CP3 Career Plan

9.10.14
Exit Strategy
After completing the FdA course at UCY this year I am unsure currently what my future educational
plans will be. There are several potential avenues Im considering, all of which can contribute to my
longer term aspirations of developing my own disability awareness organisation.
The first option I have identified is to proceed onto the media top-up in Bristol next year. The benefit
of this is that it would strengthen and hone my media knowledge. However, there may be other
areas of academic knowledge Im lacking that would be required for my future endeavours that this
course might not provide.
My next potential avenue would be to discontinue my media studies in favour of studying speech
and language therapy. This subject is more in line with my current professional direction of publicly
speaking to and educating professionals in this field. One potential difficulty of this educational
pathway is that I may lose out on social media raining and skills that the top up course in Bristol
could have provided.
Finally my third and most preferable pathway through further education would be subject to
funding, completing the top up in Bristol with a focus on social media profile raising and disability
awareness material production. Then upon completion of this course either diverting remaining
funds or self funding a second foundation degree course in speech and language therapy. Thus
combining both avenues one and two without any of the draw backs, subject to funding.

Dream position
I plan to build off the work Im doing whilst in education and the work Im doing parallel with my
education which is mainly participating in projects, producing media projects and presenting public
events. To allow me to do this more efficiently I plan on undertaking excersise to raise my public
profile in order to better facilitate my aspirations of providing education about disabilities to those I
feel require it.
In order to help me achieve my objectives I intend to establish my own organisation, likely a limited
company that will provide training and support to people with varying disabilities. My company
would provide these people with support and training in order to give them the skills and abilities to
provide training and to speak publicly about their disabilities. Aswell as this the company would also
provide a support framework that anybody with disabilities that didnt want to present about their
disabilities. This would likely integrate the company into a social media environment.


My opportunities and experiences
I am already doing a lot of work/have done a lot of work that will project me in the direction of my
dream job. I shall now talk about some notable examples of past and current activities and why
these are of a specific value.
Raising your Game: This is a five year project that is now coming to its conclusion and my
participation in it has been instrumental in helping me develop significant personal skills aswell as
long term goals and new opportunities. In this project myself and some of the other members
helped to contribute towards the production of skills building courses aimed at young people with
disabilities aswell as educational programmes for schools and local industries.
Talk about Talk: This is an educational programme that was developed by Raising your Game. In
this programme teams of speech and language therapists supported by young people with
disabilities co deliver training to businesses and local industries to enable them to better integrate
and support people with additional needs. I was one of the young people delivering this training in
the South West and this programme is a template for other projects Id like to produce in the future.
Shine a Light Award Communication Champion 2014: This is a national award I was nominated and
won. As a result of winning this award my profile was raised which generated new opportunities for
me going forward.
RCSLTs Mind the Gap conference: This was a major conference held in Leeds on the 17
th
& 18
th

September 2014 at which I presented the key note address. This represents a significant opportunity
for me as I presented a presentation about my disabilities to an audience of 300 speech & language
therapists. This also presented me with an opportunity for networking in order to make contacts and
secure more speaking engagements further down the line.
Somerset County Council: I recently delivered the same presentation I delivered in Leeds to
members of Somerset County Council . This was another important opportunity for me as it has
allowed me to raise my profile on a local level and has generated requests for me to speak at various
local events and may yet develop into paid work helping Somerset County Council enact the children
and families act.
Creative Minds: creative minds is a disability led conference about disability led art in the
community and disability art in general. I will be helping to host the event aswell as leading a panel
discussion about art and learning disabilities in early October 2014.
Houses of Commons: This is the culmination of the Raising your Game project and will be our major
dissemination event in which we will sharing everything weve learned with the MPs at the House of
Commons in late October2014.



Conclusion
All of the above opportunities and experiences help to illustrate my growing experience and network
of contacts within disability awareness community. It is these resources I wish to capitalise on to
help me to model myself as a public figure head for disability awareness. I will be building these
efforts into the media by attempting to capitalise on social media in order to help me reach the
general public. All of these resources and efforts will also support the creation of my public limited
company. The company will help centralise my efforts and create a base of operation upon which to
integrate more people to expand my efforts. By creating this company I will gain significantly more
resources than I posses which will then allow me to produce my own educational training
programmes and educational videos/ in order to help me raise awareness and spread my message.