Meet Joe, Co-Chair from Edinburgh Napier University

 

Joe Somerville is a first year Learning Disability Nursing student at Edinburgh Napier University.  He is the ENU Student Representative on the SLDNN Steering Group, and Co-Chair of the SLDNN Student Sub Group.
Joe began working in a local Edinburgh charity that works with children with Autism Spectrum Disorder.  The charity provided social groups for children and young people with high-functioning Autism and Asperger’s Syndrome; the charity also ran seasonal playschemes for children across the spectrum.  This then led on to the 1:1 respite scheme, where Joe was able to begin working freelance in home programmes, managing challenging behaviour and developing daily living skills.

In an attempt to work full time in the area of child disability; Joe then began working full time in a school for complex additional support needs, while maintaining the freelance work, with a number of the children at the school.  This allowed Joe to become heavily involved in behaviour care plans, and become heavily invested in working with multi-disciplinary teams and their assessment of adaptions the children required.   Joe also developed a role of using technology to aid learning, which led to a number of successful inclusion events for the entire school.

Joe left the school in order to go and work with the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service, in their Learning Disability team’s; Intensive Treatment Service.  Working in the NHS and in a Learning Disability specific team, prompted Joe to undertake his Learning Disability Nursing, which came to be the bow which tied up all Joe’s previous experience and created a clear career goal which Joe was passionate to pursue.  He went on to become part of the SLDNN Student Sub Group as Co-Chair, and in May 2015, will complete a month long placement in Oslo, Norway at the Nordre Aasen Rehabilitation Centre.