Meet Carol
Now a Registered Manager, with a special interest in therapeutic work, Carol discovered her career in residential childcare after returning to university as a mature student.
How did you start working in children’s homes?
I started working in a children’s home after previously working in early year’s settings. Then I went back to uni as an older student, looking at different career paths. I knew people that worked in residential care settings. We had some conversations about the different ways that they work. I was quite unaware that there were still children’s homes and especially one that’s so close to where I lived. I changed career paths to work in a residential children’s home because I like the idea of the therapeutic play and giving children the best possible outcomes in life that haven’t had the experiences my own children may have had in their early years.
I have been working in children’s home just under five years. I didn’t have a clue. I didn’t know what to expect when coming to work in a children’s home. I just brought the same ethos of how I work with children in early years, because I did have some understanding that children in residential children homes would have had past traumas and probably would have lost out a lot in their early years. So I wanted to bring that aspect and try and give them experiences that they’d missed out on. That’s where my perspective came from, and then the rest was easy to pick up from people that had been working in the residential setting a lot longer than me, and I’ve just continued to learn since then.
Tell me about the needs of the children you care for
A lot of the time when they first come, they haven’t had very good experiences of grown-ups, and it’s a big, scary world out there. They think all grown-ups aren’t nice. So it’s building those positive relationships, building those trusting relationships, allowing them to be happy in an environment they haven’t chosen to be in, and trust the people that are looking after them that they’re not going to be hurt. They’re going to be cared for in the same way that we all deserve to be cared for.
The backgrounds of children that come into a children’s home will have suffered vast traumas, harm, neglect, not positive relationships, witnessed things that they shouldn’t have witnessed, heard things they shouldn’t have heard. And it’s my role to not ignore what’s happened to them at all, but to help them understand why the things happened and moving forward how we can make them feel safer, how they can talk about what they’ve experienced and not feel shame. And that they can still build trust in positive relationships.
What does a day in a home for you look like?
A day in a children’s home starts around seven o’clock in the morning. The team will get together. I will run shifts, so I’ll pick my team for some of the activities that we’re going to do throughout the day. Start waking the children up. They come down and have their breakfast routine. We could go out to the beach on a nice day. We could have a day in the garden, building dens, all sorts of different things. We eat our breakfast with the children. We have lunch with the children, dinner with the children Our shifts finish at ten o’clock at night. Somebody will be rota’d to sleep in of a night time and then you could be on shift till three o’clock the next day. It’s to give that family feel so the children will always have somebody wake up with them the next day that’s been there with them the previous day – to give it more of that family feel. That’s really important that they feel the same as children that they go to school with, and that they don’t feel different.
What do you think the children and young people need that children’s homes provide?
Children that come into children’s residential settings need safety. They need to know that they are safe. They need an environment that’s going to enable them to express all their worries, all their muddles. They’re not going to be shamed. There’s not going to be consequences for running around the house shouting, crying, screaming. This is their safe haven. This is where they can build those relationships for further on life to help them so they can self-regulate themselves and have better outcomes, and have a chance at life that they may have missed had they not had that opportunity to be put in a residential home to build those foundations.
Children that come into children’s homes have problems with regulations, is probably the main things which is displayed in certain behaviours. That’s our job to help them find other ways to express those behaviours. Some children that come into residential will also have sensory delays, have missed out on a lot – even things like food. Some children will come and they’ll only eat one kind of food. By the time they’ve left, they eat everything!
Activities – things that they thrive at, that they didn’t even know that they could do. A simple thing as riding a bike. They’ve never been given a bike and then they’re riding up and down the garden with no stabilisers, are just like those wow moments.
What’s the most challenging part of your job?
The most challenging part of the role is if I’ve been on a double shift and I leave at ten o’clock. Some of the children may have struggled to go to bed at night. You’ve given them a nice tuck in. You’ve read them a story and they’re upset and they don’t want you to go home. That, for me, has got to be the most challenging time above everything else because you don’t want to leave. You want to stay until they go to sleep, which I often do.
What’s the most rewarding part of your job?
The most rewarding thing that’s happened for me since I’ve been a residential carer is seeing the progression of a child come in to the home that I was fortunate enough to be made link worker for, and to experience his whole journey from the day he came to the home to the day that he left. I have continued to be that child’s independent visitor because of the positive relationships that were built whilst he was in the home. That was a really, really fantastic experience for me.
When children leave the children’s home it’s nice to be able to still support them when they’ve left. They don’t just leave the door and we’re “See you later. Goodbye. Wish you all the best.” Myself personally have remained an independent visitor for a child that I was lucky enough to be a link worker for. We had a really positive relationship. I was here from the moment he came through the door to the moment that he left, and we’ve continued that relationship but now in a different way. I’m not his care worker. I’m like an auntie. I pick him up, take him out. We continue to have the same relationship as we did. If he’s worried about anything – we’ve built that foundation that he can speak to me about anything and trusts that I’ll keep him safe.
Can you tell us a little about your interest in therapeutic Life Story work?
Therapeutic life story work is where you take on a journey from when they were very first removed for whatever reason from the family home, or it could be a foster home. You will travel with that child from the moment they were born right the way to the day they leave the residential placement. It’s done on wallpaper, so it’s a visual aid. Everything you write, everything you talk about, is put onto wallpaper. It’s the children’s work. It’s their life story. Everything that’s on there has come from them, come from their voice. It’s not what I’ve told them. I will just give them the facts if they have a muddle about something, or they believe something happened to them that didn’t happen to them, or not they’re quite sure what happened to them and I’ll put it in a way that they can understand. They can take that with them when they leave their residential placement, and it’s then held and contained on wallpaper and not stuck in their head.
What are you career plans for the future?
My career plans for the future are to continue working with the children in a therapeutic way, but maybe to step away from working with the children as a group and to do more one-to-one sessions, having currently just finished the therapeutic life story work. I like to work with the children on a one-to-one basis, pre-sensory play looking at why they’ve come into a residential setting. Have nice uncomfortable conversations that nobody wants to have with them. People will often use words as ‘grown-ups didn’t make good choices.’ What is a good choice? It’s having that frank conversation that’s held in that room and I will hold their trauma and keep them safe so they can leave that room and enjoy whatever else the day has left in store for them.
What would you like to say to someone watching this who is thinking about working in a children’s home?
My message to anybody thinking about working in a children’s home is it has its challenges, I’ve had many tears along the way, and upsets of watching children go through their journeys. But it’s got to be the most rewarding job that I have ever done. I love coming to work. I do work with a great team and you need a great team to support the children. But the children are just fantastic – they make you smile, they want to have fun all the time. I’d say anyone thinking about it, do it. If you care, you can.