Daniel Gizara
People Business Partner, Bluebird Care
New job opportunities are opening up across the spectrum as community caring services evolve across Ireland.
Creating a supportive network for carers is crucial in ensuring personnel can deliver the best care to families in the community. While an important aspect of that is selecting people with the right aptitude and skills, offering training and additional support to underpin that is invaluable.
Rewarding and challenging roles
Bluebird Care delivers care to families and communities across southern Ireland, ranging from meeting complex medical needs to offering to support people with fundamental care tasks like personal care, dressing or assistance in taking medication.
Daniel Gizara, People Business Partner, providing HR support to the franchise network, highlights the education and qualifications that potential recruits would require. “We want people to have a genuine passion for the care of others,” he says. “They need compassion and the ability to listen, and build a good relationship (rapport) with clients.; and patience is an important trait.”
The preference is for applicants to have QQI (Quality and Qualifications Ireland) level 5 in healthcare, with care skills and care of the older person being two important modules. However, if people do not have that, there are opportunities for applicants to train and achieve the skills. “The first thing to know is this challenging role can be highly rewarding,” he adds.
The first thing to know is that it is a
very rewarding but challenging role.
Job opportunities available
Bluebird Care highlights job opportunities on the career section of its website but also posts vacancies on other sites, via social media and online job fairs, office open days and careers events. Personnel are recruited from across the age spectrum from school-leavers inspired to pursue a caring career to career-changers and from different backgrounds.
He says: “Bluebird Care prides itself on being a premium care provider, but this also extends towards the care and support given to our team of Carers” Competitive pay rates, travelling expenses, training opportunities, loyalty bonuses and a broader – often tailored – employee assistance scheme are included. A formal 20-hour induction programme is followed by eight hours shadowing of more experienced personnel. “If people are interested in a rewarding career as a carer, we’re keen to hear from them,” says Gizara.
