OTnews August 2020 | Page 26

FEATURE REABLEMENT
A world turned
upside down
Jo Jackson shares a personal reflection on a new start in
reablement just as the COVID-19 pandemic hit the UK
Unlike most people, I went into 2020
expecting my life to be hugely changed.
After 17 years working for Kent County
Council’s Children’s Social Services, first as
an occupational therapist and then as an occupational
therapy manager, I had taken a job in Solihull
Metropolitan Borough Council, as a reablement team
manager.
This involved significant relocation, a new field of
working, and managing a larger and multidisciplinary
team accountable to the Care Quality Commission.
Previously, my children’s occupational therapy work
had been customised and frequently complex work;
we had functioned as part of a multidisciplinary team
and undertaken a huge amount of partnership working,
but I had not been responsible for managing other
disciplines.
The first month (February 2020) was that steep
learning curve, typical of new job – new organisation,
new speciality, a new place, living apart and travelling
on weekends, renting a room and feeling like a student
all over again.
For the first time in nearly 20 years, I said ‘I sorry, I’m
new’, rather than in my recent role, when I was giving
an expert opinion to almost anything that had been
thrown at me. I had not appreciated how unsettling
it could be to find myself unknowledgeable. ‘New’
became a little scary, as well as exciting.
In the background there was the news of a virus
gradually spreading from country to country, but
somehow it seemed so distant, not real in the personal
sense. There was so much more to occupy my mind
than to consider the implications of such a removed
problem that I did not consider the impact it would
have on the life choices I had just made.
Then, the West Midlands became a COVID-19 hot
spot and in March, Solihull was starting to make plans
for a pandemic. Reablement started to wind up its
26 OTnews August 2020
© GettyImages/Steven Jacobs