Care assistant Review

I work with young adults with multiple disabilities in a day care setting. I work with the most profound group so day to day I do personal care, feeding and drinking and activities tailored to their mental capacity. I also am trained in peg feeding and we have clients that have tonic clonic seizures so we have to watch all the time.

I have certainly developed existing skills. I have been in the job over 12 years so really I was reinforcing my knowledge and updating it as you tend to forget the fundamentals and with writing it all down and going over it again I was remembering things.

Yes very much so. It gave me a focus to concentrate on during the pandemic and the interaction was fantastic. I haven't done this intense training for a long time and it has boosted my confidence. Doing something different from being on the floor was really refreshing. A lot of the course was also relevant to my working day.

Yes the time scale I thought was very satisfactory. I found the website easy to follow and it gave clear instruction of what to do next. I found it really hard at first to access Microsoft Office and to open up documents but I soon got the hang of it.

Yes they were really good most of the time. I feel though that sometimes because of my actual working hours they wouldn't give me a whole day for training so on occasions you couldn't really get in to it. When the centre also opened up more we were so short staffed and we were given odd afternoons which I found impossible to do.

My tutor was fantastic. She represented the company so well. She was always on hand to answer any questions I had. If I had a query she would answer my email by the next day and then followed it up. She always gave feedback and what needed improving in a very friendly but professional manner.

I think it goes over the information that you may have forgotten especially with myself and being in the job for so long. I definitely feel that my communication has improved and contacting the relevant people if a problem arises. I think it really enforces the care side and why we do the job that we do and to do it in a caring but professional way.

No generally there are not any of these things. In some ways it can be quite lonely. I think being a day centre and being separated into different units because of client needs maybe has an influence on this. We do get together maybe at Christmas time but generally not outside of work.

Yes

It's a yes and no answer really. I feel they treat you well as a employee and the benefits you get from them and you get support from your managers. I do feel though I sometimes have to do the work of two people as we are not allocated staff. I feel this is expected of you and sometimes it is really unsafe because of medical needs of the clients but they do not always see this.

I wouldn't work full time as I feel it is such a demanding job and it is very tiring. As units can be very specialised and clients are so different I would ask them to be really specific at what area they would like to work in as I feel a lot of people leave because it's not what they expected. A quick tour around isn't good enough.