Yvonne Maclean

When did you start working for Gray Healthcare?

May 2018

Your role:

Yvonne is our Head of Nursing.   She is responsible for overseeing all aspects of nursing across all our packages of care.  Yvonne is a Registered Nurse – Learning Disabilities. She completed her nurse training in Blackburn, Lancashire.

Before joining Gray Healthcare:

Yvonne always wanted to become a nurse, but initially she could not decide whether to train as a learning disability nurse or as a mental health nurse.  After finishing school, she worked as a volunteer for three months in the Summer in a day centre for adults with learning disabilities and this convinced her that this was the route she wanted to take.  Post qualification, her first role was working in a newly built residential and respite care unit for children and young adults with learning disabilities in Slough.  After three years in this role, she moved back to Stranraer in Scotland to be closer to her family and took up a position as a Staff Nurse at a 9-bed residential unit providing long-term and respite care for young adults with learning disabilities. She was promoted to the role of Charge Nurse and in addition to this role, she also managed two other services located close by: one was as manager of an Adult Mental Health Community Team, the other a unit for adults with dementia.  Yvonne then moved to Dumfries and took on a role as a Community Learning Disability Nurse for the NHS there.  She later became the Team Manager for the Dumfries and Galloway Community Nursing Learning Disability Team. This was a management role where she managed a team of nurses and was heavily involved in both training and education.  She also set up several dual clinic sessions with doctors working alongside learning disability nurses.  At a time when Yvonne was keen to work more closely with patients again, she was approached by a member of the Gray Healthcare recruitment team for a hybrid nurse assessor/clinical lead role based in the North of England. She later relocated to South Yorkshire to reduce travel time.  She was made Head of Nursing in October 2021.

What do you like about working at Gray Healthcare?

‘I became a Learning Disability Nurse after doing voluntary work in a day centre one Summer. That Summer opened my eyes to how much people with Learning Disabilities had to contribute to society but were so often held back – I wanted to change that.  Working here, every day we have the opportunity to make a difference to the people we support and when you see what they can achieve with the right support, it is remarkable. We are so fortunate to work for a company where we can have such a positive impact on people’s lives.  Because we are a small team, we know all our staff and can watch them grow and develop too.’

Gray Healthcare in three words:

‘Creative, compassionate, solution-focused’