It’s day 3 of #YouCanCare week! Today at CCL, we are celebrating two wonderful colleagues Colin Tilley, Day-to-Day Manager of Respite and Sophie Hunt, Support Worker.

Sophie Hunt, Support Worker

Sophie is pictured with Amy enjoying a water fight in the garden! Sophie is a Support Worker at Walford Lodge and started at CCL 1 year and 3 months ago. Prior to working at CCL, Sophie worked in the hospitality industry as a supervisor of a restaurant. Sophie decided she wanted to change career paths. She knew she wanted to help people and make them smile, so working in care caught her eye.

When asking Sophie what she loves about working as a Support Worker, she said “I love going into work knowing I’ve helped people, making their days as fun as possible! I definitely feel like I made the right career move!”.

A big thank you to Sophie!

 

Colin Tilley, Day-to-Day Manager of Respite

Colin is pictured with Nabeel with their homemade lasagne! Collin is CCL’s day-to-day manager of Respite at our Greenfield scheme. Colin joined CCL 10 years ago and started as a Support Worker. He is very adaptable and has worked at most of our schemes, so knows our residents very well. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, our respite scheme has been closed, so Collin has been based in our Harley Road and High Ridges schemes.

 

Before Colin joined CCL, he was a Lighting Engineer. In fact, Colin’s journey to caring is an interesting one. When Colin was a young boy, his plan was to leave home and train as a Mental Health nurse, working with adults with learning disabilities. Sadly, Colin’s dad was diagnosed with cancer, so Colin decided he needed to stay and nurse him instead of leaving for nurse training. Instead, Colin studied business and went on to progress in various business roles in the electrical and lighting industry, including telesales, office supervisor, sales representative, setting up two electrical wholesalers in Leicestershire and then went on to become a lighting engineer. In the midst of this, Colin also became a holistic therapist!

 

Toward the end of Colin’s career as a lighting engineer, he was made redundant twice, so decided it was time to do something new. Amongst Colin’s pondering of what he would do next, he visited Abergele and was sat in a Café when a group of guys with learning disabilities came into the café, sat at his table and started talking to him. The Support Workers who were accompanying the guys commented on how Colin was a natural and, suddenly, he knew what he wanted to do!

 

The week after Colin had met these lovely guys in a Café, he saw an advert for a job fair where he met CCL. He liked what CCL were offering, their vision and what they stood for. Needless to say, he was offered a Support Worker role at CCL and he hasn’t looked back since! In a way, Colin’s life has gone full circle and he is now in the role he wanted to be in 30 years ago.

 

When asking what Colin likes about his job he said “Making a difference. Genuinely making a difference to the guys lives and making them smile. If you can make them genuinely smile, it’s absolutely wonderful”. Colin also added “I always make sure everyone is included in everything and love to get the guys involved in different activities”.

Colin has some very fond memories at CCL and recalled a moment with Charanjit, some time ago, when he was finally able to make a drink. Colin had been helping him to achieve this goal and finally he completed it. It was a huge achievement and so rewarding.

A big thank you to Colin for sharing such an incredible story!

 

Please note: some of the pictures were taken prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.