Natalie Savery

Age: 27

Job title

Training Manager

Main tasks

Development, review and delivery of staff training as well as training, education and awareness raising for other agencies.
To be responsible for the training and development needs of all Drugaid staff.
To ensure that we are DANOS compliant
At the moment, one of our main concerns is increasing the amount of OCN accredited courses that we offer as well as improving our training resources.

Why I got into this work

I am passionate about giving good, factual substance misuse knowledge. I think everyone should know about the issues surrounding substance misuse, or at least know where they can go to get good advice. If you know enough about substance misuse, you can help to keep yourself and other safe. I also feel that a lot of people think that they know about substances but they get their information from unreliable sources. I like the fact that I can meet a group of people who have an idea of what a drug user is but by the time they leave the session, have had the opportunity to challenge what they think they know and believe.

A brief history of how I got into this work

I have a degree in Theatre and Media, which seems like a million miles away from what I do now, but I feel that this, along with my other life experiences, has helped me gain the confidence and creativity to do what I do. After graduating, I started working on a drama based project that aimed to educate young people in schools about the issues of substance misuse. That's really when I decided that I wanted to work in this field and when I became really interested in the work that an agency like Drugaid does. I started working for Drugaid as a project worker in 2005, working on the Home Detox team in Torfaen and then as a caseworker in Monmouthshire, but I quickly came to realise that it was the training and education sessions that I enjoyed the most about my work. In 2007 I joined the training team as Training Officer and got to work straight away on developing and review training courses, before becoming Training Manager in 2008. I have attended various drug and alcohol related training courses and have also attended a training the trainer course. I am also working towards my A1 Award to enable me to assess candidates for NVQs in Health and Social care and would like to go on and achieve a higher qualification in learning and development when the time is right.

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