Tony Morgan, Residential Care Home Manager

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Hi, I'm Tony.

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I'm a team manager for Caerphilly Local Authority.

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I'm a manager of a children's care home.

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So obviously I left school with no GCSEs,

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no qualifications whatsoever.

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I didn't sit any GCSEs,

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I’d finished the academic year quite early.

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School wasn't for me.

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So it was a massive sort of path of learning.

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And before that I'd obviously spent

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over a decade in the building trade.

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For me it was a bit of a career change,

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I’d obviously been in the care system back in the early 90s,

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a bit of a criminal past.

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So again I felt like I had a bit of something to

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give back to help young people, to support

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them so they don't fall into the same sort

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of lifestyles as what I did

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and just to try and make them see sense as such as in,

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there's a different path in life you can follow and

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it's not always the be all and end all of you know,

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perhaps you haven’t done well at education

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or you're not doing so well.

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You haven’t really got a strong family network,

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but you can still progress and do well in life in general.

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The learning and development path is really good

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it’s obviously funded by the Welsh Government.

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Part of the Welsh Government

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for supporting the funding for qualifications

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is that you do your

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Key skills Maths and English because they see that if you want to

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pursue another career that obviously you take your

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literacy and numeracy with you anyway and it helps you in day to day life.

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So I don’t think the job is for everyone.

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I think people have different aspects of the job

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obviously I thought the job, was you know care,

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it was sort of stereotypical as a female job, perhaps an older female.

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But working in the industry

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now there’s a lot of young males that work

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and a lot of young people in general that sort of like

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bring their life experience on.

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I think you’ve got to want to be there.

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It's not just a job,

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it is a career path you need to follow.

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If you just turn up for a nine

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till five, it doesn't work, the children can see fake a mile off.

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They know the people that want to work

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with them, interact with them and support them.

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And I think you've got to bring that.

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You've got to bring a bit of positivity

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to wanting to be there.

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The idea of just turning up,

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cashing your check and going home.

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It doesn't work

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and it quickly sort of finds

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the gaps and people don't last in that sort of environment then.

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For me, one of the main important values

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for somebody that’s going to be a child's,

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support to work with children is to have that understanding.

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So even being a parent,

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our children haven’t come from sort of like secure backgrounds.

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They haven’t had that massive family

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network, they’ve seen a lot of trauma,

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whether that be in the family outside in the community.

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So it’s having that understanding of what they've seen,

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why they present different behaviours

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and what we can do to support them

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it’s having that understanding of what their needs are,

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because their needs might be very different.

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Their cognitive ages

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could be very sort of a lot

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lower than what they present sort of as people.

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And it's just knowing sort of how to interact

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with them on what level

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and what level of support

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they will need daily to meet their

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needs, their personal needs.

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The job is very rewarding.

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I think there's a lot of lows,

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there's a lot of lows, and you always reflect on stuff,

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you know, the bad times.

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But I think the good always weighs it out.

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So it’s a thing for me i’m really proud of watching young people

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achieve is their progression from living within the homes

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where it’s supported by the staff

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to moving on to independence.

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So working alongside them, creating plans and watching them

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gain the relevant life skills

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that they're going to need to sort of live

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on their own later on down the line.