Working in the care sector can be immensely fulfilling but it can also be tiring and challenging. It takes a special kind of person to do this job well, and the shortage of support workers is set to increase when Brexit finally kicks in. If you think previous experience is a must, you’d be wrong. Everyone has to start somewhere but of course keeping in mind the right points in mind.
Here are the following attributes are far more important:
Reliability is needed for care assistant jobs in Southampton
One of the most important qualities of anyone working as a support worker is to be reliable. Put simply, your place of work is home to the service users and if you don’t turn up, their home life can be seriously disrupted. People will rely on you to be up to the job so it’s vitally important that you learn your job well and do it to the best of your ability.
Respect for others
In this job perhaps more than any other, you will meet and work with people from a wide range of backgrounds: religious, cultural, behavioural, and so forth. If you can’t treat each person as an individual with respect, this is not the job for you. By the way, treating them with respect doesn’t mean agreeing with them, it just means you acknowledge and accept their differences.
Show empathy
Some of your service users will be in difficult circumstances for a whole host of reasons. Their families may be very distressed. You need to be able to put yourself in other peoples’ places and treat them all in the way you would like to be treated in those circumstances.
Good communication skills
Absolutely vital to this kind of work is the ability to communicate with people and tailor your communication style to meet the needs of different people. Communication is not just about talking to people, it’s about really listening to others and hearing what they are saying to you. Some people may not be able to communicate as well as most of us. You need to be able to treat them all as individuals and really work at understanding service users’ needs. In some cases, you may need to repeat what you’ve said twenty times in an hour.
Caring
It might sound obvious, but you do need to care about the service users, their families and the job that you are doing. And you need to show them that you care; any insincerity will show through immediately. This isn’t just about caring a bit, you really need to have a passion for helping and caring for others.
We’ve all seen how hard support workers have been working during lockdown and the high level of commitment and flexibility that has been required. If you think you’ve got these qualities and more, then now would be a good time to take a closer look at care assistant jobs in Southampton.
Hiring the right people for roles in the care sector is challenging, but candidates with the right roles will always be helpful.
