5 Star Reviews
“I have the Skills. I have the experience. I have the Drive.”
1977 – 1981 With 3 good science A levels I had my pick of Nursing schools – chose St Thomas’s Hospital and the Nightingale school of Nursing.
1980 – Won a Nightingale scholarship to the University of North Carolina USA. Undertook a study and wrote a paper comparing wound healing rates post operatively, in the British versus American community health systems .
1981 – Wrote for the Nursing Times.
1981 -1982 – Back packed across America and Canada, came back to earn more money and then (after mistakenly thinking Jakarta was in Germany and arranging to meet a friend there), backpacked through Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and back through Sri Lanka.
1982-1985 Trained as a midwife as needed that for Health Visting. Secured sponsorship from Devon to study Health visiting in Plymouth with field work in Colliton(rural community) and Tiverton (small isolated town community before they built a link road) . Studying paediatrics, geriatrics, psychology, sociology, social policy, statistics and was highly commended for my geriatrics paper in particular. Learnt how to make a difference in community health.
1985 – 1995 Got married, had three children in two- and a-bit years. Worked in Horsham ( medium sized prosperous town) and then Bristol (inner city area of deprivation) before moving back to Guernsey.
1995 -2017 Worked as a Health visitor in Guernsey and very quickly was also allocated all the other islands except Sark. Went to Alderney one day a week for 16 years and the other islands as required.
1996 – Lobbied for a change in the way Health Visitors were allocated caseloads from being attached to the GPs to working in a defined area or “Patch attached”. Much better for community working. This way of working persists today and has been adopted by some other agencies and services
2002 – Start of my campaign to get better services for elderly people in Alderney where I had a geriatric caseload as well as child and family health. Did a survey of Alderney’s 75 year olds, including physical wellness check and lifestyle interview. This identified that some elderly people had not been able to get to an optician for 30 years and optician services were organised to visit Alderney from Southampton.
2004 – The Director of Public Health asked me if he could use a picture of me on the front cover of the Annual report as a result of successful community collaboration. Problem solving with the families, the family centre and the local play group led to successful projects to improve child health in the Bouet housing estates. At that time, they were due to be rebuilt, and families were suffering from poor housing, run down infrastructure with graffiti, cars being set alight etc.
2008 – Working with the Access course at the College of Further education to set the students a project looking at baby and childcare facilities in St Peter Port. They did the research and produced a leaflet for parents highlighting where change facilities and breast-feeding friendly areas were in the town. They also ran a tea party for some of the children of the area. I taught sessions on “Promoting the Health of Families” and “Family and Child assessment in the Community” at the Institute of Nursing.
2010 - Developed a parenting course for fathers with two colleagues, called “Just Dads” which we delivered to fathers, took into the prison to support fathers with their parenting skills when they rejoined their families, and a revised version of this course is offered periodically at Bright Beginnings in recent years.
2011- Parents of Herm put article in the Guernsey Press about how they valued my support as a Health Visitor.
2012 – 2015 Increased teaching and public speaking opportunities. Running 9 week Post natal depression course, sessions at College of F.E to nursery nurse students on Community Health and Wellbeing, Updated Just Dads course, wrote a twenty-week bespoke child care course for a child with additional needs in Alderney who was a school refuser at request of the school.
2015-2017 Formed lobbying group Youth action in the community in Alderney (YACA) to lobby for better social work provision in Alderney after inadequate response from Guernsey social services over several severe child abuse issues.
YACA comprised of services working with children in Alderney, and we carried out a research project to identify the failings in social services at that time, to the then manager of Social Services ( not the current manager of Social Services), who refused to accept our findings. Then I ensured the team from Aberdeen University who were carrying out a review of health services in Alderney were directed to key personnel both professional and public who then made a case in their report resulting in an experienced senior social worker being allocated to Alderney.
2016 -Nominated in the first Pride of Guernsey Awards as a Health Visitor.
2017 – A review of health care in Alderney was carried out by the University of Aberdeen
“Independent review of Health and Social Care Need, Provision and Governance in Alderney”
Quotes from that Report:
“The linchpin for children’s services is one individual who has worked as the health visitor in Alderney for 15 years….”
“Two individuals (Susie Gallienne and Barbara Benfield) provide and oversee highly flexible services to children and older adults respectively. The responsibilities for these roles exceed those in standard job descriptions of health visitors and Home Help Organisers in the UK.
Both are approaching the age of retirement, and it is essential that replacements are found and trained appropriately, to job descriptions which are realistically scoped and appropriately graded before serious gaps in service provision emerge”
2018 – on my retirement from Health visiting in Alderney, the families not only gave me cards, flowers and a tea party but also sent me a photo with “Thank you” written across the community hall wall.
2018 – After retiring from Health visiting, I was employed as a supply lecturer to teach child health and development to the Early Years students at the College of FE including a module on Legislation, Policies and Procedures.
2018 – Wigwam, the charity supporting families with a child or children with additional needs decided to change from a parent run peer support group to offer individual support to families at a professional level. I then completely redesigned the charity. I visited most of the 80 families on the database ( I had been the health visitor for 60% of the families) and then built Wigwam into the charity it is today. I handed over the role in October 2024 and became the Chair, in preparation for the election. Wigwam at that point had 260+ member families.
2021 – Following the resignation of three heads of department in Children’s services due to the fact that they felt that the degree of bullying they were experiencing made their positions untenable, I formed another lobbying group to lobby for an independent arbitrator or ombudsman for staff that feel they are being bullied. The group quickly grew to 25 recent cases with others joining anonymously as feared for their employment.
Eventually I met with Mark De Garis, Head of Public Services and handed him three reports with undeniable written evidence that bullying was an issue in Guernsey. He looked into the issue and made several immediate changes and said that there were possibly more that he could do in the future. There is a new post he developed which looks as if it will at least go some way to addressing these issues.
2022- While working part time as well for St Johns in their training department , I re-wrote the First Aid in schools programme for years 5, 7 and 8 which is still being used today.
2022 – I was featured in Connect magazine’s October/November edition as the month’s Charity Champion.
2023 – Nominated again in the Pride of Guernsey Awards this time as a Charity Coordinator and developer.
2024 – I became the Chair of both Wigwam and the charity Guernsey Mencap which supports and advocates for adults with a learning disability. I also joined the board of Grow as the Guernsey Mencap representative and will continue with these roles if elected.
My interest is to bring the third sector support for children and adults with a learning disability and their families into a seamless whole so that the support is there from diagnosis into old age. This to compliment and work together with the States service provision.
2024 – 2025 I completed the project for Wigwam, building an adapted play area for primary and preschool children with a moderate to severe learning disability and their siblings. The Michael Hutchings adapted play area was opened by Anne Hutchings on 29.3.25.
I have been working with women in Public Life for the last two and a half years to learn what the role of a Deputy is. This has included monthly Politics Live meetings where we have discussed and debated the issues being debated in the States and have learnt about the procedures of the Chamber. I have also attended the States sponsored sessions for prospective candidates, most of the sessions to support candidates run by Women in Public life and talks at the Chamber of Commerce and other institutions aimed at helping prospective candidates understand the finance and business positions in Guernsey. Also through Women in Public life, I put forward a requete in a mock Chamber to gain some practical experience of public speaking and speech writing.
Other interests
Sport
Competitive swimmer – picked to swim from Guernsey, for Hampshire in the Masters Intercounty swim meet twice in Backstroke and Butterfly competing against other countiess in the South of England
Arts
I have been placed multiple times in local poetry competitions including 5 times in Poetry on the Buses and (once taken as part of the Literary Festival) Poems on the Move. I have also been long listed in two international poetry competitions. My poem Bus stop is depicted in a woolly picture and is hanging in the hospital.
I also have a well-received children’s book published Joey and the Penguins
