Cerys

I'm Cerys, I'm 28, and I've wanted to be a radiographer since I was 16. That was when my little brother Rhys had a terrible asthma attack and ended up at Princess of Wales Hospital for three days. I watched the radiographers work with him, how gentle they were when he was frightened, how the images they captured helped the doctors see exactly what was happening in his lungs. There was something about that combination of high-tech precision and human care that drew me in completely. My mam has worked as a healthcare assistant at the same hospital for fifteen years. She always said the NHS was where you could make a real difference, and after watching Rhys get better, I knew she was right.

I studied biomedical science at Swansea University, thinking it would give me the foundation I needed. I graduated in 2021 and moved back home to Port Talbot, living in the tiny flat above my uncle's chip shop while I planned my next steps. I applied to Cardiff University's radiography programme in 2022, confident that my degree and my determination would be enough.

Cardiff University told me the course was oversubscribed with a two-year waiting list. They suggested I contact Health Education and Improvement Wales to explore alternative routes. When I called HEIW, the advisor was sympathetic but said they were encouraging people to consider apprenticeship pathways rather than university programmes. "There are more opportunities coming through the apprenticeship route," she told me. It sounded promising.

I contacted Swansea Bay University Health Board directly. They confirmed they had radiographer vacancies at Princess of Wales Hospital and other sites across their patch. "We're definitely recruiting," the workforce planning manager told me, "but we don't have any funded apprenticeship places available this year. The budget has been cut."

I accepted that. It sounded reasonable. Budgets get cut, money runs out, these things happen. But I kept looking.

I tried private training providers next, thinking I might fund it myself if I had to. The first one I contacted said they offered radiography training but couldn't place students in Wales. "NHS trusts in Wales aren't commissioning new training places due to budget constraints," they explained. "We can't run a programme without clinical placement partners."

The second private provider said the same thing. So did the third.

I reapplied to Cardiff University in 2023, hoping the waiting list had cleared. Instead, I discovered they had actually reduced places on the radiography programme from 30 to 25. When I asked why, the admissions office said they had to align their numbers with what Health Education and Improvement Wales was commissioning.

That was when I started to see the contradiction.

I got a job as a porter at Princess of Wales Hospital while I figured out what to do next. Every day, I walked past the radiology department where they were short-staffed. The radiographers were working overtime constantly. Appointment slots were being cancelled because there weren't enough people to run all the machines. I'd see patients waiting weeks longer than they should for scans.

In the staff canteen, I met other people like me. Sarah, who had a degree in physics and wanted to train as a radiographer. Michael, who had been a medical technician in the army and was trying to get into the profession. Emma, who had worked as a radiography assistant for three years and was ready to take the next step. All of us were stuck in the same loop: the NHS had vacancies, we wanted to fill them, but there was supposedly no money to train us.

Then I walked past the old Health Education Wales building in Cardiff one day. It's a perfectly good building, sitting mostly empty now. The training facilities are still there. The simulation labs that could teach us to use the equipment are gathering dust. The lecture theatres where we could learn anatomy and pathology are locked up.

That was when I started to wonder: if the people exist, and the buildings exist, and the need exists, what exactly is it that there is no money for? The radiography machines at the hospital were already there. The experienced radiographers who could teach us were already there. The patients who needed scans were definitely there.

I used to accept the excuse that there was no money. I hear it differently now. The UK government that prints the notes and mints the coins told me it could not find enough of them to train the people who were standing right there, ready to work. But the real question was never about money. It was about whether the people existed, whether the skills could be taught, whether the materials were available. They were. All of them.

The excuse was not a fact. It was a choice wrapped in the language of impossibility. When I was living at home, if my mam said we couldn't afford something, that was real. She had to wait for her wages to come in before she could spend them. But the government isn't like a household. It issues the pound. It doesn't have to wait for someone to give it pounds before it can spend pounds.

The limit was never the money. The limit was the willingness to spend it into the places and the people who needed it. Every time someone in Westminster or Cardiff Bay said "there is no funding," they were making a political choice and dressing it up as an accounting problem.

I'm still here, still watching, still working as a porter while the radiology department runs understaffed. I understand now that my story isn't just about me, or even just about healthcare. It's the story of every constituency where people and needs exist side by side while someone in government says the cupboard is bare. The cupboard isn't bare. Someone decided to keep it locked.