PORTFOLIO OF WORK2016A Summary of my Work so Far…

Reeja Sarai 49 Windrush Drive Oadby, Leicester LE2 4GJ

Mob: 07921 455762Email: reeja.sarai_93@hotmail.co.uk

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

Introduction _______________________________________________________________________1

Curriculum Vitae ____________________________________________________________________2

Work Undertaken as part of NHS Better Care Together Programme ___________________________5

Work Undertaken at De Montfort University _____________________________________________9

Work Undertaken at Phoenix Cinema and Arts Centre____________________________________14

List of Appendices __________________________________________________________________15

Introduction

Through achieving a high 2:1 on my BA Joint Honours English Literature and Creative Writing degree, the most significant lesson I have learned is that writing, like most skills, cannot simply be learned and mastered. Similarly, I’m learning through my current employment at West Leicestershire Clinical Commissioning Group (WL CCG) that, irrespective of the skills one may have mastered, there is always more to learn. With this is mind, every piece of work covered in this Portfolio encompasses learning, development and my efforts to master every skill I can.

Having worked on several projects within the Better Care Together (BCT) Programme, I have developed my skills in a number of areas including:

Networking with healthcare professionals and Executives across Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland (LLR) to encourage a shared vision, and shared approach to improving system-wide healthcare

Project/Programme Management: alongside updating a programme-level master action log, and populating monthly highlight reports for the BCT Project Management Office (PMO), I am qualified in PRINCE2 Project Management (Foundation). Working in a programme/project environment while studying for my PRINCE2 exam definitely supports my contextual understanding of the field, and enriches my experience

Organisation: I realise the importance of understanding ‘who’s who’ it the programme/project world. I’ve arranged meetings, taken Minutes, populated monthly highlight reports, and cleared up network drive space to ensure the End of Life Care team’s work runs as smoothly as possible.

With regard to writing practice, my degree has helped me to discover my natural ‘voice’, so to speak. In my spare time, I’ve been developing ideas for future work. Since I have a keen interest in experimental and dystopian fiction (for example, Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange), I’ve also been reading experimental writers’ work in my spare time (such as Marisha Pessl’s novel Night Film). Reading more modern writers’ work has helped me to develop my writing style further and strengthen my passion for upcoming work.

I believe my combination of writing skills, knowledge around the publishing industry, marketing experience and programme/project Management experience is adaptable and advantageous to most professional organisations.

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Reeja Sarai 2:1 B.A. Hons. Creative Writing and English, De Montfort University, Leicester. Class 2012 – July 2015.

Personal ProfileI love thinking outside the box and often find connections between things that others might overlook. I demonstrate my creative, insightful personality through my writing practice, and through the ideas I develop on my own, or in a group.

I am highly self-motivated and, as a keen writer and dedicated reader, my eye for detail is meticulous, and my commercial awareness sharp. My natural love of learning and curiosity motivate me greatly.

Work ExperienceRegional Project Support Officer | NHS Better Care Together Programme | West Leicestershire Clinical Commissioning Group (base)| 30th Nov 2015 – 30th Nov 2016 (Notice period: 1 wk).

Providing project support to the Better Care Together transformational programmes of work, covering 2 clinical areas. I was involved with supporting the Service Implementation Manager for the Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland (LLR) End of Life Care workstream.

Key tasks included: Organising meetings/taking minutes; Event Management; Maintaining work plans and action logs; Research for programmes of work; Liaising with a wide range of Clinicians and key stakeholders across 3 LLR CCGs and

providers; Extensive involvement in stakeholder engagement; Supporting the 2016 System Transformation Plan for ratification from NHS England; Supporting plans for integrated working across LLR

Book Publisher | States of Independence Publishers’ Fair, De Montfort University | Mar 2015

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49 Windrush Drive, Oadby, Leicester, LE2 4GJ

07921 455762

reeja.sarai_93@hotmail.co.uk

Main Skills and QualitiesHighly focused; passionate; enthusiastic; Great writer; keen eye for detail; brilliant presentation skillsDetermined; hard-worker; Enjoys working collaboratively and independently.

I was extensively involved in writing and editing an original publication, which I then helped to market and sell at the States of Independence Publishers' Fair.

Manuscript Analyst | De Montfort University | 27th Dec 2014 – 4th Feb 2015I worked as part of a team to analyse and evaluate bestselling author, Mark Z. Danielewski's original manuscript, The Familiar: One Rainy Day in May

This role required me to: Liaise with overseas students to define key themes and areas for improvement; Edit publication and help to research for input into it

Creative Programme Assistant | Phoenix Cinema and Art Centre | 4th Aug 2014 – 4th Feb 2015I wrote and edited original copy for Phoenix’s monthly film brochure.Key aspects:

Website navigation / digital marketing Use of Photoshop to edit images Running off financial reports to Warner Bros. and Disney Data entry / use of Vista Database / scheduling film times

Shop Assistant | Age Concern: Furniture. Oadby, Leicester | 24th Jun – 19th Oct 2013 Key aspects:

Operating till Experience in busy consultative environment Organising / cleaning shop and items Answering phone calls / taking messages

EducationIn addition to my degree (please refer to the heading of this document), I achieved three A-Levels whilst at Beauchamp College, Leicester, including a B in English, a B in Philosophy and Ethics, and a C in Psychology.

I also achieved six GCSEs whilst at Beauchamp, including an A in English Literature, a B in Science and a C in Maths.

I obtained a PRINCE2 Foundation qualification whilst providing practical project support to the Better Care Together programme of work.

Hobbies and Interests I thoroughly enjoy writing (especially experimental prose, short stories, and songs). I’m particularly influenced by Speculative Fiction writers such as Anthony Burgess and Aldous Huxley because they’re so daring and experimental.

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I also have a keen interest in human and animal psychology, and often explore this in my writing. It also helps me to adapt my approach to any individual.

I love singing, and work with people to create exciting, though-provoking songs. I also enjoy doing this through my own lyric writing. I have performed at The Shed in Leicester, and love to share ideas with other people.

References References available on request.

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Work Undertaken as Part of NHS Better Care Together Programme

Define: Working with Providers and Commissioners to Perform a Service Gap Analysis

Better care together (BCT) is a significant programme of work which aims to transform the health and social care system in Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland (LLR) by 2019.

BCT brings together partners, including local NHS organisations and councils, to ensure that services change to meet the needs of local people. We worked closely with public and patient involvement (PPI) representatives to develop plans for change.

The BCT programme consisted of eight clinical workstreams (or programmes of work), including the End of Life Care (EoLC) team, which I worked with for a year. As part of the scoping phase of this programme, we needed to identify any key areas of clinical lead within the existing pathway for patients at the end of life.

In order to enable the EoLC team to develop a greater understanding of where each provider across the 3 LLR CCGs stood financially and contractually, I created a mapping template which I populated by talking face-to-face with Senior Commissioning Managers, and primary, community and voluntary providers.

I used a stakeholder matrix to appeal to individual stakeholder motivations where there were any misunderstandings in our commissioning intentions; I feel that, in order to build up meaningful relationships with our stakeholders, we need to be transparent in our motivations too.

Through use of a master action log, I ensured that I was up-to-date on peoples’ actions and that they were kept updated on them.

I created a master circulation list and programme of meetings for the entire year to ensure that the appropriate people turned up to the appropriate meetings, so that we could work within the three-month timescale agreed as part of our project plan, and worked with my colleague from Public Health to format and sense-check the Health Needs Assessment (HNA).

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As a basis for comparison, I set up and facilitated a workshop with I set up and facilitated a workshop to encourage Senior Commissioning Managers, clinicians and provider Directors to open their minds and discuss the Ideal pathway without inhibition.

As a result of my coordination skills above, the HNA was completed successfully within the three-month timescale; recommendations included in the HNA1 were reflected in our collaborative Strategy.

Develop: Work around Collaborative Strategy

Having established our existing areas for improvement, and our Ideal pathway, we needed to define what needed to be done in order to achieve the Ideal.

I used the project plan in conjunction with the stakeholder matrix to ensure a gradual yet timely acceptance of the change in culture which was on the horizon.

In order to do this, I set up meetings between the Service Implementation Manager and individual stakeholders to discuss any key concerns and seek out any solutions, and formatted the Strategy with stakeholders’ amendments in mind.

As a result of my dedication to out tight deadlines and our stakeholders’ views, we had successfully created the first collaborative Strategy in years.

Implement: Work around Service Specification

Now that we knew what needed to be done, we needed to establish how to do it contractually and operationally.

Since this was bound to be a fairly unstable stage of the programme for our stakeholders, I wanted to ensure that they understood our expectations of them, and that we understood theirs of us; being highly busy clinicians in highly technical environments, I wanted to encourage clear lines of communication and understand why they wanted to continue working with us. This, of course, involved capturing any key concerns.

1 Please see Appendix A.

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In order to do this, I took confidential Minutes at EoLC programme Board meetings and ensured that any concerns were addressed in the Service Specification.

Work Undertaken as part of the Learning Lessons to Improve Care Clinical Workstream

In 2013, a mortality review was undertaken in the University Hospitals of Leicester (UHL), and twelve areas for clinical improvement were identified; three of these key areas (including miscommunication around DNACPR orders) were taken forward into a programme of work entitled ‘Learning Lessons to Improve Care’. I worked in this workstream alongside working on the EoLC programme of work.

During my internship, we looked at procurement for a retrospective review to establish areas of clinical improvement once EoLC had been moved from an acute to a community provider environment.

Experience in Event Coordination

In most clinical environments the term ‘Serious Incident’ was ill-defined at the start of my internship. Providers often disagreed on what a Serious Incident consisted of and the procedures which should take place to learn from them once they were identified. In an attempt to solve this issue, the EoLC team organised an event to encourage shared learning across providers.

Due to political conflict we experienced when mapping EoLC services at the beginning of the HNA, we assumed it would be difficult to bring providers together to encourage shared learning. However, in this case, it wasn’t nearly as challenging. This is because I had helped the EoLC team to create a reputation for ourselvess, where we moved work forward resourcefully and effectively; we were a small team with big ambitions. We believed in our work and this was apparent at the event.

Having created a programme for the event, I put together a register of attendance (which I kept updated), created identification badges for delegates, and produced pen-portraits for the keynote speakers. I also ensured we had the appropriate (amount of) stationery and equipment for the event, and assisted my colleague with contracting arrangements with

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University of Leicester (where the event was held). I also helped to organise catering. During the event, I ensured each delegate knew where to sit – and, taking into consideration the organisations they worked for, ensured that each table had delegates from multiple organisations and providers.

As a result of great reviews – particularly around integrated working and organisation – and a new system-wide awareness of issues raised at the event, a follow-up event was set to take place at the end of the year to review work taken forward.

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Work Undertaken at De Montfort University

One Rainy Day in May: Editing a Manuscript by Mark Z. Danielewski

On 12th May 2015, Mark Z. Danielewski (House of Leaves, 2000) published the first volume (of 27) in his long-awaited experimental series, The Familiar. One Rainy Day in May explores the events of one specific day in May across nine timescales and character groups across the world. This day starts of like most and ends on a somewhat apocalyptic note.

With the help of fellow students at De Montfort University (DMU) and overseas students, I analysed an original manuscript2 for this work for interesting symbolism, and intertextual reference, and for areas which might be improved before being published. I spent my spare time between working on my Dissertation and working my job at Phoenix Cinema and Arts Centre reading the script very closely, and making notes on any questions I had around context, structure or the writer’s craftwork. My main area of interest was to explore connections (or lack thereof) between Danielewski’s characters. While some connections were subtle, others were rather prominent, and I found myself questioning why these were presented in this way. Each week, me and my study group would get together and build on our questions while attempting to answer them. I think this discussion and debate was the most interesting part of the process; Danielewski’s incredible ability to create a story which takes place entirely in a tiny, tight timescale while leaving the content almost entirely open to the reader’s interpretation astounded me. While writing my Dissertation, I began to realise that this was also a key strength in my own work. As a result of this, I could begin to analyse and question my own craftwork, which helped me majorly with my Dissertation.

‘Miriam’: How I Worked on my Dissertation

Planning my Creative Writing Dissertation3 was challenging, labyrinthine and, perhaps most importantly, really enjoyable. I knew from the onset that my inspiration would be the macabre ‘adult’ fairytale. What I didn’t know, however, was how broad that term really was.

2 See Appendix B.3 See Appendix C.

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Like most writers, I ran with one idea and sprinted to the next in the blink of an eye. Having moved from timeframe to timeframe, character construct to character construct, I began ‘combining’ traditional fairytales together and found some interesting themes emerge. These themes intertwined in my mind to form a story almost as twisted: my final piece, ‘Miriam’ (attached).

Having read and analysed classic fairytales, such as ‘The Red Shoes’ and ‘The Twelve Dancing Princesses’, I combined the two stories together and created something rather complex and Medieval. Following this, I adapted the story to suit a modern-day setting, but found it far too multifaceted and inaccessible. Consequently, I took a step back and scanned the two fairytales for common themes and issues, most of which were rather controversial. Finally, I came up with a story which contained some of themes I identified, and aspects of the story which was set in the modern day.

Once a solid story began to form, my naturally creative mind kicked in, and I began to conjure up more and more ideas – some of which I enjoy developing in my free time, now – which resulted in a ‘snowballing’ effect, and the story became dense and impractically intricate again.

I took one final step back, and began writing the following story: during a time when female infanticide and honour killings are considered completely acceptable, Kazima has a daughter. She calls her Miriam. Kazima’s family is, regrettably, majorly disappointed. When Miriam turns fourteen, Kazima gives birth to a second daughter named Zaida. Kazima’s family is enraged. They banish Kazima and Zaida and arrange a marriage between Kazima and a stranger in her native birthplace, Qatar. Fourteen years on, Kazima is driven mad by her obsession with Miriam, who she misses unspeakably. Having pinned her hopes on Zaida being her ‘second chance’, she projects her bitterness onto her and bullies her husband. Much like the process of writing a story, Kazima’s story never really ends.

Essentially, my final submission was a concoction of ideas and stories, for which I received First grade. This combined with feedback received from my tutors has encouraged me to continue writing ‘Miriam’ with the incorporation of my older, more intricate ideas.

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‘What am I?’: Featured in Demon Newspaper

One of the first pieces I wrote in my first year of university was from the perspective of a chameleon, entitled ‘What Am I?’4. This work is centred around a rather wise chameleon who perches on a treetop branch and comments on human behaviour – particularly around the ridiculousness of cough mixture, and how humans fail to hide much.

I thoroughly enjoyed writing this as it was one of the first in an ongoing series of pieces which helped me to discover my writing style and voice. This, in turn, made my writing distinguishable, which meant that students and tutors alike recognised it instantly, and some told me they’d discussed in in their spare time!

As a result of this, I decided to publish it in the Demon Newspaper, which I think was a great first step into the world of writing for the public domain, since it gave me the confidence to read it aloud at my first publishers’ fair. After reading it aloud to an audience, I received some rather positive reviews and was encouraged to keep getting my writing style out there.

Broken Silence: A Collaborative Project

4 See Appendix E.

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During my second year of university, we were tasked with creating a book from scratch5 and selling it at a publishers’ fair.

Having teamed up with a couple of classmates, we began my developing our previous story ideas and, in some places, even combining them. However, much like the issues I had with my Dissertation, I found that this approach made things far too complicated. We opted, instead, to create a story from scratch.

Since we were all intrigued by it, initially we considered experimenting with a non-linear horror story, where the reader was the key character. However, due to time constraints, we began focusing on a different idea.

Inspired by Mark Haddon’s novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, we started writing fictional diary entries from the perspective of a young boy with an autistic disorder. We quickly realised, however, that this would also be challenging since we didn’t want to run the risk of exploring a subject matter which we didn’t know very well.

After much deliberation, we noticed a common interest which showed up in the above ideas: experimental fiction. So we took a fellow teammate’s older ideas and experimented with formatting it in different ways for different effects. We aimed to understand how line breaks or page breaks (for example) would affect the original story and how it made the reader feel. This is where Haddon’s novel came in really useful.

Following the formatting stage, I edited and sense-checked the piece, and added my own twist to it for dramatic effect. We worked on designing the cover in a way that would appeal to our adult audience – this was interesting, because I’d never worked with the illustrative aspect of publishing before, and I found that, if done correctly, it could add volumes to the written content. Finally, we spent an afternoon looking for the appropriate professional printer companies, who later printed copies of the attached book.

With regard to selling our work, I used my marketing knowledge to place the books where they would be noticed at the publishers’ fair.

I include this piece of work in this Portfolio as it was my first experience of the publishing world. I enjoyed working with my small publishing team to create something of the highest

5 See Appendix F.

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quality we could achieve to a set deadline. The most significant aspect of this project for me, was to manage all of our expectations and preferences so that we all accomplished something that we all believed in.

Work Undertaken at Phoenix Cinema and Arts Centre

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Development of Commercial Awareness

Digital writing was an entirely new concept to me when I began working at Phoenix. So when tasked with writing digital copy for Phoenix new (at that time) website, I was intrigued. I began by using copy I’d written for the page6 and edited it to suit an audience who would find us on the internet. Since the internet is often used for convenience, this often meant shortening the word count and making each synopsis more concise. With regard to navigation, this also meant placing low-selling or up-and-coming independent films on the right hand side in the centre of the page (so that it would catch the user’s eye). When editing images using Photoshop (which was also new to me at the time), this meant using tricks of shape and lighting to draw the user’s eye to a specific area of the image. As a result of my experience with digital writing and marketing, in combination with scheduling film times to suit the wider public, I became more commercially aware about my own writing work. I developed my understanding of what would make my audience ‘tick’ further, and came to realise the importance of writing for an audience, rather than for my own personal enjoyment alone.

Retrospectively speaking, I have come to realise that this shift from personal to public awareness has played a huge role in my work as a BCT Workstream Support Intern. It has enabled me to understand the impact our work could have on our patients and service users. I believe that an outward facing outlook that keeps service users at the forefront is the way to move forward with work in an appropriate and efficient manner.

Appendix ID Article Format

A Catherine John7, End of Life Care Health Needs Assessment Hard copy only

6 For Brochure, see Appendix D.

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for Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland, July 2016.

B Mark Z. Danielewski, The Familiar: One Rainy Day in May, Pantheon Publishing, May 2015, [manuscript].

Hard copy available on request

C Reeja Sarai, ‘Miriam’, May 2015, [Dissertation/Creative Writing Portfolio].

Hard copy available on request

D Reeja Sarai, ‘What am I?’, Demon Newspaper, De Montfort University, [date, vol, edition, editor].

Hard copy only

E Reeja Sarai et al., ‘Broken Silence’, De Montfort University, date Hard copy only

F Brochure for Phoenix Cinema and Art Centre, date, edition, editor Hard copy only

List of Appendices

7 Catherine John, Clinical Lecturer in Epidemiology and Public Health/Honorary Specialty Registrar in Public Health, Leicestershire County Council.

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