Vicky's Story:
Working as a PA
Vicky's Story: Working as a PA
Hi, I’m Vicky and I provide in-work support, funded by Access to Work, to a person with a vision impairment and have done for the last 7½ years.
Dave is registered blind and works part-time for SILC as a Community Employment Specialist providing pre-employment courses for people with a disability or long term health condition. The nature of his job means my role is very varied which I enjoy. Doing this role part time also means I can continue to be a business partner in 2 small businesses as well as continue working a few hours a week for another organisation.
My role is to support Dave with certain tasks and do the things that Dave can’t do due to his vision impairment. Examples of these are:
Dave is registered blind and works part-time for SILC as a Community Employment Specialist providing pre-employment courses for people with a disability or long term health condition. The nature of his job means my role is very varied which I enjoy. Doing this role part time also means I can continue to be a business partner in 2 small businesses as well as continue working a few hours a week for another organisation.
My role is to support Dave with certain tasks and do the things that Dave can’t do due to his vision impairment. Examples of these are:
Sight Guiding Dave when out and about and in new places
Driving to course venues and meetings
Supporting Dave to run the pre-employment courses (helping set up rooms and refreshments, initially greeting participants so Dave is aware of who’s in the room, taking photos of travel receipts, writing on the flipchart, completing and ordering paper-based documents, reading paper-based documents, formatting electronic documents and reports, informing Dave of visual clues that he would otherwise miss, etc.)
Making hot drinks if we are in unfamiliar or shared places
And whatever other tasks are required to support Dave visually within his job! 😊
As with all PA roles, I am there to assist not take over which is a skill in itself, can take some practice and may not be for everyone - but I love my job, find the role interesting and am proud to be able to offer the support I do. Dave and I knew each other from working as colleagues previously so already knew we got on easily which I think is important when you are going to be working this closely with someone.
For us, communication is key, and, if things are not going so well, which is rare but does happen, we will always talk it through. We have a mutual respect for each other and our respective roles - we also share a sense of humour which helps!!
