Pros
I enjoyed working with the clients. Team was diverse which was nice (age wise, career background wise and cultural background)
Cons
Low pay and huge workload. Assistant Support Workers have the same caseload and case complexity as Support Workers in the team but get paid approx £2,000 less a year which makes no sense. Little to no training was provided. My induction was reading printed out powerpoints with little context and I shadowed some colleagues on visits for 2 weeks before I was assigned my own cases and made to go it alone, despite being completely new to support work. It's emotionally draining work and difficult to take leave because of being so overworked. Some of my colleagues would work on their days off and weekends to try to catch up. The targets set were unreachable and unmanageable workload meant that service provided to clients was subpar as there wasn't enough time to work with them properly. There isn't much satisfaction as you didn't have the capacity to make meaningful change in your clients' lives as you were spread so thin. I had a caseload of over 40 people, despite only being there 3 months. I felt like I was doing them all disservice and it was very frustrating. The management was chaotic and provided little to no support for staff. We were often understaffed due to high staff turnover or people on long term leave for mental health reasons. I was assigned 3 high risk cases which I was wasn't trained or qualified to manage, because all senior lead workers were signed off sick. It was an incredibly stressful environment and I ended up resigning due to having a nervous breakdown. When I was on sick leave, management called me daily to see when I would be coming back. It was too much. There was also a strange cliquey work culture which seemed to be based around faith and Christianity, which often led to uncomfortable conversations and questioning of others in the office.