A caring career
Whatever your age, background or academic qualifications, if you want to work with people to help them with their day-to-day living, there will be a role in the caring profession for you.
The care sector provides a whole range of services to support children, young people, adults and older people. Social care means helping people with their non-clinical needs. This can include social activities, personal care, mobility and meal times. If you work in social care you might help people living in their own homes, a residential home or in supported housing or a day centre. You might be based in one place, looking after one or more clients. Or you may spend time travelling between different locations looking after many different people.
Working for an agency
Carers can be directly employed by service users but there are also many opportunities to work for a care staff agency. An agency works with a variety of organisations to provide staff wherever and whenever they are needed. Needs can range from emergency cover, where a staff member is off sick for example, and short term holiday cover. It can also cover longer term or permanent placements where workload has increased and more help is needed. A good agency should know its staff very well. It can match the ideal candidate to a role, personalising the service to meet each client’s individual needs.
Routes to caring
There are many different routes to a career in caring. There are apprenticeship schemes available and graduate opportunities too. Remember, you don’t necessarily need academic qualifications to become a carer. You may need to be able to demonstrate that you have good English and numeracy skills, so qualifications like GCSEs in English Language and Maths can be useful.
A range of social care qualifications such as a Level 2 or 3 Diploma in Health and Social Care are available. If you haven’t got any of these yet, you shouldn’t let that put you off. It’s perfectly possible to undertake these qualifications once you’re actually in a job. Amore Group particularly prides itself on providing its staff with funded training opportunities to enhance their skills and build their CV while ‘on the job’. To find out how you can build a career in caring, contact Amore Group today.
