Daisy started her career in social care after looking after her grandmother with dementia. Her grandmother’s condition gave her an interest in social care and when she started her apprenticeship, Daisy knew it was where she wanted to be.
Daisy chose an apprenticeship because it went into more depth than doing a standalone qualification. She wanted to learn more about the company, and what it was doing, as well as learn more about working in adult social care.
Daisy says that the apprenticeship allows her to deliver a better quality of care.
“The knowledge you have before (the apprenticeship) is still good, and it’s enough to be able to do the job. But to actually understand what is going on, how people feel, how the service users feel, how other work colleagues feel - it’s so much better than just going out and shadowing.”
Thanks to the apprenticeship, Daisy says her confidence has grown.
“When I first started I didn’t have any confidence or belief in myself. I’d always ring up the office ‘am I doing this right?’ ‘can I do this?’ ‘should I do that?’ whereas now I know that I am good at my job. I love my job and I know that I can help other people because I’m confident enough to do that.”
Daisy is already a great advocate for social care apprenticeships.
“I convinced one of my friends to do the social care apprenticeship because she was unsure of what she wanted to do. She thought maybe she wanted to be a hairdresser. I told her the amount that you learn (on an apprenticeship) is great and even if you do an apprenticeship in health and social care, it doesn’t mean that you’ll be stuck in one role - you will get the chance to work with a variety of service users to see what suits you best.
Nor does it mean that you have to be in personal care. You can use your apprenticeship to go into other things such as childcare, nursing, hospital work and as soon as we had this conversation she went to my boss and signed up.”
As well as many other apprentices, Daisy firmly believes that it will help her develop her career in social care.
