring colleagues. Thank you for everything that you have done and continue to do for our communities.”

Rebecca Byers, Therapy Assistant Practitioner, Neuro-oncology Therapy Team

Tell us about your career journey and why you decided to become a Therapy Assistant Practitioner

I started my career within the NHS in 2016 and have been a Therapy Assistant Practitioner for six years. I initially started working in the Burns, Orthopaedics and Limb Reconstruction Team, and after four great years moved across to the Neuro-oncology Team during the time of the COVID pandemic.

I was aware of the work done by Sheffield Children’s from accessing the hospital through my own children and had also qualified in complimentary therapies. I wanted a more caring and rewarding role than I’d had previously, and when the opportunity came to work in the Physiotherapy and Occupational Therapy Team I applied. My initial role at Sheffield Children’s involved helping to make supportive garments and wheelchair cushions for patients alongside the therapy work, and now I am more involved in the rehabilitation programmes and direct patient care.

What does your role involve?

My role is very varied – no two days are the same! I support Occupational Therapists and Physiotherapists to rehabilitate patients in therapy sessions while they are an inpatient. I help patients to carry out therapy programmes, using play and physical activity to help them remain

active throughout their treatment and beyond, once discharged home. I also work with babies and children to assist them in their development and guide parents and families to prepare them for going home, as well as supporting with general admin tasks to keep the team running smoothly.

As an AHP, what are you most proud of?

I love being able to make a difference to patients and their families lives and helping them through their time at Sheffield Children’s. It may be simply helping them to sit up or get out of bed after surgery, or liaising with other services and colleagues to enable them to prepare everything to go home.

Rachel Dawson, Dramatherapist, Becton Centre for Children and Young People

Tell us about your career journey and why you decided to become a Dramatherapist

My career started in teaching Drama in a mainstream secondary school. I loved teaching and noticed that through the play a therapeutic opportunity would arise for young people to learn about themselves through the exploration of their characters. I wanted to focus on this further and so returned to University to complete a Masters’ in Dramatherapy, which was required by the Health and Care Professions Council to practice psychotherapy using drama and theatre techniques. Through my training I completed clinical placements where I worked in both adult and child mental health care. One of my placements was here at Sheffield Children’s and this is where I’ve been in role since graduating back in 2015.

What does your role involve?

I offer individual and group therapy for young people at the Becton Centre. There is a weekly group therapy session for our young people on both Emerald and Sapphire Lodges where we come together to play and create, supporting each other to share opinions and express ideas whilst engaging team-building activities and story-making devices. I am also trained in offering creative clinical supervision where we use a variety of activities such as drawing, chair work, role play and mapping, to explore, reflect, and assess our clinical work.

The teams on all lodges across Becton can refer young people to Dramatherapy. I offer a short assessment to consider therapy outcomes and if the therapy form is appropriate for the needs of the young person. This also provides the young person with some ideas and expectations to what the therapy could offer and gives insight into how we work in Dramatherapy.

Sessions offer a holistic, person-centred approach to young people’s care, and depending on the young person’s desires, can also focus on exploring identity, confidence development or support in management care. Dramatherapy uses a variety of tools and methods including role play, craft and drawing activities such as mask, puppet and scenery making. Sessions can also offer creative writing either in script writing, poetry, or song writing. We also invite young person to create their own stories using their characters to explore issues to aid understanding in their own mental health difficulties. I’ve offered many Dramatherapy sessions looking at themes and characters from television programmes, films, or comic book adventures to help young people to step out of their own shoes and spend time in a fictional reality. By stepping outside our world, we can safely explore issues and challenges to gain a deeper understanding of why we feel what we feel. This then leads us to create strategies to support our emotional responses, anxieties, feelings of vulnerability or frustration.

As an AHP, what are you most proud of?

I’m proud of being part of a larger team of other AHPs who provide young people with alternative methods of care. It is great to be recognised and accepted into the multi-professional team as one of the only Dramatherapists in the Trust. I believe the AHP group can help promote and educate the wide variety of crucial roles we provide in the NHS.

How are you working to achieve a key priority from the new AHP Strategy for England: AHPs Deliver?

The AHP strategy promotes and educates the diverse and varied expertise that we all bring to the NHS. I believe we have always been offering these strategies – it is in our training and our professional nature to be inclusive, innovate with data and use evidence-based strategies and devices. This strategy is promoted among other colleagues, to underline and highlight the roles and clinical expertise we offer our patients. It also celebrates the achievements and perspectives that we bring to a patient’s care – thinking holistically and offering alternative medicine to support recovery and recuperation.

Development Coordination Disorders (DCD) Team, Ryegate Children's Centre

We are Josie Hamilton (Therapy Assistant Practitioner), Jay Paling, Laura Davies, Ellie Baldwin and Rachel Maton (Therapy Assistants) in the Developmental Coordination Disorders (DCD) Team!

What does the DCD Team do? 

Our team works with patients who have coordination difficulties. Some of our patients are also on the autistic spectrum and may have ADHD, amongst other neurodiverse conditions. Our goal is to try and bring these patients in line with their peers in their development, focusing on fine motor and gross motor skills.

Our assistant roles are very varied within the DCD Team.  We receive referrals from the Physiotherapists and Occupational Therapists in the team once they have seen and assessed the patient and agreed goals with the family.

We work one-to-one with patients and their parent or carer to achieve independence skills at Ryegate Children’s Centre or at home, such as using cutlery, fastening and unfastening uniform buttons, and washing independently. We coordinate and run bike groups (link) and football taster sessions, helping patients to achieve independent bike riding and basic football skills within a small group setting.  We also work with more complex patients and teach them how to ride a bike within a two-to-one or one-to-one setting.

We carry out IT assessments with patients, where we screen their current typing ability and IT knowledge and provide a summary with recommendations to further progress these.  We carry out handwriting assessments with patients and pass this information back to therapists to interpret and discuss with families.  We work in schools to provide one-to-one and handwriting sessions to patients who require additional support.  We also cover hydrotherapy sessions for the Therapists in our team, improving water confidence and swimming skills in a therapeutic setting/warm water pool.

As a Therapy Assistant Practitioner, Josie runs her own hydrotherapy clinic where she sees patients to work on water confidence and achieve hair washing and showering goals. Josie also has her own caseload of patients that she independently manages, along with consistently devising, modifying, and evaluating therapy programmes.

We also provide preparatory resources, to help our more anxious patients feel prepared for our sessions. We use social stories, videos introducing ourselves and what we will be doing, or a simple voice note to parents or carers with a photo of us, saying hello to the patient.  We set up and run workshops alongside therapists and we recently ran a transition workshop for Year 6 patients and their parents and carers around moving up into secondary school.

We support each other throughout our working week but make dedicated time monthly in the way of an assistants meeting, where we can bring each other up to date with things we are currently doing, run in-service training, share new resources and ideas, and check in on each other and our overall wellbeing.

Our collective employment backgrounds include working as a community nursery Special Educational Needs (SEN) Coordinator, supporting children with SEN in a summer camp or nursery setting, support work for adults with SEN and gym/personal training work with adults.

What do you enjoy the most about working in the DCD Team?

We thoroughly enjoy how varied and active our job is – we are not sat down for very long! We especially love that we get to work with our patients in the community, where we are able to witness the application of their new skills in their daily life.

Katie Ellis – AHP Support Worker Project Officer Lead

Tell us about your career journey

I started my NHS career as a Physiotherapy Assistant in 2004 at Sheffield Children’s at the acute hospital site. I became a hybrid Therapy Assistant along the way when the Physiotherapy and Occupational Therapy teams merged their Support Worker workforce. I have worked in different teams across the service at the acute site and in the community. I have had the privilege to have worked with some great Physiotherapists, Occupational Therapists and AHP Support Workers, who have believed in my potential, invested in me professionally and encouraged and empowered me to keep learning.

I’m currently on secondment from my role as a Therapy Assistant in the Early Years Physiotherapy and Occupational Therapy team at Ryegate, having just started in a new post as the Allied Health Professional (AHP) Support Worker Project Officer Lead for Sheffield Children’s. This is a brand-new role, where I am supporting the implementation of the Health Education England (HEE) framework for the AHP Support Workforce in the Trust. At Sheffield Children’s, we have fantastic AHP Support Workers who work in the Dietetics, Physiotherapy and Occupational Therapy, Theatres, Speech and Language and Radiology Teams.

What is the HEE AHP Support Worker framework?

The HEE framework, called ‘Allied Health Professions’ Support Worker Competency, Education and Career Development Framework’ was released in October 2021. It provides guidance on training, education, and competencies for AHP Support Workers and demonstrates a clear pathway for recruitment and progression. As a Trust we are using the framework to guide our future workforce planning.

What do you enjoy most about working at Sheffield Children’s?

I love my role as Therapy Assistant in the Early Years Team. It’s a privilege to be able to work with children and their families at such a young age to help them achieve their goals and reach their full potential.  It’s an incredible experience to see a child learn and master a new skill and knowing your help has made a lasting and positive impact on their life. It also fun, lots of singing, playing and games to get the children engaged in their therapy treatment. Recognising, and adapting your levels of ‘silly’, calm, gentle, empathetic, enthusiastic or patient to suit the child on that day to get the best out of them, whilst also remembering their therapy goals, is really rewarding.

I have seen the incredible contribution made by AHP Support Workers and in my new role, I am excited about the opportunity for development and progression that this project offers to the AHP Support Worker workforce!

Alan Royle – Advanced Physiotherapist, Gait and Motion Laboratory

Tell us about your career journey and why you decided to become a Physiotherapist 

My interest in physiotherapy began when I accumulated enough injuries in the pursuit of mediocre sporting performance to seek some rehabilitative support. It provided a moment of reflection on the diverse health-related careers available in the NHS and the opportunities this provided to contribute to the collective endeavour of improving or maintaining the health and wellbeing of those that needed it most. Within the year, I had made a speculative application to study physiotherapy as a (notionally!) mature student.

After cutting my teeth in an adult district hospital, I secured a rotational position at Sheffield Children’s Hospital. It was here that I had the good fortune of working with colleagues that had a passion for integrating research into clinical practice, for driving innovation with evidence to provide a better service for the children, young people and families we serve. I was inspired to embed research into my own practice and career. Thankfully, an opportunity to specialise in gait analysis presented itself, a service that is naturally orientated to the sciences. Here I was supported to realise my research ambitions and within two years I made a successful application for the NIHR Pre-Clinical Academic Fellowship. The fellowship has been an unrivalled opportunity to develop the skills, knowledge, experience, and contacts necessary to make an application for an NIHR funded clinical academic doctorate to investigate the impact of impaired balance and falls on the lives and walking function of children and young people with cerebral palsy.

What does your role involve? 

At the Gait and Motion Laboratory we are predominately responsible for the assessment and analysis of walking function for those with mobility impairments. We use motion capture technology to scrutinise current function and monitor change, provide considered recommendations for treatment and measure outcomes from intervention. Complimenting this clinical work are numerous service development projects, educational endeavours and collaborative activities with academic organisations and special interest groups.

As an AHP, what are you most proud of? 

I am most proud of the values our professions encapsulate, of treating people as individuals, putting them first and ensuring they are at the centre of our service delivery. The therapeutic relationship and interpersonal skills that are at the core of the profession can be powerful tools for facilitating autonomy and for appreciating the holistic, multi-dimensional nature of a young person’s health and wellbeing.

How are you working to achieve a key priority from the new AHP Strategy for England: AHPs Deliver?

My focus is on the development of an integrated, clinical academic role in my service. I want to build research capacity and embed these activities into the fabric of what we offer as a service and in doing so support clinical innovation and quality improvement at a local, national, and international level.  My next step towards this is an application for the NIHR Doctoral Clinical and Practitioner Academic Fellowship. This work will provide a better understanding of the impact of balance and impaired stability on the walking function of children and young people with cerebral palsy. We will develop a quantitative tool to better measure walking balance and support improved outcomes for children and young people in the future.

Rachael Winder – Operating Department Practitioner

Tell us about your career journey and why you decided to become an ODP 

I became an ODP following my partner’s first aortic valve replacement as I felt I was lacking in knowledge and understanding of the procedure and ramifications – or some might say I was being nosy!

I took a career break after ten years due to the struggles of childcare and medical complications. My return to the theatre world happened during COVID. I chose paediatrics after working in Special Educational Needs for 15 years as an unqualified alternative curriculum coordinator. I missed the recognition my ODP registration gave me and the validation that I was a professional member of a multi-disciplinary team. I undertook a return to practice course at a crazy time and have never looked back!

What does your role involve?

I now work within the education team and have an on-call rota for out of hours and emergency surgical care. I endeavour to be an ambassador for autism and learning disability and support health and well-being within the department.

As an AHP, what are you most proud of?

I am proud to call myself an ODP and love explaining our role to people who have never heard of us!

How are you working to achieve a key priority from the new AHP Strategy for England: AHPs Deliver?

I hope the AHP strategy will put us firmly on the map as a future career pathway for young and old, securing the future of the profession due to our complex surgical and airway management skills, critical care transferable abilities, technology and digital knowledge, whilst always being organised and effective workers who value the health of our communities we serve.

Dr Nicki Barker – Advanced Physiotherapist and Principal Clinical Researcher

What does your role involve? 

I have a joint role as an Advanced Physiotherapist and Principal Clinical Researcher – my role is unique in the Trust! I have a clinical role looking after respiratory outpatients and my speciality is dysfunctional breathing and complex asthma. I also look after children with general respiratory conditions, such as bronchiectasis and protracted bacterial bronchitis. I will see inpatients with particularly complex asthma who come into hospital as planned admissions, to help work out why they are as symptomatic as they are.

Tell us about your career journey and why you decided to become a researcher

I’ve worked at Sheffield Children’s as a Physiotherapist since 2003. I originally worked in cystic fibrosis, and then I left that role to do a PhD in 2010. The role that I have now evolved out of my PhD, which I finished in 2014.

I think you can’t separate clinical work from research activity. We’re working very hard at Sheffield Children’s to draw those strands together through our new clinical strategy, because it’s patients who drive the research that’s required. If you see patients and you understand their problems, then you can understand the problems that you’re trying to solve.

Researchers in Allied Health Professions aren’t as common as in the medical profession. It’s newer field and is taking more time to evolve that it has done in medicine.

As an AHP, what are you most proud of?

I’m proud that I am forging a pathway for other people – there are now more colleagues following me and pursuing research.

I’m also proud that the dysfunctional breathing service that we have at Sheffield Children’s is a national leading service. We created the first specific dysfunctional breathing clinic for young people. Dysfunctional breathing is where people suffer from symptoms that are not specifically related to a disease, for example, if somebody is short of breath, or has chest pains and can’t breathe properly. This is generally because they don’t use their breathing muscles in the right way at the right time, so their breathing is not efficient. When we first started the service, people didn’t know about it as a condition, and it wasn’t very well-recognised. Now everybody talks about it like it’s been around forever!

I’m proud of how AHPs work, but also how they work within the multidisciplinary team. For example, at Sheffield Children’s we’ve developed some really specialist clinics, such as an exercise laryngoscopy clinic with a respiratory consultant, ENT, an advanced physiologist and myself. We all see a patient at the same time, so they get a whole raft of testing all in one go. They come in with a big problem and they leave having been tested for all different possibilities, with an answer and a treatment plan. Patients travel a long way to see us – Sheffield is at the forefront. We have really strong multidisciplinary teams in respiratory – for example in complex asthma, dysfunctional breathing and cystic fibrosis.

How are you working to achieve a key priority from the new AHP Strategy for England: AHPs Deliver?

The obvious one for me would be the research priority! My work also fits into the leadership priority – because we are leading in areas such as dysfunctional breathing, we can support colleagues around the country to be able to provide this care closer to home so patients don’t need to travel as far to see us.

Kerry Grady – Occupational Therapist, Neuro-oncology Therapy Team

Tell us about your career journey and why you decided to become an Occupational Therapist 

I always knew I wanted to work with children and young people and did work experience in a child development centre. I trained to be an Occupational Therapist straight from school and have worked in paediatrics in community and acute settings since then, mainly in the NHS.

What does your role involve?

Occupational Therapists support childhood occupations through assessment, goal setting and therapy, for example with play, sleep, eating and drinking, communication, sitting and school. A developmental approach is used to focus on each individual child and family, and we also support parents and carers in their roles too.  We help with discharge planning and ensure that the right services, equipment and support are in place.

In my current role I provide therapy and rehab for babies and children with conditions such as brain injury, spinal cord injury, brain tumours and leukaemia.

As an AHP, what are you most proud of?

I am most proud of our ability to be holistic, and child and family centred as a Therapy Team.  Therapy and rehabilitation are so important as they enable children and young people to reach their optimal potential, be independent and participate as fully as possible in their lives.

Wendy Dickens – Manager and Principal Therapist, Gait and Motion Analysis Service

Tell us about your career journey and why you decided to become a Physiotherapist

My interest in physiotherapy was ignited by my mother after she received physiotherapy, post-thoracic surgery. On investigation, it was clear that I was far more suited to physiotherapy than nursing – which I had been considering – and I have been very fortunate that this exciting career has suited me from day one.

I trained in Nottingham, my first rotational basic grade post (Band 5) was at Leicester Royal Infirmary and the second at St. Luke’s Hospital in Bradford. During this time, I also had the opportunity to be part of the physiotherapy team for the Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh. A two-year orthopaedic rotational senior II (Band 6) at Queen Alexandra Hospital Portsmouth followed.

I was keen to continue my education and completed a full-time MSc in Rehabilitation Studies at Southampton University, working in the evenings at the Chalybeate Private Hospital in Southampton to top up my charity funding. I briefly returned to the Queen Alexandra Hospital before recruitment to IBM as part of their occupational health programme, to head-up a health promotion programme for their Portsmouth manufacturing site. At the end of this contract, I worked in private practice including having the opportunity to travel to the European Cup competitions in Spain and Holland as physiotherapist to Havant Hockey Club.

I then spent 3 years in the USA, firstly in Texas setting up an outpatient service, followed by posts in South Carolina and Michigan. On return to the UK, I was recruited to a research study in Nottingham’s Queen’s Medical Centre investigating Gulf War Syndrome and it was here I met the gait analysis physiotherapist who inspired me onto my current career path.

What does your role involve?

I currently lead the Gait and Motion Analysis Service team of physiotherapists, clinical scientists, orthotists and clerical support. This role includes facilitating the ongoing development of the team and services and ensuring we are represented at Trust, national and international levels. Our laboratory is one of the leading clinical facilities in the UK, having been instrumental in developing the Gait Analysis National Standards. We were one of the first to achieve accreditation through the Clinical Movement Analysis Society of the UK and Ireland (CMAS), an annual requirement which requires significant time and team effort and continues to date. We have hosted two CMAS national meetings and maintained committee representation from its inception, ensuring our continued role in shaping this important national motion analysis organisation.

As an AHP, what are you most proud of?

We provide gait analysis to patients with a range of diagnoses for the purposes of clinical decision-making (surgery, tone management, orthotics, therapy), outcome assessment following intervention and to track change over-time. The team provides an excellent clinical service which is valued highly by patients and referrers alike. Our Friends and Family feedback is consistently positive, for example, in 2021 93% of our patients completed the questionnaire, of these 99% replied “very good” and 1% replied “good.”

How are you working to achieve a key priority from the new AHP Strategy for England: AHPs Deliver?

The team have presented at National and International Conferences annually since 2008, with an increasing portfolio of publications. Our investigations have helped to increase the understanding of a range of neurological and orthopaedic conditions, and we have developed new motion analysis models to advance understanding of foot function and centre of mass excursion. Both models have been well received by the international community.  The team also collaborates with Sheffield University (INSIGNEO) and Sheffield Hallam University (AWRC), with one PhD underway and another anticipated to start in 2023.

Our team aspires to grow into an international leader in the field of motion analysis with the aim of optimising outcomes for the children and young people we see. We are currently laboratory-based with a focus upon gait but are planning to incorporate upper limb analyses and more ecologically valid community-based analyses in the future. Our ongoing service developments will be in response to comprehensive stakeholder involvement including referrers, patients and families, to ensure we understand what is important to them.

We are currently in the initial stages of transferring our service to the Centre of Child Health Technology (CCHT). This represents a fantastic and unique opportunity for us achieve our vision through ongoing team and individual development and inclusive leadership.

Lauren Swift – Operating Department Practitioner

Tell us about your career journey and why you decided to become an Operating Department Practitioner 

I joined Sheffield Hallam University after completing my A-levels at school. I qualified in 2005 and started working at Sheffield Children’s. I have progressed from being newly qualified to becoming a senior member of the team. I now work as part of the clinical lead team managing day-to-day activity and colleagues in Theatres. I also have a separate role in the trust as the clinical support for Emergency Preparedness, Resilience and Response (EPRR).

What does your role involve?

Day-to-day I still have a clinical presence completing my trained role as an Operating Department Practitioner, working in Theatres and assisting the anaesthetists with operating lists. We are part of the crash team (who treat patients who go into cardiac arrest) and respond to Crash/Trauma or Code Red bleeps. We assist on the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit and High Dependency Unit with ventilated patients, transferring them around the hospital for treatment.  The role is varied and challenging at times.  As part of the clinical lead team, we ensure the efficient running of theatre lists, dealing with colleague, equipment, and flow issues. I oversee the education team in theatre, who work hard to ensure that all students, new starters, and visitors are appropriately prepared for and trained.

As an AHP, what are you most proud of?

I am proud of the growth of the profession.  It’s still rare I meet people who understand what an ODP is and their role however, more people have heard of it over the last few years. People are fascinated when I explain to them what I do – we all work very hard to promote and encourage the profession to move forward.

How are you working to achieve a key priority from the new AHP Strategy for England: AHPs Deliver?

We promote all practitioners to undertake the team leader role in theatres. As a team, we train all our staff on Human Factors and encourage a culture where all are empowered to have a voice.

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