Residential Care Worker (RCW)

I have been a Residential Care Worker (RCW) for about 3 years, working for a company in Derbyshire. I've only recently finished my job because I needed a break from a job that is very hectic and stressful and puts quite a strain on your private life due to the irregular and unsocial hours. I on average worked two 15 hours shifts (8:00-23:00hrs) every week and on top of that either another night (17:00-23:00) or day. One of the 15 hours shifts will be at weekend and I was off just 1 out of every 4 weekends. Because this work takes place within a children's home where young people live their actual lives, you are also expected to sleep over once or twice a week to provide any assistance needed during the night. I know other homes have waking night rotas where you actually stay awake.

But this can also be a very rewarding job where you work directly with young people and get very good hands-on experience, which is very helpful in other areas of social work. It gives you a lot of opportunities to develop your communication skills with young people and gives you valuable insight into certain parts of society and fractured family life. It also helps you to 'get real' with Social Work Sector and what daily social work actually involves.

Good companies within this sector are hard to find. On average social services will pay £2500 to £3500 per week for a young person to be in care. These large sums mean a lot of individuals see this as an easy way of making money and they start businesses up for that reason and not because they genuinely care about damaged young people. This in turn often means staff are not valued and I have witnessed and experienced this first hand at the place I used to work. Wages are low and after doing an average of 170hrs a month and 5/6 sleep overs a month my gross annual income was about £16500,-. For the amount of evenings, weekends and nights you work this really is not much.

So if you are thinking about doing this work you need to bear these things in mind:

- You need to have a 'thick' skin. Some of the young people in care are experiencing serious crisis in their lives. You may find yourselves being shouted at, sworn at, hit out at or basically being fully assaulted. At times this might mean you need to physically restrain a young person, which is a horrible thing to do.

- Your social life will be seriously impacted. Long and irregular hours including weekends and night mean you often find yourself working when friends/family are off and doing better things than working. When you are off, the irregularity might mean you are very tired.

- Check out the company you apply to. My experience has been very bad and I would check things out better if I could do things again.

My advice is that if you can put up with the things above this can be a great stepping stone. The experience you get is invaluable in other areas of social work and if you translate these things well on a job application form there's a lot of opportunities out there. If you hang in this work for too long you will notice it will have a severe impact on your life which you start to take for granted. It is only when you leave and look back you realise how much you've missed out on.

Apart from the scandalous way I was treated as an employee, I can (luckily) after about 3 years, look back on a rewarding time and use the experience in the next phase of my life. My recommendation to a friend would only be if I thought the person is 'fit for the job' - I would not recommend this for just everyone! If you are unsure, perhaps start doing some relief work first so you can get a taste of it!