Andrea Burrows

Community Learning Disabilities Nurse, Norwich Learning Disabilities Team, Norfolk Community Health and Care NHS Trust

FoNS Learning Disability Nursing Fellow

I competed my Learning Disability Fellowship in September and my project is still ongoing. It’s complex and we’re just getting through all the red tape. My project is to hire a person with a learning disability and pay them a wage. Their job will be to get ‘Family and Friends’ feedback on the service. When I was on placement a couple years ago, they had hired a person doing exactly this, but they didn’t pay the person and I realised there was an inequality there straight away.

To achieve my project, I’ve had to speak to all sorts of people. I’ve never felt like I’m a leader but now I find myself leading people, supporting students and new starters. The external mentor helped me with the FoNS project working out who my stakeholders are; what do they need, what do I need and what they can do and since then, I’ve contacted people quite high up in the organisation, other services and so on, whereas I probably would never have done that.