Your role as a HCA (Health Care Assistant)
HCA roles can be an extremely rewarding job. Every day you will be helping to improve lives, working on the front line of Health and Social Care with a wide variety of clientele. HCA's provide support to the disabled, elderly, dementia patients, long-term ill and individuals with learning difficulties, so your role can be very varied and no days will ever be the same! You can work as a HCA in a residential or nursing home or in a respite care setting. We also offer some 1:1 positions in supported living accommodation.
Main duties of a HCA
The job is centred around helping clients with immediate needs, as a HCA you will always aim to provide individual care to your clients, working to provide a care plan that suits their individual need. Your role will include:
- washing
- dressing
- maintaining their hygiene
- ensuring they receive healthy meals and fluids
- helping them with basic day-to-day or administrative tasks like paying bills.
The HCA role also includes getting to know clients personally and providing them with emotional support and company, being a good listener and encouraging them to take part in activities and socialising with other residents, all of which contributes positively to their wellbeing.
Required skills and experience of a HCA
At Swanstaff we ask for all of our HCA's to have a minimum of 6 months recent experience in a paid care role, this is so that you can enter our clients with a good understanding of the role and help support them during staff shortages when shadowing may not be an option. We look for passionate Care Assistants who are able to relate to people from a variety of backgrounds. You should be patient and have a sense of humour with the ability to show compassion for those in your care.
Being a HCA can be a challenging role but it is also one of the most rewarding and fulfilling.
Sevenoaks spans an area of 142 square miles in West Kent and borders Greater London, making it a prime area for businesses across a large number of sectors. Central London is just 21 miles away and Sevenoaks is well connected by both rail and road. As a rural district, the population sits at around 30,000.
Sevenoaks is an affluent area with an average house price of £663,431. This brings with it a highly skilled workforce, many of whom commute out of the area for work - however, there has been a rising number of local businesses which follows a regional trend of companies seeking lower operating costs, most prevalent are service-based industries, particularly in the finance and business services sector. The area has an unemployment rate of just 1%.