Shirley Forson, Regional Clinical Lead, South East

Shirley started with HomeLink in January 2022. This was Shirley’s first experience working outside of the NHS – except for her time as a very successful debt collector!

Having worked at King’s College Hospital for most of her physiotherapy career, Shirley specialised in Falls, Balance and Dementia before being seconded to working with patients in community services. King’s encouraged creativity and Shirley grabbed hold of this with both hands exploring innovative ways for discharge planning training; building and embedding an interactive tool that was rolled out to all therapists. To this day Shirley is known for leaving an innovative trail most recently building an electronic system that allowed for safe and effective allocations of patients to team members.

Shirley has worked in all clinical areas of a patient’s journey but found her passion in the community wanting to ensure the best care was delivered in the place most patients feel safest – their own homes. Shirley’s most recent role was an Operational Manager for community nursing and podiatry services in Sutton. Managing these services with the pandemic, rates of sickness and nursing vacancies was a challenge, but she reports it also being so rewarding. She used this time to further develop her mentorship skills and lead wellbeing projects within the organisation. Shirley accredits her career to the great guidance and leadership that went before her, she is therefore passionate about paying this forward by investing into individual’s growth and development and ensuring that the team’s wellbeing is always a priority.

Shirley reports her favourite things about working at HomeLink are the team building and service evaluation elements of her role.