Where do you work? What do you do for a living? These are conversational questions that we ask, and get asked, time and time again. How many of us though, can actually say ‘I make a difference to people’s lives’. Well you certainly can if you work in social care and specialist education like we do here at Bright Futures.
Made With Care
The government’s ‘made with care’ campaign has put social care in the spotlight recently to help encourage people into this massively rewarding career, which is a fantastic way of starting a conversation about how and why people find their way into the field.
As we continue to grow at Bright Futures, we have welcomed a number of new starters through our doors over the last twelve months. Our new starters come to us from all walks and stages of life proving that there is no one set route into social care. What is also great to know, is that we do not look for any prior care experience, we are looking for people who match our values and fit our culture.
Some of our colleagues have recently been sharing their stories with us on our social media, and from this, it is clear that we have a lot of amazing colleagues who have found their way to us through very different avenues. One of our Senior Support Workers described his journey straight from education into a career here at Bright Futures. His main focus was to work somewhere that he could carve out a great career and work with like-minded people. He’s certainly achieved that and is currently working on developing into a Deputy Manager whilst providing exceptional care to the people we support, and being a highly-valued member of the team.
One of the perhaps more surprising routes our colleagues have taken to join us is from the world of sports. We have a Registered Manager who played professional football, a Deputy Manager who played professional rugby league, and a several colleagues involved in football and other sports including tennis. It may not feel like a natural progression but talking to these colleagues who have come to us from sport, where the retirement age is much younger, it is clear that the goal for working in social care is to make a difference to people.
There are clear links to social care from people who have worked for the NHS or education and we have been very lucky to have colleagues join us from these professions when they have looked for a career change. Working with us here you get to support people on a one-to-one basis and this is something which appeals to people who have worked in support roles previously but had a high number of people to support and care for.
There is no ‘right time’ to start a career in social care, or a ‘right way’ to go about it. Some of our colleagues have been to university, some haven’t. Some have worked in retail, insurance and sales. In fact between us all, we probably will have most jobs covered in some way.
So, what do we all have in common? What unifies us all here at Bright Futures? How did we end up in social care? It’s coming to work every day and helping the people we support, to live their lives in the way they want to. It’s about having a career that you can be proud of and, hand on heart, we can say we are making a difference to someone’s life.
