Working for Care Works as a Personal Care Assistant (PCA)

A Care Works Personal Care Assistant (also known as a Carer or Care Attendant) provides direct care assistance to people with significant physical disabilities in their own homes.

These care services are designed to assist the person (client) with their normal daily living tasks. This enables them to achieve maximum personal independence and therefore live their desired lifestyle within the general community.

Duties of a PCA

Depending on the client, the work you perform may involve:

• personal care - including assistance with showering, dressing, grooming, mobility and transfer, toileting, urinary and bowel care;
• assistance with medication
• assistance with nutrition - cooking, meal preparation and feeding;
• companionship or supervision
• light domestic duties including cleaning, laundry, shopping, banking, and paying bills;
• minor home maintenance including lawn mowing, exterior cleaning and small repairs.
• assistance with community access - including social outings, business or medical appointments or attending educational facilities

Place of Work

You could work in a variety of settings including: a client's home; their workplace; a school/college or university or in holiday accommodation. Supervisory or companionship tasks can take place in the client's home or anywhere else in the wider community and could be day or night work.

Working in a Team

Depending on your working hours and the care that is required, you will either work independently with the client or partnered with another care worker for all or part of the shift. In most cases you will become part of a regular team of Personal Care Assistants that support one particular client. However because care staff shifts do not usually overlap it is possible that you may never have the opportunity to work with all the care staff in that particular clients team.

Hours/Shifts

The service that Care Works provides is designed to meet each client's individual needs and enable them, whenever possible, to choose who provides their care and when the care occurs. For this reason a care assistants shifts can be fragmented. Many clients choose to have assistance in the morning to get ready for the day and in the evening to go to bed at night. Therefore, the bulk of work often occurs between the hours of 6.00am to 10.00am and 6.00pm to 11.00pm. The length of most shifts will vary from 1 to 4 hours. If you want more hours of work it may be possible for you to work with more than one client, providing the shift times do not overlap.