Staff stories – Garmon

As one of our longest serving employees, Garmon’s career reflects how Shaftesbury can facilitate career progression across different areas of the organisation. Starting out as a support worker in Wales, he’s now an IT project manager working across our network of services. Find out why Garmon thinks this is an exciting time to be working for Shaftesbury...

From support worker to nationwide project management

Garmon’s career path is testament to the extensive learning and development opportunities available with Shaftesbury for those who want to get ahead.

Now in his 13th year with us, he reflects on his progression from frontline support worker at a residential service in Wales, to leading on a number of high-profile projects within Shaftesbury from our office in Gateshead. 

With a Masters degree in politics and international relations, the self-confessed ‘computer geek’ now oversees systems and processes across our network of services in the UK.

Fresh out of university, Garmon’s first job was local to home in Aberystwyth due to existing links with a Shaftesbury service there. He started in a temporary role working with adults with learning disabilities, later becoming a permanent Enabling Support Worker and Team Leader.

Opportunities to help out at other Shaftesbury services enabled Garmon to move into IT project work, despite not having formal qualifications in this field. “As someone who has always been interested in computers, systems come naturally to me,” he explains.

It meant relocating to Swindon, and a few years later to the North East, implementing and managing the day-to-day running of care management software. Ten years on, Garmon is still fulfilling this role, “just at a higher, more strategic level and working with more senior stakeholders,” he says.

Garmon enjoys seeing the bigger picture, working with others across our care, education and rehabilitation services to see how systems and processes work – or don’t work – rather than just making decisions from behind a desk.

From his vantage point within Shaftesbury’s Estates and Programme Management team, Garmon works closely with other departments, ensuring he has ears close to the ground to better support people with disabilities.

What has kept him at Shaftesbury so long? The answer comes easy to Garmon: “The work we do,” he says simply. “Being able to support the frontline services is amazing. I get a real sense of fulfilment; a feeling that my work actually matters. That’s hard to come by in a desk job.”

“We are an organisation that genuinely cares about its staff and continues to offer me opportunities to develop and evolve. No day is the same in this job.”

This is an exciting time to work for Shaftesbury, according to Garmon: “We are becoming more digitally confident and aware, whereas historically, the care sector has been somewhat resistant to change. We are helping to improve lives, making sure it adds up for people with disabilities.”