Recently visiting one of our services in Hampshire I was delighted to catch up with Ann, someone I first met in 1985 as a charge nurse in a hospital I eventually helped close. It was great to see how much she is enjoying life in her later years and to hear how much she enjoys visiting her equally ageing sister who now lives over a hundred miles away. She also told me how much easier she was finding eating with her new false teeth! Our chat brought home just how varied support work can be – from helping people maintain their important relationships to ensuring they remain healthy and well and enjoy everyday life.
You may have seen that Dimensions has today published the results of a substantial piece of research amongst our support workers and managers. Spoiler alert: The vast majority of those who previously worked in different sectors, prefer support work. They said their job has given them a wide range of new skills. And a large majority report being happy in their job most of the time.
Of course, support work isn’t great all the time. What job is? However, what I found most interesting was that most people who joined Dimensions from non-care backgrounds felt support work had an undeserved bad reputation. If you’ve been following the #socialcarefuture research, you’ll know where this blog is heading already. Tell people there’s a crisis often enough and they’ll believe it. And because good news doesn’t seem to sell and therefore isn’t shared, crisis is all we hear about.
Who wants to join a sector in crisis? No-one.
So why do people join and stick with it? Our research tells us our colleagues in Dimensions believe that supporting people is a huge privilege and can be profoundly fulfilling. For some it is a brilliant role they want to keep on doing, whilst for some it can be a key stepping stone into a long and fantastic career that might even lead to a leadership role in an organisation like Dimensions.
I certainly didn’t think I’d end up with this great job. I left school having not done very well with my A-levels (my mum would have described that as a bit of an understatement!) At a loose end and not wanting to join the dole queue, and having done some voluntary work in a local hospital and Gateway Club, I applied to become a student nurse. My career choice was pragmatic and my ambition was about qualifying and getting a decent job in the NHS. Leap forward 13 years and I was appointed as the area manager by a small voluntary provider who won the contract to provide residential services for the people living in the NHS hospital I was managing. Leap forward another 18 years and I was appointed as the CEO of that same voluntary provider – by then one of the leading not-for-profit providers in the UK.
As far back as I can remember – certainly within my latter years in the NHS before I joined this organisation – I’ve had what was recently described by a colleague as ‘optimistic discontent.’ By that I mean I know what we have today – I recognise and accept this is the best we’ve been able to do so far – but I know we can get it better – and I’m not going to be content until we’ve improved it. This mindset applies to how good we are at supporting people with learning disabilities and autism; how good we are at employing people and helping them enjoy their job and have a career with us; and how well society values the people we’re supporting and how well the system serves them.
Alongside our raw research data, five of my colleagues – Mark, Sarah, Gemma, Anne and Ailish – were interviewed about their jobs. All five demonstrate the character and the values that will allow them to follow the career of their choice in care. I for one was profoundly moved by their stories and I’d like to hope in the early days of my career I was as eloquent and passionate as they are today. They are fantastic role models for anyone considering entering the sector.
And that, I suppose, is what I hope people take from this blog and from our research. A career in support work isn’t right for everyone – but it was right for me, just as it is right for Mark, Ailish, Sarah, Gemma and Anne. And if you have the right set of personal values, maybe it could be right for you, too.
Why not join the discussion? Share your thoughts at online@dimensions-uk.org