I joined Bedlington day centre to help set up a garden, and before I knew it I was in the kitchen. I’ve got a background in running bread making courses privately so it’s really applicable to this job. We’ve got a little garden here now but we’re not managing to do it much at the moment so hopefully we can expand that during the good weather, I’d like to do the cooking and some gardening.

When I was a care supervisor I did loads of training and I wasn’t sure I wanted to do it, but in the end it was really helpful. You’re warned about challenging behaviour and you think ‘oh it’ll be scary’ but it’s not, the service users are just loud or boisterous, they’re all lovely to work with. 

The work is really varied, I’m covering for a kitchen assistant today, but I could be helping with anything. You get service users involved in doing things like baking, you don’t do anything for them, so they’re actually picking up life skills. The variety is definitely a great thing in this job, you’ve got to be able to adapt to the work. It doesn’t feel like a job at all.  

We started off with a small baking group, and now there’s fourteen in every group in the kitchen and it’s packed. It’s good to see everything work and grow based on what the service users actually want. 

Give caring a go, absolutely. You get a lot out of it, you really do. We definitely need more people to get into it.