Our Workforce Staff Ambassador

February 2025

Well where has the time gone!!!

Things have been very busy on the Workforce side of things. I have been involved in lots of events and it's been lovely visiting places, seeing new faces and chatting to potential carers and students who want to know what Persona do, who we support and tell us why they want to potentially look at becoming involved in care work.

I attended a career fair at the Mosses Centre. This was a great event as we were meeting and talking to people who were looking for care roles, so it was great to really give them an insight as to who we are, what we do and what roles would best suit them.

Knowing we had a few school career events coming up, we upped our game by introducing "spin the wheel " and a chance for them to win a £20 Amazon voucher. The wheel we created was not only to get people's attention, but it would hopefully get people to engage with us, and that is exactly what it did. The students love it! The wheel has 14 numbers on there and each number relates to a question we have chosen to ask, that then enables us to answer that question in detail and get a conversation flowing.

Our first school event was at Tottington High School, and then onto Woodhey High School where we had the pleasure of meeting teachers and students. Great to have all the years attend and again give them an overview of Persona. We talked about progression opportunities, the benefits of working for us, and what they could achieve by being in a care role because it's not all about supporting people with personal care or supporting them to eat, which I think a lot of the younger students imagine it being like. When we explained the other duties our roles involved they were pleasantly surprised.

We took the opportunity at the school events to change the game a little by asking each student who wanted to spin the wheel if they could name us a disability. This went better than I expected. I expected a lot to shy away or struggle to answer, but I was pleasantly surprised. By doing this we were surprised how many students actually opened up to us and spoke in more detail about the disability they had mentioned. Many of them knew what that disability was and some had loved ones who lived with this disability. It was lovely to hear them share their stories. We also had students who told us they wanted to work in care because they have a disability themselves and they want to give someone the support they had. The students who already support someone living with a disability didn’t realise what an amazing job they’re already doing, so to tell them that and thank them from a carer’s point of view was lovely and to see their faces beam with pride.

So there we have it, it's been a great start to the new year, I have met yet more new members of staff within Persona who I've had the pleasure of attending these events with. We have plenty more coming up including a visit to Bury College. Keep your eyes peeled for further updates.

While I'm going around services, I have a chat with members of staff about their jobs. Click here to have a read of these case studies and more like them.

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