Anna Gunning

I have worked across the secure campus and been part of the development of an intensive transitional residential house.

Over my time at St Mary Kenmure, I have worked across every secure house, which has helped me develop my adaptability, resilience, and ability to provide relational support to children and staff.

My role encompassed creating and supporting children's safety by promoting structure, routine, and healthy boundaries and offering a healthy, reliable, and consistent relationship to understand buffers and meet the needs of children's significant adverse childhood experiences.

As part of the role, children are treated with the utmost compassion, integrity, and respect by honouring their rights, the team I lead, and my colleagues. The most significant aspect of the role was communication with children and colleagues to ensure the team operated with cohesion and structure, which transmitted safety to children.

• Promoting positive and life-changing experiences for children.
• Supporting children's physical, mental and emotional wellbeing.
• Promotion of structure and routine.
• Encouragement and support for education.
• Therapeutic crisis intervention with a lot of pride in de-escalation and incorporating Life Space Interviews at the start of a possible crisis.
• Offering relational trustworthiness and authenticity to inspire safety.
• Ability to identify unmet needs which manifest in maladaptive coping strategies.
• Communicating with colleagues, uplifting and supporting colleagues to manage difficult situations.
• Experience with developing and inputting care plans, formulations, and risk assessments, and overall exceptional at record keeping, passing information and ensuring information is passed on to the appropriate professionals.
• Experience safe movement, conduct searches with dignity, and hold children safely and with respect to promote safety.
• Overall, the role involves providing a safe attachment to children and continuing to provide them with that safe, authentic, and reliable attachment without judgment, regardless of their situation or how unsettled they may have been.
• Due to the nature of children being secure and the children being significantly wounded mentally and emotionally, I have also developed a remarkable ability to work on repairing relationships when there has been a physical assault on myself or the child as being in distress.
• Building safe and trustworthy relationships based on healthy, secure attachments to buffer ACEs. As well as solid boundaries.
• Developing healthy strategies to self-regulate and cope with trauma, mental health diagnosis and alternatives to self-harm, drug misuse and antisocial behaviour.
• Strategies to build self-esteem, confidence and resilience through providing and promoting opportunities for children to discover who they are and what they like.
• Compassionate trauma-informed practice.
• Ability to provide and create safe environments.
• Ability to level and adapt to each individual and situation.
• Attention to detail..
• Attentive awareness of the effects of adverse childhood experiences and risks young people can experience psychologically, emotionally, physically and socially.
• Clear and concise communication.
• I work well as a team, and I have great initiative and leadership skills.
• Resilient, patient and able to stay calm.
• Respect and honour levels of confidentiality, as well as sensitivity in communicating information.
• Ability to identify protective factors and buffers for young people.
• Awareness and understanding of complex post-traumatic stress disorder.

Systematic study exploring the barriers and facilitators of care-experienced individuals in higher education. S

As a care-experienced individual who, through sheer tenacity, made it to university and experienced many challenges and inequalities associated with my adverse childhood experiences, I was inspired by my own experience and the lack of research on the topic.

Through this experience, I was able to develop and further my skills in literature review, academic writing, reflecting, analytical skills and overall find significant inequalities in the education system concerning supporting care-experienced individuals in the UK Additionally, I was able to strategies recommendations on training and support for universities to support better cared experienced individuals such as the significance of lectures having more training in the back grounds of cared experienced individuals as well as in light of attachment theory, more consistency and communication between tutirs and students.

The role involves providing 24/7 support to vulnerable children and young people transitioning out of long-term care. Young people under community therapy orders conducted by the court or children's hearing panels, have experienced breakdowns in residential placements and or have been in secure placements for a considerable length of time. As well as unaccompanied trafficked children.

• Providing one-to-one mentor support to children and young people transitioning out long term care.
• Promoting independence while providing and honouring well-being indicators.
• Developing risk assessments and strategies to minimize and neutralize risks and crises.
• Taking part in and leading multidisciplinary meetings as well as linking young people with professionals and advocating for young people. Such as transitioning from children's mental health services to adult mental health services and from the youth justice system to the justice system
• Completing chronologies of incidents, identifying patterns and strategies to reduce incidents from reoccurring.
• Building safe and trustworthy relationships based on healthy secure attachments to buffer their transition. As well as solid boundaries.
• Developing healthy strategies to self-regulate and cope with trauma, mental health diagnosis and alternatives to self-harm, drug misuse and antisocial behaviour.
• Strategies to build self-esteem, confidence and resilience through providing and promoting opportunities for young people to live up to their potential.
• Compassionate trauma-informed practice.
• Ability to provide and create safe environments.
• Ability to level and adapt to each individual and situation.
• Attention to detail.
• Awareness of updates and changes in the Children and Young Peoples Act, 2014.
• Attentive awareness of the effects of adverse childhood experiences and risks young people can experience psychologically, emotionally, physically and socially.
• Clear and concise communication.
• Work well as a team, as well as great initiative and leader.
• Resilient, patient and able to stay calm.
• Respect and honour levels of confidentiality, as well as sensitivity in communicating information.
• Ability to identify protective factors and buffers for young people.
• Awareness and understanding of complex post-traumatic stress disorder.
• High level of organization and discernment skills.
• Writing reports outlining project progress and results.

In this post, I have carried out many roles for different services within the organization. I have worked in supporting living 24h services to support the independence of adults with disabilities. I have worked in an out-of-hours responder service, responding to awide range of calls such as elderly falls, elderly leaving their house at night and sex offenders breaching their perimeter limits. However, mostly I have worked in an integrated mental health service supporting individuals long term who have been hospitalized for long periods of time. The role involves being part of Glasgow North East CMHT.

• Reducing risks of hospitalization.
• Completing and updating support plans.
• Effective communication.
• Well organized.
• Promoting independence within their homes as well as their communities.
• Strategies to promote structure in individuals' lives.
• Linking individuals with services.
• Delivering creative strategies for individuals to cope with their mental health.
• Reduce shame and isolation.
• Delivering strategies to promote a sense of belonging.
• Ability to adapt and honour individuals' needs, wants and personalities.
• Promoting individuals to feel in control, safe and to gain self-esteem and independence.
• Compassionate and understanding trauma-informed practice.
• Developing activities in communities.
• Making referrals.
• Well-established at record keeping besides update of risk assessments and plans.

The role involved facilitating residents in Addiwell prison experiencing substance abuse issues by offering a group where they could voice their feelings and thoughts.

• Facilitating and creating a safe environment where residents felt heard and seen.
• Holding space for individuals to express themselves freely.
• Offering and supporting residents to stay abstinent and reduce prescriptions.
• Offering strategies to manage their feelings.
• Raising awareness of 12-step programs.
• Facilitating workshops and speakers.
• Advocating and raising awareness of residents' rights.
• Linking residents with recovery organizations and a recovery network.
• Offering strategies and support when leaving prison.
• Taking part in The Prison compassion project.
• Collaborating with CISCO.
• Collaborating with ACES Scotland.
• Creating creative and fun ways where residents could express themselves and learn to support each other

Additionally, I took part in the prison compassion project which involved introducing awareness of adverse childhood experiences to residents providing an understanding of predisposition factors increasing risks of offending and more specific effects of trauma. and coping mechanisms such as learning to talk and express themselves, meditation and peer support.

The role involved a five-week experience in the Netherlands working in a form which supported children with additional needs.

• Learning Dutch.
• Creating games for children.
• Supporting children with nature and animal therapeutic activities.
• Supporting staff on the farm with the maintenance of the premises and animals.
• Safeguarding Children.
• Learning social culture.
• Supporting children build confidence and communicate

My responsibilities involved supporting vulnerable individuals, such as the elderly, individuals with autism and physical disabilities, including children with tasks they could no longer carry out themselves.

• Monitoring and administering medication safely.
• Ensured safe, secure living conditions for service users, reducing risk and enhancing the quality of life.
• Considerate working with others as well as confidence and initiative working alone.
• Supporting individuals and families with end-of-life care.
• Adaptive to each individual's needs and values.
• Extremely attentive.
• Conscientious.
• Respectful.
• Worked closely with nurses to maintain high levels of communication.
• Delivered high-quality, dedicated care to clients with disability, consistently achieving individual care plan objectives.
• Helped service users improve their independence, building strength and confidence to enhance daily living.
• Prepared healthy meals and delivered feeding support.
• Demonstrated consistent respect and privacy for care users, maintaining dignity irrespective of circumstance.
• Completed care documentation and monitored patient progress to achieve up-to-date records.
• Improved service users' daily lives through compassionate conversation, empathetic care and community socialization.
• Aided service users in everyday activities, such as washing and dressing, ensuring constant safety and effective care.