Caring through covid: why I started a temporary social care worker role during the pandemic

Wendy Adams, Locality Manager for Yorkshire and the Humber/North East at Skills for Care shares her experience of taking on a temporary care worker role during the pandemic, and what it taught her about the everyday reality for care workers.

A year ago, at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, I decided that I wanted to do something to support the sector and so I took on a 12-hour post as a care worker in a local care service. I expected to be there a few weeks or months, but never did I expect that it would be a year before my temporary contract finally came to an end. What a year it has been!

I’ve experienced the challenges of wearing personal protective equipment (PPE) for long shifts, trying desperately to build relationships with a mask on, and having to wash your hands so many times that they are dry and sore. The challenge of interpreting the ever-changing guidance has fallen to managers but it’s the care staff who have then had the task of implementing the different ‘rules’ in situations which don’t neatly ‘fit’ the guidance. Despite my years working in direct services and then as a social worker, trying to build relationships and communicate in a person-centred way wearing full PPE made me re-evaluate my skills.

There’s been something quite surreal about experiencing many of the things that, as a locality manager at Skills for Care we spend the day talking about. One of these is the importance of ‘contextualising’ training to the people being supported. In my previous post before coming to Skills for Care, I delivered dementia training to hundreds of care staff, but what I’ve realised is that no ‘generic’ dementia training that I’ve ever attended or delivered, equipped me with just the right skills and knowledge to support the two tenants we have with dementia, who are both wonderful people with unique needs and challenges.

We talk a lot about resilience at Skills for Care and I have seen this resilience first-hand. As a member of the care staff, I’ve watched people deteriorate in front of my eyes because they can’t see their families and friends. I have WhatsApp called family members and comforted a resident because seeing their new great-granddaughter on the screen isn’t the same as having the chance to hold and cuddle that new little life. I’ve held gloved hands with people at the end of life because family members couldn’t visit. All this work is undertaken by care staff without the usual support mechanisms of being able to have a chat in the staff room with a cup of coffee and a biscuit.

It's easy to focus on the heart-breaking experiences during covid but what I’ve also witnessed is a ‘normality’. Despite covid, people still need support to get washed, dressed, use the toilet, have their lunch and have a laugh and a joke. In the outside world where we seem to talk about nothing but the pandemic, some days in the service (when the PPE became so ‘business as usual’ I didn’t notice it) as I was laughing and joking with people to keep spirits up, it felt like a different world….a more normal one.

What I’ve been absolutely amazed about is, whilst all of the care workers had their anxieties, often about what this all meant to them and their families, there was an overwhelming sense of ‘just getting on with it because that’s the job’ and for me this is why care workers will always be the ‘unsung heroes’ of COVID-19. I’m proud and honoured to have been part of it.

This month we’re #CelebratingSocialCare and sharing reflections, good news, and achievements from across social care during the pandemic. Find out more on our #CelebratingSocialCare spotlight.

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