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A week in the life of a Brook Senior Administrator

In this blog, Grace Ransley explains some of the roles and responsibilities she carries out on a weekly basis as a Senior Administrator for Brook in London. Admin roles are vital in ensuring Brook’s clinical services are able to run smoothly, allowing Brook to support as many young people as possible.

When I graduated from university, I had no idea what I wanted to do as a career. Having studied psychology, I loved the idea of working with people, and even more so doing something that positively contributed to other people and the wider society. Working for Brook I definitely feel like I do this.

Every person that works at Brook has young people’s needs as their top priority and goes above and beyond to make sure the young people leave clinic having had the support they need.

As Senior Administrator, I only really deal with young people directly when I am covering reception. Receptionists play a vital role in Brook’s services as they are the first point of contact when young people are booking an appointment or visiting a clinic. We need to ensure young people feel welcomed, safe and comfortable.

There is also a huge amount that goes on behind the scenes to keep our London clinics running smoothly! I am the busybody, which means I do whatever tasks are needed to support the London clinical teams in their work. Below are just some of the things that I typically deal with on a weekly basis.

Clinic Rotas:
Someone has to organise who is going to be where and when and that is my responsibility. When a member of staff has annual leave, I need to fill their spot with someone else to make sure we have adequate staff available so that we can see as many young people as possible. I send the rota to the rest of the team to double check all looks good for the following week.

Ordering:
In a clinic setting, there is a lot of stock that is needed. It is my responsibility to order in all the drugs that we give to clients, as well as products needed to carry out procedures – such as PPE.

Referrals:
For some of the London boroughs that we work in, we work on a referrals basis to try to reach the most vulnerable people possible. These referrals come from organisations, such as youth offending services, the police, and social workers to name a few. I monitor these referrals and distribute them to the relevant team members to contact the young person and see how we can best help.

Health and Safety:
In order to keep our young people and staff comfortable and safe, I have to make sure our building health and safety is faultless and any issues are resolved as quickly as possible (e.g. leaky roofs, the heating not working etc.). This involves testing our fire, security and panic alarms to make sure they are working in case of emergency, but also speaking with various contractors to make sure we are compliant to health and safety standards to prevent issues occurring as much as possible.

Payroll:
It is important our hard-working staff get paid for the amazing work they do and at the end of each month I collect up everyone’s hours and send them off to our payroll team to get processed.

The best thing about my role is getting to work with people across different teams and therefore getting to speak to so many people who are passionate about their work with young people.

Sadly I’m leaving Brook soon to try my hand at something else. But it has been an amazing experience and a great place to start my working life.

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