Work Experience Student

Hiya, I’m Eric Khor and this is my first work experience blog. 

After a week of work experience here at Hackney Service Centre, I primarily worked on creating a fun presentation of what roles and projects the Project Management Team here at CAMHS does as well as carrying out other tasks that needed to be done. I would like to share my reflection of my work experience and skills I have developed coming here·

Working with the CAMHS Alliance PMO had been such a pleasant experience where each different member had all different unique responsibilities in ensuring that young people are not left alone. 

The team here all have very welcoming personalities that made the workplace very friendly and comfortable. Which has made work far more enjoyable and supported me when there’s a problem with the work I have. This has changed my understanding of what office jobs are like and has given me more of an interest in this particular environment of working. 

On my first day, I went to the Hackney Town Hall and I met with John Kurubo who is the Work Placement Manager who gave a brief introduction of what Hackney is and what organisation I will be working with which is the City & Hackney Children & Young People’s Emotional Health and Wellbeing Partnership/CAMHS Alliance.

On the second day, It was a proper work day where I come in at 9 and leave at 5. Throughout the day I had primarily focused on interviewing 4 of the 5 members of the team about what their roles and responsibilities are, and an overall review of one of the members is Sophie who is the Senior Programme Manager that manages projects and supports their members for any problems that need to be addressed on certain projects. One of her notable projects is known to be called ‘Emotional Based School Non Attendance’ which means that children build up anxiety to the point they cannot attend school, and there are other barriers to why they have these anxiety and that are stress in academic demand or the school environment. And so it is Sophie’s job to implement a system of ways to support young children in dealing with this problem throughout hackney. Furthermore, other than the interviews I’ve also attended an online meeting known as the Youth Board event planning meeting. I’m not going to reveal what they were planning but attending this interview was quite interesting in how the team I’m working with communicates with other departments about any reports or updates they need to share with on a particular project they are working on. 

From here on, it was working on the presentation and attending various meetings to have an insight of what projects they are working on which was really interesting because I myself , who has lived in Hackney all my life, did not know about the many activities and events Hackney has provided to the community. Which I will try out in the future. In addition, I went to one of the four youth hubs that they provide for young people at Forest Road and it’s a place for young people to come and socialise with another and they also provide a consultant room so that young people can discuss the medical issues they have with the medical professional.

In this week I developed many skills such as technical skills, presentation skills and communication skills which is good for developing my employability and gaining an insight into the working world.