Marking the launch of Professional Care Workers Week today, Laura Selby, care branch manager at Audley Care talks about her background and explains what led her to pursue a career in care.

My name is Laura Selby, I am a mother of two beautiful children and have worked in the care industry for 13 years. My passion for care started with looking after my younger brother who was born with cerebral palsy. He had a newspaper article written about him on how he beat the odds to walk and talk and live past his 5^th Birthday, (he’s now 28). The article I still have in my attic speaks about how he was able to say my name and how me and older brother would pull him around so he could stand and be like us. I suppose my moving and handling techniques were not so apt back in 1994.

My mother also worked in care, and we got to experience her role, through emergency calls into work and she also worked in a corresponding department where my brother had respite, so when we dropped him there, we got to be within the environment which I thoroughly enjoyed. Due to my brother’s condition we were always in and out of appointments and seeing all the roles in health and social care in action, from doctors and nurses to physiotherapy and speech and language. I knew from a young age care was my passion.

I studied child development and completed my GCSEs. I then moved on to study for my BTECH Level 3 in health and social care. I completed work placements and was still unsure of the role I wanted to go into. I didn’t go to university, instead I found an article in the newspaper looking for care staff and decided to send them my CV. My first role was with an agency. This helped me to develop my skills in a mixed range of social care settings from being a care assistant in domiciliary care and a health care assistant in care homes to a support worker in individual homes and children’s home settings. As I continued to work in a variety of environments, I realised that my calling was in domiciliary care with older adults.

For the last seven-and-a-half years I have worked at Audley Care in Birmingham, starting as a personal care assistant. I was shortlisted for Carer of the Year in the National Care Awards, the same year I won Care Star of the Year for Audley. Also within that year I was promoted to a senior care worker role. As I developed my skills and further roles became available I was promoted to quality care supervisor where I got to learn more administration within my role and to support my care branch manager to ensure we were always ready for an inspection. With my care manager being promoted to general manager, I was given the opportunity to become a care manager and have officially been registered with Audley Care for the last four years.

The best thing about working in care is no day is ever the same. I can walk in and sit and my desk and continuously complete admin throughout my day whereas on other days I can be dropping people to appointments, dealing with emergencies, supporting other managers and care team members, answering calls, responding to emails, calling GP surgeries, be having meetings and supporting hospital discharges. I never know what each day will bring. I can plan my day and something can be added or taken away from it in an instant but the fast pace keeps me on my toes.

The biggest challenge of my role as a care manager, is introducing new team members into an integrated retirement community, as it can be quite different to other settings that they have previously worked within. What’s fantastic about the challenge of working in an integrated retirement community is that we have so much more to offer than simply domiciliary care.