Caroline Gallant - Training Manager

I joined Unlock My Life as Training Manager in September 2024. When I first heard about the job, I was working as a Prison Offender Manager, and I felt excited and confident in my abilities, which enabled me to go through the interview process without anxiety taking over. The positive approach to mental health awareness, and the support of the Unlock My Life team, is what drew me to the role. The project uses everyone’s lived experiences and passion, which is key to continually developing and improving what is already a successful and innovative concept.

I spent over nine years working in the prison service, which enabled me to work with a variety of people. I saw firsthand some of the challenges that prisoners face on a daily basis. I was lucky enough to work within a progressive regime; using procedural justice to rehabilitate and focus on individual needs, whilst building positive working relationships and encouraging prisoners to take responsibility for themselves and their future. However, demands on prison staff are high, and there isn’t enough time or resources to offer the support every prisoner needs.

I knew I wanted to work in mental health in some capacity, having a long history of lived experience with mental health. I encountered significant trauma throughout my childhood and was diagnosed with ADHD aged 40.

I am passionate about making a difference in peoples’ lives; most importantly, giving them the knowledge they need to understand themselves and why they make the choices they make. For me, it is not only the project and what it sets out to achieve, but also the people who make it successful. The people who see someone for who they are and the potential they have, if given the right support. It’s being able to be myself.

I want to use my lived experience to create awareness and promote healthy attitudes to talking openly about mental health. The more open we are, the less others feel alone.

3 facts about me:

  1. I HATE chocolate orange.

  2. I had no idea I wasn’t watching the Disney version of Peter Pan and The Little Mermaid when I was young, until I watched them with my children and Ariel didn’t die!

  3. I refused to try a custard cream until I was about 24, because it wasn’t chocolate.