My First Job in London

For those who do not know it, I became a Certified Occupational Therapy Assistant in 2005. It is fortuitous that I did because I would be slinging burgers at minimum wage somewhere if I had stayed in the environmental field. My environmental experience is useless here because it is so United States specific.

My experience as a Certified Occupational Therapy Assistant allowed me to get a job as an activities organiser at Cherrycroft Care Home in Peckham. Peckham is on the wrong side of the Thames: it has a very New Bedford feel to it. It looks like it may have been posh at one time, and we are always running into interesting facts about its past. The buildings and parks are residual clues of its rich past, but it is definitely not posh now.

Cherrycroft specialises in dementia care. I started in September 2007. A woman with an incredible passion for what she is doing is managing the home. She is one of those people alive with Spirit. I also worked with a very caring young man who was my activities assistant. And the residents were incredible. And the staff was like a United Nations assembly. I could write on for days about the experiences I had there.

Despite all of the positive things at Cherrycroft, there were many signs that this was not the place I was supposed to be. I am just not ready to do this job yet. I need more clinical experience first. So, I went part time in January 2008 to start my second job (subject of a future post) and left in March 2008 to start my third (more to come on this later).

I have lots of pictures, but most of them I cannot post due to confidentiality concerns…. All I can really show you is the front door.