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About Support Work jobs
Whether you’re working for social services as a community support worker, or for the NHS in mental health, if you want to work in support workers jobs you’ll need to enjoy caring. It might be caring for clients with physical disabilities or youth worker jobs helping young offenders. You might be required to visit someone recovering from a stroke helping them rehabilitate by assisting with simple, daily activities....
Jobs in support work will have you providing care in any number of situations.
Support worker jobs are about providing day-to-day practical help to clients in order to help them live as independent a life as possible. Domiciliary care plays a large role in support worker jobs (home care jobs), but support work can take place at hospitals too, or community centres, clinics, residential care, sheltered housing organisations.
The kind of activities support workers need to carry out are washing clients, helping residents enjoy events and activities, assist dressing or undressing, bathing, managing incontinence and any aids required, preparing food, helping the patient eat and care for themselves, making their bed. If clients are not residential then your support worker job may mean you accompany individuals to and from a centre or to appointments or you offer support to those in sheltered housing enabling them to maintain independent lives in the community. Alternatively, you may be providing respite to family members and other primary carers. Your clients might be children, adults, elderly care, people with learning disabilities. You might specialise in mental health, physical disabilities, rehabilitation....
It’s difficult to quickly describe what is essentially an extremely varied job role. Elsewhere on this site we usually outline job roles in social care into short explanatory articles about particular job roles. This time, because support workers jobs are so diverse, it might be better and of more interest to quote some of the short answers we had to questions put to support workers about what their job is about. We asked them to describe their job and what it is they like about it:
“Visiting people in their own homes. Domiciliary care.”
“Working for social services as a community support worker.”
“I enjoy caring.”
“Caring for those with physical disabilities and who are physically unwell”
“I’ve specialised in two areas. Brain injury rehabilitation and youth work jobs.”
“Simple things like talking to them, combing their hair, helping them iron and cook.”
“Giving them meaning. Looking after people who are in need of care.”
“I enjoy banter, I have a laugh. I can bring families together.”
“I feel proud and satisfied with my job.”
“I work in mental health in a NHS hospital. My job is recovery focussed. I mostly work with psychosis sufferers where their condition has lead to drug misuse.”
“Improving client chances. People say it’s about giving people their future back. You deal with a range of human emotions.”
Support worker jobs intend to assist in the journey from ill health to recovery. They’re there to care and also to observe, listen, communicate, intervene, provide early intervention. For their efforts and expertise they are rewarded with a very human, a very hands-on vocation. No degree is needed to apply for support workers vacancies. But you can improve your chances with NVQs (or, from 2011 onwards, the Qualifications and Credit Framework). Of course, some jobs will request qualifications as a minimum, so it’s something you should consider if you’re interested in support worker careers long-term. A common route in to support workers jobs is voluntary work. This will quickly gain you some vital experience, and of course will demonstrate whether this is the vocation for you.
Support workers can view their job as a career, or support worker jobs can be a stepping stone to other roles and specialism – careers in nursing, social worker jobs, psychology, psychiatry. These are the skills and qualifications of those who make up the rest of the team around you.
If you’re interested in support workers jobs in Ireland then you should visit our sister site, Healthcarejobs.ie after fully browsing these pages.
