Residential Childrens Care Worker Review

I work as a professional parent in a children's group home, day to day tasks include: School Runs Washing/Laundry/Cleaning Cooking and providing meals Providing nurture, empathy, support and encouragement to the children in my care Organising family meets, fun activities, Helping with homework Completing accurate documentation like daily summaries for each child Safely dispensing medication where required

I have improved and strengthened the resilience that I joined the job with. I have developed my understanding of PACE: Playfulness, Acceptance, Curiosity and Empathy. I am more confident now in suggesting activities and organising these for and with the children in my care. I have developed my communication skills and have fit in well into the team. I have also discovered a new skill with creating newsletters to show off the fun activities we do in our home and have received praise for the quality i have been able to produce.

Whilst I do enjoy the programme I feel like there are some factors that could be improved to make the programme more beneficial and fulfilling. I like that tasks are varied in respect for shadow tasks, class led tasks and self study tasks, this makes the learning more flexible and interesting. so far the course has been completely virtual (via teams) and the online portal, I would like to see my trainer face to face sometimes, in addition to this, some students are receiving individual time with their trainer and some are in group classes, I would appreciate individual time with my trainer. Furthermore, my work place Five Rivers Child Care have recently removed study time from our rotas which has impacted time time I have available to put towards my course, this has made reaching deadlines more difficult.

The programme appears very well organised, I can see how long the course is going to take, approximately when my finish date will be and what my upcoming tasks are. At the beginning it seems like the reviews happen too frequently to economically record progress however as the course progressed I don't see this continuing to be an issue.

Very little, study or QCF time has been removed from our rota meaning that we have less time to complete our course work, in addition to this we are and have been for almost a full year heavily understaffed meaning that all staff including those completing course work are doing regular over hours which again impacts the time we have available to complete course work.

My trainer has been very supportive and understanding with regards to helping me achieve my goals through this qualification. However I think I could benefit from constructive criticism with my work, to identify any areas that I could improve. In addition, I think that some face to face session with my trainer would be great to improve my learning and coursework.

At this early stage in my training course, I don't feel that it has helped me perform better, it is very repetitive of my new starter training and therefore has been beneficial to consolidate and concrete that learning. However I have high hope for the course as we move forward into the learning that will help me perform better in my role.

I have as a part of my team taken on extra responsibilities, I maintain the house dairy, produce and publish a monthly news letter showing off our home to the rest of the company and I am starting my journey being a co key worker for one of our children in this role i will support the key worker and learn from them what it is to be a key worker.

No

Five Rivers Child Care are outstanding for providing training and recognised learning opportunities. I am very grateful to have the opportunity to learn and qualify with Five Rivers Child Care. However, Five Rivers Child Care have an issue retaining staff they they have so heavily trained and invested in because the staff morale is low and the support received by staff is inadequate at best. Five Rivers Child Care, have provided an abundance of training for me and will continue to do so annually however they will not provide the time or support network to complete these effectively, timely or efficiently.

I would advise them that they will need to be very resilient, much more so than in other child care jobs. I would advise them to look if they can achieve their goals elsewhere. A great tip would be to give up any idea you have of life outside work because Five Rivers Child Care will consume it all and still wont provide you any time to complete your course work.