When we discuss social care jobs, it is important to remember that this encompasses a whole range of positions. These positions differ in skill sets required to perform them, as well as different levels of experience. In this article, we will look at a few examples of direct care and management roles within the sector. This will show the wide range of people needed to help make social care successful. The idea being, that this will perhaps show an area of social care that might be more applicable to yourself than you previously thought when looking at social care on a more general level.
The most common direct care role is that of a care worker. In this role, you will support care users in all aspects of their day to day lives. This might involve physical activities, mobility, meal times, etc. However, there are other direct care roles that may suit your expertise better. For example, an advocacy worker works supports vulnerable people when decisions are being made about their lives. The skills needed for this role can be more analytical and based on a combination of ethics and logic. While at the same time, both these roles demand a high level of empathy. This driving force will help ensure care workers provide the highest quality of care, while advocacy workers use it to make sure governing bodies are providing the necessary access to the best quality of care for vulnerable people.
In terms of management, a supervisor will help manage and run a team of care workers. This role is all about maintaining high quality of care throughout a variety of criteria. Good organisational skills are a must, while maintaining professional yet personal relationships with those you are supervising. This can be a tough industry to work in, so it is important your management style is one in which your care workers feel comfortable coming to you with problems that may occur.
Instead of supervising a broad range of care workers you may want to pursue a path to become a specialist coordinator. In this role, you’ll specialise in a particular area of care, such as dementia or end of life care. This is more of a teaching role than managerial. As you’ll be providing your specialist knowledge as part of training programmes for care workers who are going to be looking after those related to your specialist field.
