A rewarding career in social care

To celebrate National Career Development Month, we thought we’d catch up with Egnes, who has recently completed her Level 5 Lead in Adult Care qualification – equivalent to a higher national diploma or foundation degree. Egnes shared her experience with us.

“Working for FitzRoy is not just a job, it’s an amazing career. I joined FitzRoy in 2014 as a support worker and have been promoted twice now, first to senior support worker and then to deputy manager of a supported living service in Suffolk. When I became a deputy, I spoke with my manager about doing the Level 5 Lead in Adult Care course. It’s a fantastic course and gives you so much knowledge as a manager, although it does need real dedication as it usually takes about 18 months to complete. There are ten strands to it, including communication styles, leadership and management, recruitment, resource management, and theory of change. You complete over 600 hours of on-the-job training and I shadowed my service manager as well as people from other departments, including Quality, HR, and the Learning and Development team. It gave me some really useful insights into the other teams’ work and approaches.

“The course includes some things that you might think are really basic, such as communication skills, but good communication makes a huge difference – tone matters!”

You learn different ways of interacting with your staff too – am I here to support them and boost their confidence right now, or do I need to deliver constructive feedback that might be hard to hear? If there’s conflict in the team, which approach will I use to manage it? You also have to know when to lead and when to manage – they’re not the same thing.

“Doing this course on top of your day job is really intense – at times I became overwhelmed and at those points it was so important to have people I could reach out to for support. My manager, Christina, was brilliant and so were the FitzRoy learning and development team. Sharing with your staff that you’re finding it difficult can be really helpful too.”

We’re all human and we all need a bit of support from time to time, but people can’t help you if they don’t know. My team’s support made a big difference to me and I really appreciated it.

“My tutor from the training company was very supportive too – I wasn’t sure I wanted to take the final assessment at the end, but she believed in me and thought I would achieve a distinction. With her encouragement, I went ahead with it – and I did get a distinction, so she was right! And it was worth it. I have learned so much, and it means I can better support my team to deliver for the people we support.”

Heidi, manager of FitzRoy’s learning and development team, said: “The development of our colleagues is vital for FitzRoy to ensure our knowledge and skills fulfil the needs and requirements of the people we support. Egnes is a great example of how her development journey with FitzRoy has supported her long-term goals into a management role.”

I am delighted she’s felt supported throughout, and to have achieved a distinction was a testament to Egnes’ drive and dedication.