My work experience with Bobby Dean
by Deqa Abdul-Kadir
This year as part of my Year 12 work experience, I had the honour of being able to spend the week in my local MP Bobby Dean’s Liberal Democrat office in Carshalton. My time spent here was extremely smooth-sailing, and the staff were kind, caring and super accommodating.
To first be accepted into the program I had to fill in an application which told staff a bit about me, my interests and my background and was overall very self-explanatory. Shortly after, I was notified of my acceptance and my week began.
On our first day, my work experience partner and I were given a tour of the office by Julie, who also introduced us to the main staff. After that we were given our first task in which we had to review some casework tasks, and discuss our perspectives on how we would solve the cases. After we spent around 2 hours on this, we worked alongside the casework team and talked through their thought process when reviewing casework. I found this particularly interesting and fascinating due to the wide variety of cases that are dealt with but what stood out to me overall was the intelligence and the variety of knowledge required from the casework team, specifically Sarah (who had a noble and humorous character) and the extreme care and detail that goes into dealing with all local issues. Additionally we were briefly introduced to Bobby, who was also very kind, and relatable, and with him we discussed our specific interests related to politics.
We spent our second day doing a research task, in which we had to identify a local organisation, business or community that aligns with Bobby’s top priorities, explain its relevance and then propose an engagement strategy. This was really insightful and gives you a good idea of just how much hard work goes into the everyday life of an MP. After this, we were challenged to go through the process and propose our own Private Members Bill. We spent the afternoon researching our cause and preparing a 10 min bill speech with the help of Chante, another very friendly and kind member of the team. After this we proposed our PMB’s to Chante who congratulated our bills and gave her feedback.
On our third day, we were lucky enough to spend the day in Parliament. We made our own way there and the day began with a brief tour of Portcullis House, and the journey to Bobby’s office. Once we reached the office, we were met by Hermione who was very helpful and passionately explained to us her role working alongside Bobby as a legislature researcher. Together we then watched that day's session of PMQ’s and headed to lunch. After lunch, we were given a full, in depth tour of the building whilst simultaneously trying to spot any MP’s which was exciting. After our tour, we went back up to Bobby Dean’s London office and were met by Matt, who is in charge of Bobby’s comms & media coverage. Matt explained to us his role and showed us some of his work which was very cool and entertaining. We spent a lot of time on that and then we were once again greeted by Bobby for a more in depth conversation. We spoke to Bobby about our PMB’s and gathered his thoughts on them, also asking him for honest feedback which he very kindly gave. We found out more about him on a personal level and really was able to gauge his kind-hearted nature and easy-going character. Bobby spent a lot of time talking with us and was very interested in what we had to say and non-judgemental which I was grateful for as I was previously very nervous.
Overall, my time spent here was very eventful, I enjoyed it a lot and would definitely recommend it to anybody interested in Politics who would like to get an understanding of how it feels to work in the behind the scenes of Politics.
