Meet Kay

Kay explains why a career in residential childcare can take you in all sorts of directions, personally and professionally, always with exciting and varied opportunities to progress.

How did you start working in children’s homes?

My journey is a bit different to most people that start out in residential care – and I think actually it’s one of the positives about working in this sector is that you can down many different pathways.

Where I came into it was I’m a psychotherapist, so I had a private practice and I worked with adults and young people with mental health difficulties. I wanted to broaden what I was doing, and I fell into residential care, and that’s how I started.

Tell me about your role

Children in children’s homes have a lot of trauma from their experiences in the past. They really need positive experiences and adults who give them those positive experiences. I do believe that most people that work in residential care at some point will have to go down a route of understanding basics of attachment theory and the basics of therapeutic parenting in order to be able to give them that nurture that they need. That’s what I do. I teach staff members and teams of people how to be more therapeutic in their practice.

It is quite varied. I’ve gone into consultancy as well, so I do lots of different things but the main thing I do is help staff members to learn the underpinning practice is therapeutic parenting. Also I provide different services for managers, like supervisions, and reflective practice for staff groups. Sometimes do some training and I also do audits as well. So lots of different things.

What’s the most challenging part of your job?

The most challenging part in my role is probably wanting to always do more and sometimes obviously there are certain boundaries within each role. It’s very easy to walk into a children’s home and connect with children and then just want to help them in every area, but you can’t. You have to stick with your role and those boundaries otherwise things can get a bit messy.

What’s the most rewarding part of your job?

There are so many different rewarding things about this role, and it’s probably one of the reasons I’ve stayed within this sector for so long. I think prior to this I did have a tendency to get bored in my jobs, but I definitely have not been bored.

One of the most rewarding things is working with the young people and seeing that difference that you’re making to them. It might not be big differences. I think people are always looking for huge steps and progression with children, but sometimes it’s just… For example, it takes kids a lot of time and energy to build a connection with people and build a trusting relationship. I’ve gone into homes before where children will not talk to me, will point blank not engage with me, and after a month or two of me going to visit them, they’re finally having a conversation with me. That’s really rewarding to know that they’ve come from a place of not wanting to talk to me to a place of being able to open up and connect with me.

What do you think the children and young people need that children’s homes provide?

The adults that are there in the homes that’s who they need. They need people that are going to be reliable and consistent, and experienced with helping them build up positive experiences and relationships. If they don’t have those people around them, then they’re not going to get very far.

So many different backgrounds. I think there’s a real stigma around children in care and residential care, that they’re naughty kids or they just come from one type of background. There are so many variations to children that are in care, so many different reasons, and I think that’s what we need to start telling people. If we keep allowing the stigma to continue, these children are always going to be something they’re not.

What are you career plans for the future?

I don’t have to have any solid plans right now. I can see where this takes me. At the moment my major interests are mental health and wellbeing and the therapeutic side of things and the environments the children are living in. But quite honestly there are so many different avenues that I could go down that it’s an exciting place to be. If in a year’s time I would like to go down a different route and be a manager or going into safeguarding or go into anything really, there’s always an option available.

What would you like to say to someone watching this who is thinking about working in a children’s home?

Definitely do it. I would say it’s one of the most rewarding careers. It’s a varied career. You can start right at the bottom, work all the way up to the top. You can become a manager within 18 months to two years if you put your mind to it. You are supported the whole way through to gain your qualifications, and not just your major qualifications, but there’s so much CPD available that you can do, that you can specialise in. I would say definitely go for it.

Also remember this is for children that really need it. We need good people to work with the young people.