Changing career into care
You have done a hard job before. This one is different. Most of our care staff did something else first: wards and care homes, classrooms, the forces, pubs and shop floors, or fifteen years raising their own children. They arrived with no care qualification and a great deal of useful experience. We fund the Level 3 in full, plus the specialist training that sits around it, and we give you the time to do it properly.
What you already know
Where our care staff came from, and the part of it that turned out to matter here.
The NHS and adult care
Personal care, record keeping, safeguarding, handovers, working to a care plan with someone else's name on it. Almost all of it transfers. The difference is that here you have four or five young people rather than a ward, and you will know all of them properly.
Schools and teaching support
You have sat with a child who cannot access the lesson and worked out why. That is the job. Several of our team came from teaching assistant and behaviour support roles and say the work is the same conversation with more time to have it.
The forces, police and security
Discipline, calm under pressure, and the habit of recording things properly. What's different is the pace. You are not managing an incident and moving on, you are with the same young person tomorrow, and the week after, watching them get steadier.
Hospitality and retail management
Shift work, a rota, a team who need you to be predictable, and members of the public at their worst. You already de-escalate for a living. You have just never been paid to do it for someone who needs you to keep turning up.
Raising your own family
Routines, boundaries, meals, appointments, patience on a day with none left. We have never once thought of that as a gap on a CV, and a fair number of our staff came back to work through this route.
Driving, warehouse and trades
Early starts, a job that has to get done, and no fuss about it. Young people who have been let down by adults notice reliability before they notice anything else, and you already have that. The rest we will teach you.
What you do need
Three things, and they are firm. Everything else we teach you.
What a shift is really like
An early shift in one of our homes. Not a job description, just the day.
Handover
You pick up from the waking night team. How everyone slept, who is anxious about school, what happened yesterday that still matters today. The senior sets out who is doing what.
Breakfast, medication, out the door
Breakfast, washing, dressing, bedrooms sorted, lunches made, medication given and counted.
The part nobody advertises
Kitchen cleaned, hoovering done, car checks, fire checks. Then whatever the day needs: a walk, an appointment, helping someone look for a job, sitting with a young person who is at home today.
Lunch and life skills
Lunch together, and often teaching someone to cook something new. Midday medication. The kind of hour where a lot gets talked about without anyone planning to.
School pickups and the afternoon
The late shift comes on, and the two teams overlap so nothing gets lost. You talk through how the day went before you leave. School and job pickups bring everyone home, and the afternoon starts.
Dinner, evening, wind down
Everyone eats together, and young people working towards independence cook their own. Games and activities after tea, then the house quietens. Showers, teeth, diaries written up.
Your first year
What happens from your first day to your twelfth month, and what you earn along the way.
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Induction
£1,000 welcome bonus paid on starting. Then a full induction programme in our own training room: safeguarding, the therapeutic approach we use, and how the home runs.
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You start in the home
Your first shifts in the home. You learn the routines, the small preferences, who wants to talk at bedtime and who needs an hour on their own first. None of that is in a training manual.
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Probation passed
A second £1,000, a pay rise, and you can start working towards your Level 3 Diploma in Residential Childcare, funded in full.
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Twelve months
A third £1,000, and entry into the annual holiday voucher draw. A year in, you know the young people properly and they know you.
What it pays while you learn
Rising to £30,385 once your funded Level 3 is complete. On top of that, a welcome bonus paid in stages, half your childcare costs back, and a mileage supplement. Care worker roles here do not include sleep-ins. If you are moving from another sector and want to compare properly, tell us what you are on now and we will be straight with you.
Work out your packageQuestions people changing career ask
I have never worked with children, only adults. Is that a problem?
No. A lot of our staff came from adult services or the NHS. The care planning, the record keeping and the safeguarding all transfer. What is different is the relationship: you are one of a small number of adults a young person sees every day for years, not for a shift.
Am I too old to start in care?
No. Our care teams span a wide range of ages. The only age requirement is that you are over 21.
Will I have to take a pay cut?
We keep a close eye on what other local providers pay and make sure our staff are ahead of it. But a headline salary is just one number. The funded qualification, the welcome bonus, the mileage supplement and the rest all add up, so use the benefits calculator to work out your own figure.
Do I need a qualification to apply?
No. We fund your Level 3 Diploma in Residential Childcare in full once you start, and Levels 4 and 5 as you progress into senior and management roles.
What are the shifts, and are there sleep-ins?
Early, late and weekend shifts on a consistent rolling rota, published in advance so you can plan around it. Care worker roles do not include sleep-ins. Senior roles do.
Can I do this around a family?
We reimburse up to half your childcare costs, capped at £5,000 a year, and part time is considered for every care worker role we advertise. The rota being predictable is usually the thing that decides it.
I have no idea what PACE or trauma-informed means. Do I need to?
No. Most people arrive not knowing, and we teach it properly rather than expecting you to pick it up. In short, it means understanding that behaviour is usually telling you something. A young person who has been let down by adults may test whether you will stay, and the instinct to meet that with discipline tends to prove them right. PACE stands for Playful, Accepting, Curious and Empathetic, and it is the approach we use instead: staying curious about what is driving the behaviour rather than reacting to the behaviour itself. You will learn it face to face from our clinical psychologists during induction, and keep learning it through reflective practice sessions long after. Nobody expects you to walk in speaking the language.
Do I need to drive?
Yes. A full UK manual licence is a firm requirement for care staff, because getting young people to school, to appointments and out for the day is part of the job almost every shift. We provide company cars, so you are not using your own vehicle or your own fuel. If you drive to work we also pay a monthly mileage supplement, between £20 and £50 depending on how far you travel.
Thinking about a career that means something?
Browse current vacancies or register your interest and we'll let you know the moment something fits.