Tom Folkard

I worked as part of a team of three providing a wide range of activities and events for more than fifty residents in a large luxury care home in Norwich. My weekly responsibilities required me to take the lead in designing and implementing a bespoke range of activities ranging from planning and delivering a series of discussion and listening groups on classical music, history, and travel, to cooking together or playing guitar for residents in their rooms. Our primary mission was to build an atmosphere of trust, companionship, and personal fulfilment and to help the residents to pursue their interests and maintain active lives. Residents in residential care settings often struggle with severe and ongoing mental health issues, but particularly depression and anxiety, so by building friendships with our team and other residents, we helped them to feel engaged with the world, the people around them, and to maintain their self esteem and confidence. By focusing on goals, shared reflections and personal passions, we helped our residents to preserve the sense of a continuing journey through life.

I have always enjoyed writing, and have often earned money by copywriting, content writing, small scale publication, and fiction writing. Throughout the pandemic I concentrated full time on producing a range of writing projects, including articles, short stories, and full length screenplays in many genres. I supplemented my income when shutdowns permitted with a mixture of recording engineering, construction work, and musical performance.

I worked as part of a team of Carers, Wellbeing Assistants, Psychologists and Psychology Students to create and maintain a positive and fulfilling life for patients in a secure residential medical facility. We worked with patients suffering from severe mental health and developmental issues whose behaviours could present in extremely challenging, often violent ways. We aimed to help the patients work towards stabilising their behaviour and building positive habits and healthy relationships, with the eventual goal of rejoining the community.

I ran an independent recording studio for many years, working with a range of clients on both long term and short term projects. My clients ranged from commercial clients recording regular voice overs for industrial tutorials, to young people of all interests and ambitions pursuing careers in the creative arts. My goal was always to help the client to best achieve their best results, and to help them discover ideas which they have not yet conceived. Even on short projects the success or failure of the project is entirely down to communication and creating a frictionless working environment.