Case Study: Kingsley

Case Study: Kingsley, Team manager

I’ve been the Team Manager where I work for about eight months, having moved around the organisation since I joined in 2020.

The movement is good for me, I enjoy it. It gives me a broader horizon to get to know the different types of support we offer. I’ve had the privilege of working in Supported Living, residential support and respite care, and in my previous work I’ve worked in outreach and mental health support. I can talk to people. I can create a conversation out of nothing, have a laugh or a banter.

My first impression [of Certitude] was that, although it was big, it was a focused organisation. Certitude knew what it wanted to be, and by concentrating support in London, all that focus goes into creating quality support.

“It’s like a never ending opportunity to develop”

The culture here is all about people. We’re constantly encouraged in our training and development – the sky’s the limit. It’s empowering.

I like our diverse culture. Everybody is given an equal opportunity to grow. You just have to have the willingness. For me that’s important.

I’m currently doing my level 5 Diploma in Health and Social Care; I want to complete it before the end of this year. I’ve also particularly enjoyed our training sessions on coaching and dealing with difficult conversations. I’m a ‘Wellbeing Champion’ within Certitude too. It’s another good programme where I gained a lot from learning how to support colleagues with their own mental health and wellbeing.

Coming from Africa, my own country is so diverse in culture, language and way of life, and I have since lived and studied in several other countries. I’ve come to embrace differences and respect uniqueness. Working here, with so much diversity, is just amazing because if you do things with similar people, I think it becomes boring. With diversity, you get to learn new things, try different food and learn from all that uniqueness. It’s one amazing culture filled with trust.

“Certitude has been able to bring people together and make them understand that in diversity lies our strength.”

For the people we support, it’s an opportunity to experience different things, if they want to. For those who have specific religious or cultural beliefs and want to see that reflected in the person that supports them, we can usually find a colleague to do that because we are so diverse.

I feel included here too. Certitude has given me shared experiences with a lot of amazing people because of the culture of the organisation. I love people. I like people being happy around me, doing their work in a way that they enjoy. I want to see colleagues happy and singing when they’re approaching the door to work. That is the atmosphere I try to create as a manager – where we are working together to get things done and to give the best we can to support people and see their smiles. It’s joyful. I get pride knowing that I’m part of the story of those smiles.