Taking the leap!

Redundancy is scary - let’s not pretend otherwise - but it has also given me the opportunity to step away from full-time work and move into a more flexible way of living and working.

On 1 May 2026, I was no longer employed. It was an odd feeling, not helped by my daughter announcing that she’d selected “unemployed” for me on her car insurance quote.

I’ve always worked. Through school (Dolcis shoe shop, summer camps, cafés), university (cafés and pubs), and then 31 years in a range of roles across health and social care.

I did have a brief break in 2004, when I thought it might be nice to stay at home with my very young children, who were four and one at the time. I lasted six weeks.

From 2004 to 2010, I had my first experience of self-employment. I’d built strong relationships through my work managing a charity for people with learning disabilities, and I was fortunate to be commissioned by organisations and people I’d previously worked alongside.

Over the following 16 years, I continued to take on small pieces of freelance work while completing a PhD and later working full-time on research projects at the University of Manchester. It meant I could stay connected to community-based work that made a difference in people’s lives in the here and now, while also researching longer-term solutions for the future.

In October 2021, I left the University of Manchester to work in health and care policy at Age UK. At the same time, I was still a co-investigator on an NIHR-funded research project, so my freelance work shifted more towards research and academia - turning the balance of my work on its head.

One of the reasons I left academia was that I was struggling with the mental health effects of perimenopause, although I didn’t fully realise that at the time. I’ll come back to this in a later blog. I’d lost confidence in myself, and the constant peer review that comes with academic life started to feel overwhelming.

I was fortunate to work with some amazing people at Age UK, and I genuinely loved my job - the networking, the media work, the research and, most of all, my colleagues. Looking back, I feel proud of the difference I was able to make during my four and a half years there.

Unfortunately, redundancies are everywhere in the health and care sector at the moment. Many friends and colleagues across the country have been affected. When redundancy first became a possibility for me, I felt scared, stressed and deeply uncertain about what would happen next.

As usual, I went straight into planning mode to work out how we would manage financially. Thanks to the support of my family, we were able to make plans to downsize quickly and reduce our expenses, which took away much of the fear around losing a regular income.

By the time redundancy actually happened, I felt something I hadn’t expected: excitement. Hope, even.

Once again, my network came to the rescue, and I’m incredibly grateful for that. Before I’d even finished work, I already had two contracts lined up. Soon afterwards, two more opportunities came along.

I know there’s still risk and uncertainty ahead, but I also know this: I would never have been able to take that midweek trip to Dumfries and Galloway in the campervan (see photo above) if I hadn’t taken that leap.