Looking for a change this New Year? Have you thought about a career in social care?

The New Year often brings thoughts of finding a new job or doing a new challenge.

If you’re looking for a rewarding career with lots of opportunities to progress, adult social care could be right for you!

There are hundreds of different roles depending on who you want to work with, where you want to work and what you want to do. You can read about the different roles here. 

In social care, you could support people with physical disabilities, learning disabilities and/ or autism, older people, people with mental health conditions or supporting people to recover from an accident.

If you’re not sure about direct care roles, there are also lots of support and ancillary roles, such as administration, finance, marketing, project management, kitchen and domestic work. You can read more about support roles here.

And it’s not all about working in ‘care homes’ – more and more social care workers are supporting people in the community, in their own homes, supported living, day centres or hospices.

You don’t necessarily need any qualifications or experience – what really matters is that you have the right values.

Tuija worked ‘in the city’ for over 25 years, but found that her job wasn’t fulfilling what she really wanted to do. She had no previous experience of working in social care, but her personal values and passion for the job meant she was successful in getting her role as a social care personal assistant (PA).

She said:

“When I turned 60 I decided to do something that made a difference, and that’s when I decided to become a carer.”

Tuija is a PA for Sheena, who has advanced dementia. She works in a team of PAs to support Sheena to live in her own home – this includes helping her to get up on a morning, accompanying her to appointments, going out shopping and to see friends and cooking at meal times.

After 40 years of working in a variety of different roles, Tuija says:

“I love the job! It’s the most rewarding work I’ve ever done in my 60 years. You’ll make a difference to someone’s life, but they’ll make a bigger difference to yours.”

If you’re looking for a change, you can do our A Question of Care quiz, to see if you’ve got what it takes to work in social care.

Think Care Careers has lots of information about the different job roles you could do, and how to get started.