Career

Working as a live-in carer is a very rewarding role with high levels of job satisfaction. It may not be the first job that springs to mind when you embark on your career in the caring profession but it has many advantages both personally and professionally over the more typical care roles on residential care homes and nursing homes.

For a start the people that are being cared for overwhelmingly want to stay in their own homes if they can when they become old and frail so you are already helping someone achieve this aim. According to the Better At Home report from the Live-in Care Hub, 99% of people say that live-in care helps them continue to live a happy and fulfilling life even with illness and frailty.

However, the role of a carer of any kind requires certain personal traits, skills and attitudes that not everyone possesses. Of course, you have to be compassionate and empathetic to provide senior care but you also need a good dose of common-sense and practical skills such as cooking tasty, home-cooked meals. You also have to effectively take on the role of companion as well as carer, which might mean taking you elderly client on trips to the shops, library, doctors or community clubs – it is a job that requires true dedication but which, in return, is truly rewarding. A live-in carer can make such a significant difference to how an old person can live their life in their golden years.

What Skills and Personal Qualities Are Required  To Be A Live-in Carer?

Experience of some sort in the health sector is always valuable but not a necessity as most live-in care agencies and providers do offer training when necessary. Live-in carers come from all walks of life – they may be nurses, care workers previously based in a residential or nursing home; equally they may have cared for their own elderly relatives before and decide it is a role they would like to take further.

Some are young students from abroad who find they can combine caring for someone else with their studies – often enabling them to live in pleasant areas in cities and towns they would have struggled to afford if they had to pay rent. This can be a perfect way to gain valuable experience in the caring profession whilst also studying for relevant qualifications so they can avoid the problem suffered by so many newly qualified young adults who have qualifications but no experience so find it hard to secure a good job.

Whatever walk of life a live-in or in-home carer comes from they the most important quaoties they can possess are:

• Compassion
• Dedication
• A positive outlook
• Willingness to work hard
• Common-sense

They also need to be physically fit and be able to work happily on their own.

What About Ongoing Support?

Of course, training in such an important role is essential but so too is ongoing support while working in the job, and also continuing professional development to help you develop in your career. Live-in care agencies and providers have a duty of care to their client which means they will always help the carer deal with any difficult situations and where there are complex care needs they will provide support, for instance in the form of an additional carer with specialist skills for medical conditions such as dementia or Parkinsons disease.

All in all a job as a live-in carer is extremely rewarding, you will receive training and gain recognised qualifications, as well as ongoing support to develop your career as a carer to its fullest extent.

If you want to make a successful career in many fields, including those such as seo consultancy, you will be expected to achieve professional qualifications and undertake continuing professional development (CPD) throughout much of your early career. You might think you already have a university degree or higher level apprenticeship but in many professions that simply isn’t enough. Take project management, for example, or accountancy or engineering – these are roles where you need to be willing to commit to maybe several years more study after leaving full-time education if you are to achieve the greatest success and the pinnacle of chartered status.

Even in fields without chartered status, such as sales and marketing, it is still important to keep your skills up to date,  undertake sales training courses to learn the latest best practice, and gain recognised qualifications such as those from the Institute of Sales and Marketing Management (ISMM)

You will need to gain a project management certification such as the prestigious APM PMQ exam from the Association for Project Management (which, incidentally has a Royal Charter). You can, of course, do this by undertaking a course of study focusing on the APM project management Body of Knowledge (BoK) or you can take a different route if you haven’t been to university and don’t plan on going. One such alternative type of training is to become a project management apprentice in order to get the necessary qualifications and take your career to the next level. However, it can be hard to determine which route will be right for you so here’s an overview of some of the possible options for the role of project manager.

First, let’s consider agile project management. Agile project management focuses on the incremental development of solutions, allowing those working on the project to quickly react when objectives change without undermining the integrity of the project. There are 8 principles of effective agile projects: demonstrate control, develop iteratively, never compromise quality, deliver on time, communicate cleanly and continuously, build incrementally from firm foundations, collaborate, and focus on the business need.

A more traditional approach

As already mentioned the APM Project Management Qualification (remember the one that used to be called the APMP?) is designed for anyone who sees a knowledge of project management as an essential part of their role – even if they are not actually a project manager. So, for instance a member of the PMO (Project Management Office). It provides a solid foundation in PM skills, tools, processes and behaviours. Anyone can take this course and achieve a professional qualification,.

So undertaking training to gain professional qualifications, and continuing to develop your skills and knowledge, are now a part of many careers. And, indeed, sometimes the only way to distinguish yourself from other professionals with the sme level of experience.