Some careers build slowly, one careful step at a time. Annmarie’s took off. She joined Hawthornes as a Therapeutic Practitioner in October 2023. Two years on, she is a Registered Manager. It is the kind of progression most people would call a leap. Annmarie just calls it natural.
A Career That Took Off
From the start, Annmarie had a mentor in her corner. Our Quality Assurance Manager gave her the chance to get stuck in, including working alongside professionals from outside Amegreen, and the two of them soon started talking about where she could take her career. In January 2024 he told her she had real potential and could go far. That belief set the tone for everything that came next.
“You have potential and can go far.”
Annmarie moved to Oaklands House as a Team Leader, where she found more people willing to back her, including our Operations Manager, who brought her into senior work and kept pushing her on. By April 2024 she was Deputy Manager. Soon after, she got to do something she had never done before, which was help open a brand new home. Burney Bit opened its doors in October 2024, and Annmarie was there for the whole admissions process from the ground up. She had never seen a home come together from scratch and found the whole thing fascinating.
From there the steps came quickly. Home Manager, then Dual Home Manager, and now Registered Manager. She is the first to admit it has happened fast, but says it has never once felt forced.
The Bits That Weren’t Easy
It would be easy to read all of that and think it came effortlessly. It didn’t. There were moments when Annmarie could have walked away, and the hardest was having to retake the exam for her Level 5 Diploma. Plenty of people would have taken that as a sign to stop. She took it as a reason to dig in. What kept her going, she says, was the people around her. She has never been short of leaders who believed in her, and that belief carried her through the moments when she wasn’t sure she believed in herself.
There was another, quieter thing she had to work on too. Annmarie used to find feedback genuinely difficult to hear. Now it is one of the things she values most, especially when it comes from professionals outside Amegreen, because it tells her she is getting it right. Learning to take feedback and actually use it has, in her words, made all the difference. This role has given her the chance to do something she always wanted but never quite believed she could. She never pictured herself as the kind of manager who would go and find resources off her own back and share what she had learned with her teams. That is exactly who she is now.
What Made it Possible
Ask Annmarie what she loves most about Amegreen and she doesn’t talk about job titles. She talks about the way everyone pulls together. It doesn’t matter where you work or what your role is, people simply chip in. That, more than anything, is what gave her the room to grow this far this quickly. Her advice for anyone hoping to follow a similar path is simple, and it sounds like her:
“Take every piece of advice and guidance and make time to reflect. Use feedback to better yourself. Be open-minded, always give it your best, and you will reach your long-term goals.”
Inspired by Annmarie’s Story?
At Amegreen we invest in our people and give them room to grow. If you want to build a career that makes a real difference to children and young people, we’d love to hear from you.
