Talking #TeamCWPT blog

With Karen Scorer, Lead Trainer for Oliver McGowan Mandatory Training on Learning Disabilities and Autism

Karen has many roles: occupational therapist, trainer, wife, mum, advocate, to name a few. She has also recently added Chair of the newly formed CWPT neurodivergent network to her cap. Self-identified as having ADHD, Karen is sharing her career journey and why she is setting up a community for neurodivergent people within the Trust this ADHD Awareness Month.

Impact through occupational therapy 

Karen has always loved helping and supporting people and has been an enthusiastic advocate and champion for others. It was why she became a support worker for people with learning disabilities when she left art school. She loved the role, and it was then that she first heard of an occupational therapist; a role that empowers people with a condition, illness, or disability to find ways to adapt tasks or their environment to allow them to live as independently as possible.

Karen first joined CWPT's services in 2000 as an occupational therapy assistant before training to be an occupational therapist through the NHS.

Throughout her career, Karen has used her occupational therapy skills in many places and supported lots of different people, including patients, students, and staff. She has always been drawn to a new opportunity or challenge, brimming with creative ideas and solutions. Whether it's starting a new service, launching a new training programme, teaching the next generation of occupational therapists, or supporting people to reach their individual goals.

It's this drive and excitement which has seen Karen move around a lot during her career and make a difference in many areas at CWPT. She has worked across the breadth of our services, including adult inpatient mental health, community mental health, learning disability and autism services, and even became a lecturer for 5 years at Coventry University.

Masking and the hidden side of ADHD

Helping others has never been difficult, but what Karen did find challenging is knowing how to advocate for her own needs, something which often led to burnout and feelings of shame or guilt. Thinking back on her journey with ADHD she jokingly says: "the signs [of ADHD] were always there... there's a pattern."

Behind every big achievement or idea, there have been times where seemingly small tasks felt impossible. Whether it was what felt like mountains of paperwork, marking, or admin. "Some of those really simple tasks to other people feel like torture in my head to get them completed. I know I need to do them, but it becomes enormous, and then the shame and the guilt kicks in. [By comparison] if you give me a really difficult, challenging training room environment, I thrive in that."

For a long time, Karen was an expert at masking her ADHD: "My strategy was always to be the last-minute wonder, but that worked for me. I would be up until 4 or 5 in the morning completing things that needed to be done for the next day."

There have been some key moments in Karen's life where ADHD has felt all consuming. In her personal life it was when she became a new mum and then through perimenopause, and professionally, managing strict marking deadlines as a lecturer.

"I'd always managed to wing it and hold it together until I had my own child and then definitely during perimenopause the wheels just completely fell off because I just couldn't keep everything going at the same speed."

When working as a lecturer, balancing the workload of teaching, marking students work against strict deadlines, and finding time for family felt like an impossible juggling act.

"I would procrastinate about how to word things really sensitively and how to be kind in my feedback to students... I would always be working until really late at night and at that time my son was around 6 or 7, I just couldn't keep doing it. I was spending all weekend marking work and not spending time with family."

"That's another bit of ADHD that doesn't get talked about as much; the thought of upsetting others... then that rumination, worry and anxiety that kicks in."

"One of us"

Karen had never considered she might have ADHD, but in 2017 she joined a team responsible for setting up a new neurodevelopment service at CWPT. During an 8-week programme with a group of patients to shape the service, they helped her come to a realisation.

"I will never forget it... after about the third session, they [the patients] started chanting at me, saying 'one of us'. It was in unison... they said you've clearly got ADHD, and this was a group of patients who had just been diagnosed as autistic or having ADHD."

Karen remembers going back to her office and speaking to a psychiatrist in children's services about it, and he was shocked she had never considered it. "I knew that I'd always had crash and burn cycles; what I would describe as taking on everything and being really excited by new projects." These cycles were accompanied by periods of anxiety and depression, and Karen began to understand that she was experiencing burnout.

"It was just that moment of clarity. Working in that service, I'd started to understand my brain a little bit more and I suppose had that ability to advocate for myself a bit more than I think I ever had done."

When Karen was growing up in the 70s and 80s, ADHD awareness, especially in women, was not what it is today. She says: "It was learning through women actually coming through the service, and there is a much bigger narrative now of women who have ADHD than there was before."

Surrounded with support

As an occupational therapist, whatever service Karen has worked in there has been a theme of people needing reasonable adjustments, and sometimes it just takes someone like Karen to help them identify their needs and feel confident to communicate them. But Karen has many champions in her own life too.

"I've always been very good at advocating for others, but when it comes to advocating for myself and what my needs are, I would burn out before spotting it. So, I would be getting more stressed."

"I rely on other people around me asking if I am taking on a bit too much or my husband noticing if I am working until 6pm or 7pm every night... I rely on people to give me those early warning signs."

Now, Karen is the lead trainer for the Oliver McGowan Mandatory Training on Learning Disabilities and Autism. The team is made up of trainers who are autistic, and/or have a learning disability and provide training to health and social care staff across Coventry and Warwickshire.

"Moving into the Oliver McGowan team was a real opportunity for me as an occupational therapist. The whole training is about reducing health inequalities... it's also about reducing employment inequalities."

The biggest factors that have helped Karen to manage her ADHD have been accepting that she thinks differently, recognising her unique strengths, and surrounding herself with people who are supportive and understanding. She says: "I'm more accepting that this is the way I need to do things and that it's not me being stupid or lazy. That's just the way my brain works."

Collaborating with other neurodivergent people has helped Karen to identify what she needs to be able to succeed in her role, such as asking for specific deadlines or summaries of conversations or meetings. "Working in the team is amazing because we're all neurodivergent. There is that shared understanding that we seek clarification from each other."

Creating community through the neurodivergent network

Having come to understand and accept her own neurodivergence, Karen now wants to bring the sense of community she has found to everyone at CWPT. The neurodivergent network launched in September, and provides a space to seek support, explore challenges affecting neurodiverse staff, and make all-important changes. It's also about recognising the unique strengths neurodivergent colleagues bring to teams when they are supported to thrive.

"A lot of neurodivergent people will have gone through life being told they're different, they're weird, they're wrong, and all these messages. When neurodivergent people and allies come together and understand you and are supportive, that makes the biggest difference, and I hope we can create that with the network."

Over 70 people joined the first network meeting, and now the group is focussing on coproducing aims with network members and starting to discuss new ideas and initiatives to support neurodivergent colleagues. This could include peer supervision from other neurodivergent staff, education sessions, and empowering staff around reasonable adjustments.

Karen has also set up a Microsoft Teams channel to create a community for network members to come together, discuss and share ideas in between network meetings.

When asked why she set up the network, Karen said: "There's a clear need for it. I think that's the biggest thing that made me set it up. During the Oliver McGowan training as well, a lot of people have identified that they might be neurodivergent through either being on that training or being able to talk about it for the first time."

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With thanks to Karen Scorer for sharing her experiences this ADHD Awareness Month.

The next neurodivergent staff network meeting will take place on 25 November at 1pm online. If you work at CWPT and would like to join or be added to the Microsoft Teams channel, please contact Karen Scorer. Contact details can be found through the people directory on the intranet.

Find out more about staff networks and wellbeing support at CWPT.