Find Care Assistant Jobs
Birmingham-Health Care Assistant shifts
Home Care Gastrostomy or ITU/ICU/HDU RGNs
Care Assistant-NVQ Level 3
Care Assistants
Care Assistant-NVQ level 2
About Care Assistant Jobs
Care assistants offer support and help to clients in their homes (home care assistant jobs) or in residential homes. Good communicators, able to provide clients with a friendly voice and care, dignity and respect, care assistants form a valuable part of the social care framework. Care assistants tend to deliver support in a direct, personal, one-to-one manner, providing day-to-day, practical and therapeutic support to clients.
Care assistant jobs are about enabling people to live independently. Health care assistant jobs can be a career in themselves of course. But they can also be considered as a gateway to a career as a qualified nurse, social worker or other healthcare specialist.
Available throughout the UK, and in high numbers (notably in the cities of course - care assistant jobs in London for instance - but also provincially too) care assistant jobs are numerous and frequently available.
Care Assistant Jobs for qualified jobseekers
Socialcare.co.uk lists hundreds of care assistant jobs and care worker jobs, many of which will prefer applications from qualified staff. Not all health care assistant jobs require you to be qualified of course. But if you want a career out of care assistant jobs it’s worth finding out more about NVQ (National Vocational Qualifications) for care workers. You’ll be able to find information about NVQs elsewhere on SocialCare.co.uk and the web.
Care assistant jobs are available in social and healthcare institutions such as nursing homes and residential care homes (care home jobs), as well as care in the community (home care assistant jobs, as mentioned already). And they’re easily available throughout the UK, just search carer jobs in London on SocialCare.co.uk and you’ll find plenty (you can use our Advanced Social Care Job Search page for this). You could also search for healthcare assistant jobs on our sister site, Nurses.co.uk too of course! That will list more NHS healthcare assistant jobs for you.
The term ‘Care Assistant’ is necessarily ambiguous. On our sister site, Nurses.co.uk, a care job comes to refer more specifically to healthcare assistant jobs (HCA jobs in a clinical setting). Within social care a care job tends to refer to carer jobs, providing healthcare support at an institution or in the community, but without the specific qualifications and training of a qualified and registered nurse.
What Care Assistant Jobs are about
Day-to-day, a care assistant job will require you, for instance, to assist in the comfort and care of your clients. In a care home setting this can be as simple as overseeing mealtimes, assisting wash times, helping clients get dressed, and organising activities. All the while you’ll be monitoring health and general well-being. Through qualifications a care assistant can also be given some responsibilities for medications.
Care worker jobs are considered a fundamental function within health and social care. A visit to a client to monitor continued good health provides a valuable preventative function as well as a relationship-building social exercise. In the community, carer jobs therefore provide a crucial role for patients who may otherwise require clinical services at a general practice or hospital (a burden that the straining national health service can ill afford).
Care Nurse Jobs / Nursing Care Jobs - the start of a long career in care
Care assistant jobs therefore form the backbone of the nursing and social care industry. They provide work for unqualified and qualified staff, and also offer an opportunity to thousands who later choose to specialise in nursing jobs or social work jobs.
Many carers start their career as a part time worker. Finding the interaction with patients at their local residential home for the elderly rewarding, the part time carer may feel that a carer in care awaits them. The most common refrain from those who enjoy care assistant jobs is that they are satisfying, rewarding - makes them feel good.
Oftentimes, the care provided is not clinical or medical. Singing songs, organising a game of bingo, planning day trips out, sitting with someone and talking about their life over a cup of tea. These are the social functions performed in a care assistant’s day-to-day work in a residential setting or nursing home, or at the client’s own home.
Beyond this, many carers take further courses, studying while they work. Through qualifications or through promotion the care assistant may become a deputy home manager, or home manager, nurse or social worker.
Care Worker Courses
Care workers and senior care workers can increase their skills knowledge by taking further courses. Common Induction Standards, launched in 2005, gives a framework for people entering adult social care.
An NVQ level 3 is enough to allow you to gain access to nurse training. Many qualified nurses started their career in care assistant jobs, gaining qualifications, developing various interests and travelling down specialisms as diverse as dementia, child services jobs, mental health nursing, learning disabilities, and substance misuse.
These specialisms may seem a long way from making a cup of tea or playing bingo, but a care assistant is aware of the importance of the small details - whether it’s within palliative care, rehabilitative therapy, healthcare, or social care. And that’s something that every nurse, social worker or any other registered and qualified healthcare worker has learned to appreciate too.
Health and Social Care NVQs - Common Induction Standards
As of August 2010 the Health and Social Care NVQs level 2 and 3 were phased out under the new Qualifications and Credit Framework. There’s more information on this on the SCIE (Social Care Institute for Excellence) web site - http://www.scie-careskillsbase.org.uk/index.php?id=360.
