Assistant Team Manager
Disability Alliance

Tim P

0.00.03 My name is Tim P and I work as an assistant team manager at a local adult services team. As a team, we assess older adults in the community in respect to remaining independent in their own homes so for example, if we assess somebody and they need some help with getting washed and dressed in the morning then we can arrange services to do that.

00.00.38 Well, I’d had a number of operations as a I was going through my younger life and into my teens but I think things came to head at the last operation which was when I was 17 or 16, or 17, where I then acquired my disability in terms of me not being able to walk.

00.01.02 So basically it was a mind shift really in terms of what can one do next. I always had supportive parents. My mum was a district nurse. Her understanding of other people’s issues in terms of what they have to contend with health wise helped her to come to terms with supporting me as a son. And from a career point of view, I met a woman called Mrs Ruth Woolf who was a disability resettlement officer.

00.01.42 And she was a big help as well. When I left school obviously I missed my school exams because I was in hospital at the time of the exams but I had since acquired a range of the BTECs in business and finance. And then that coincided at that time, when I finished that HNC after five years, with me wanting to have a career change really. And that also coincided with the Electricity Board becoming a private industry, PowerGen as we know it now and I took a secondment opportunity to gain some experience in the community to then apply for the social work diploma as it was back in 1992.

00.02.33 Table tennis I got into purely by chance really. In looking at activities to take up, I went to a local disability sports and recreation group and table tennis was one of the things that was supposed to have been done. And back in 1992 I just missed out on the Barcelona Paralympics where I was fourth in line to make the three man squad to go out. That didn’t help me and another colleague of mine who was pushing for that birth as well.

00.03.18 One of the biggest impacts on my life was to pass my driving test actually because it was always frustrating to talk about planning for the future but yet not having the ability to get to places under my own steam. So I think passing the driving test was actually a crucial thing to happen. I’d like to be remembered as somebody who did they best they could but also mainly as somebody who didn’t take himself too seriously and was enjoyable to work with.