The manager of Huddersfield’s centre for pre-school children with special needs has retired.

Sharman Secker started her nurse training in 1971 and has been manager at the Ellerslie Centre on Greenhead Road in Huddersfield for the last 24 years.

Over the years Sharman and a team of NHS professionals including physiotherapists, speech therapists and occupational therapists have helped many hundreds of children born with complex special needs.

She said: “We help around 45 children a year aged from birth to around three, supporting both the children and their families. We do our very best to realise their potential at such an early age which is done through a mixture of play therapy, speech therapy, physio and occupational therapy.

“I’ve loved the job and if I had to choose again I would have done exactly the same. The strength of the job has been the teamwork and we have all worked very closely together through the happy and some sad times.”

Sharman began her career as an orthopaedic nurse in 1971, training at Ellerslie House on Blacker Road, Edgerton, which later became the original Ellerslie Centre.

She then went on to do her adult nursing training, qualifying in 1975.

In the mid 1980s Sharman qualified as a health visitor, working across Huddersfield, and in May 1991 became manager of Ellerslie which had moved from Ellerslie House to its current base in 1988.

Sharman is married to Stephen and the couple, who live in Holmfirth, have two children, Abigail and James and two grandchildren, Isabelle and Joseph.