Graduates choose care as a profession

Elsyng House Lifestyles team members, Ella Forbes and Adrianna Newton are both graduates and have said that “caring is the most rewarding job” and encourage others to join them!

To go home happy at the end of a working day and to know you have made a positive difference to someone’s life – that’s what makes caring so special and rewarding, according to two young graduates who recently joined the Lifestyles team at Elsyng House Care Home in Enfield.

For Ella Forbes and Adrianna Newton, both in their early 20s, the days at Elsyng House Care Home on Forty Hill fly by as they help to devise and organise activities for the residents. “With organising activities, a lot of creativity goes into it, and you learn how to adapt them to the people you are with and their needs, such as if they have dementia,” says Ella.

“It is about being able to improvise and communicate in different ways and bringing energy to whatever you do – it can be anything from sitting down and talking about people’s life stories to a big event such as Christmas.”

For Ella, who had jobs in the performing arts since graduating in 2019 and no previous caring experience, working at Elsyng House was meant to be. She lives close by and watched the home being built as she passed the site on her daily walk during the lockdown in 2020.

“This has been such a welcoming place and sometimes it doesn’t feel like you’re at work here,” she says. “Every day is different: we cater to the individual residents and what they would like to do. That’s always our main priority: it is their home after all – if someone was in my home trying to make me do something I didn’t want to do, I wouldn’t stand for it, and neither should they. We want them to enjoy their life here.” Ella has a real passion for her work and plans to stay in the care sector and develop her career in it over the long term.

Meanwhile, for Adrianna, her role is giving her much-needed experience working with people with dementia before returning to university to study medicine, with the aim of one day working in neuro care. “At university, I learnt all the theory, but I have learnt so much more interacting with people with dementia here in a real-life setting,” she says. “But more than that, it is such an enjoyable place to work.”

There are currently more than 105,000 vacancies in the care sector in the UK and almost 500,000 extra job opportunities in adult social care expected by 2035.

Elsyng House’s general manager, Daisy Slavkova, says care is an immensely rewarding career and that no formal qualifications or experience are needed to start work in the sector. “Many of the skills that are needed initially, such as compassion and a caring and patient nature, can’t be taught in a classroom,” she says.

Daisy herself has recently been promoted to the manager position, having worked hard as head of hospitality since the home opened last year. She too has come from outside the care sector to work at Elsyng House, having spent much of her career in the hotel and hospitality industry.

Both Ella and Adrianna agree that care is rewarding and recommend it as a career to anyone – no matter what their academic or previous work background.
“Our mentors and managers are very supportive but at the same time you get the chance to go out and push yourself and do things independently,” says Adriana.
“But the work is so rewarding; when someone tells us they have had a nice day or enjoyed an activity it is such a good feeling.”

If you would like to find out more about our current roles at Oakland Care, register your interest.