“When opportunity knocks… Know when to open the door.”
I have taught children how to throw some shapes on the dance floor, I’ve cared for children with extremely complex and life limiting health needs, I’ve worked in Education and dipped my toes into Social Care.
In Summer 2017 I graduated from the Open University with a 2:1 in Childhood and Youth Studies which I completed whilst in full time employment. My latest role in the industry was in Child Protection. This involved screening and risk assessing Safeguarding referrals from the Police, Health, Education and members of the public. We could receive anywhere up to 50 child protection referrals each day and had to assess these within very strict timescales to ensure each child was safe and their families supported. As a result, workload was high and time was limited — as with any public sector profession.
I became frustrated
There is a lot to be said about budget cuts and an ever increasing workload in the public sector. But when it comes to technology, I cant help but feel they are a million years behind the private sector. My team and I were wasting much of our time completing mundane tasks that could be done much more efficiently had we utilised technology. Our internal process involved automated email notifications, logging in to a website, manually downloading a document, manually uploading the document elsewhere, a shared excel document and (Yes…I know) pen and paper — all to aid with the screening process of referrals. Some of these are great features, but neither of these features were linked and mistakes could be easily made. In this line of work, where the life of a child depends on you, there is no room for mistakes.
There had to be a better way.
I decided to attend the Claris (FileMaker) conference in Arizona. During this time I came across across a Facebook Live chat with Sara Severson and Molly Connolly talking about all things Claris FileMaker — including their journey — as women, into the world of development (#Live with Sara Severson and Molly Connolly to discuss all things #Women #Tech & #FileMaker at #FileMakerDevCon 2017). This being something that took me by surprise, as the tech industry (in my opinion) appears to be very male dominated.
I started to think about all the other women I had met during my time in Arizona and my perspective changed. I stepped outside of my comfort zone and asked myself ‘Could I create something for Westminster?’ I returned from DevCon inspired by an extremely welcoming community of individuals. I became actively involved in the referral process not only to try and streamline their processes by leveraging technology, but to improve the quality of our work at the same time. I then decided to create a FileMaker database in an attempt to replace one excel spreadsheet (that caused my team a headache everyday) and the pen and paper documents. It started off as a really simple task management solution but I then started to realise the possibilities of the Claris Platform.
Opportunity came knocking…
And I was faced with a situation one could not plan for. 8 weeks following my inspiring retreat to Arizona, I was approached by Gary Palmer, IT Director of ForbiddenPlanet.com and Titan Entertainment Group who was recruiting for a Junior Developer. Do I flip my entire career upside down? I’ve just graduated in a completely different subject? I’ve spent 5 years building a career that evolves around child development — were all questions running through my mind. I decided to seize this opportunity with both hands!
Three months in and I am confident I made the right decision!
Developing in FileMaker requires a different kind of energy than I’ve ever experienced before — those of you who are parents will understand, children can be physically and emotionally challenging, however developing in FileMaker demanded brain power — I needed to think logically. It’s also far more creative than I ever imagined, once it functions in the way you need it too (which is quite satisfying when you make this happen), the rest is a big design project.
I think its safe to say that I am loving every minute!
Therefore not only do I owe a massive thank you to Titan Entertainment Group for throwing this life changing moment my way, but also a great big THANK YOU to everyone I met in Arizona that influenced my summer break in ways I could never imagine and allowed me to build the confidence to take this opportunity whole heartedly!
