Mandy Tucker – Inspiration in Education nominee
Mandy Tucker – Inspiration in Education nominee
Mandy Tucker has been championing deaf and vision-impaired people across Staffordshire for more than 30 years.
She is the manager of ASSIST, part of Staffordshire County Council’s Specialist Support and Teaching Service, which provides the likes of BSL interpreters, specialist notetakers and sighted guides.
The service also includes Braille and audio transcription, Easy Read translation, readers and library support, Deafblind Communicator Guides, communication support workers, specialist study skills tutors and vision awareness training.
Mandy and her team work with over-16s in colleges and universities as well as in settings such as courtrooms.
She has been nominated in the Inspiration in Education category of the Your Heroes Awards with her nominator, Mike Tyler, calling her a hero and a constant inspiration to those who are fortunate enough to know her.
He said: “Without Mandy’s leadership over the last three decades ASSIST would likely have been subsumed by large generic support providers or disappeared due to the economic pressures and cost-cutting policies which so often disproportionately impact the very students ASSIST supports.
“Mandy’s dedication and her inability to take no for an answer, combined with her winning sense of humour has meant that ASSIST has continued to grow, adapt and thrive.
“Mandy has pioneered and championed the cause of deaf and vision-impaired students in further and higher education in Staffordshire for over 30 years. She continues to inspire new generations of staff and facilitate the educational achievements of these students.”
ASSIST is a small cost recovery service which was set up in 1988 to support a handful of deaf school leavers to progress to further and higher education.
When Mandy took the helm a few years later ASSIST grew and developed under her guidance to reflect the growing demand for local, high-quality, bespoke, specialist support required by deaf and vision-impaired students as they continued with their learning journeys into further and higher education.
ASSIST has expanded over the years to support deaf and vision-impaired people in the community but has never departed from its commitment to a focus on the educational opportunities of students in Staffordshire.
Mike added: “Mandy’s passion for the people she supports, her vision, her relentless enthusiasm and absolute determination to level up the educational opportunities for deaf and vision-impaired students in Staffordshire is truly inspirational.”
Mandy has been working at ASSIST for 32 years and even moved from Birmingham to Staffordshire to be closer to the job.
She said: “I’m an interpreter myself and came in to do that job, eventually becoming the manager, so I know all the roles and we all do a bit of everything.
“We’ve seen a lot of organisations come and go over the years. I’ve always said that even though funding has been difficult at times, we have to keep the quality of what we do.
“I’ve always tried to put myself in the shoes of the people I’m supporting and ask the staff to do the same. I’m not deaf or blind but I try to have that understanding of their life.
“I arrived thinking I’d stay as long as the job interests me and it’s never failed to interest me. There’s always something new every day.”
She added: “I’ve got a marvellous team. They’re wonderful. Everybody works in this team as if it was their life and their business. They do it because they care.”