care assistant

caregiver

care manager

in home caregiver

care coordinator

Bluebird Care

You do split shifts throughout the day, you may start at 7, work till 12/1 then start again at 4 through till 11.
But sometimes you end up with breaks of half an hr or one and a half hrs, which is not enough time to go home, so you end up sat in your car in a car park. This ends up being a long, long day. 
A lot of driving, wear and tear on your car, and although you get paid mileage, it does not make up for the wear and tear of having to get tyres more often (cos of rubbish, pot holed roads), or more regular services (cos you're clocking the miles up). I did 400 miles in one week, and was only doing 20 hrs. A lot of the calls are half hr calls, and 15 or 20 minutes driving between the calls, you don't get paid for the driving time.
Sometimes you end up being out for 70 odd hours in the week, but are actually only doing 35 hrs paid work. 
When you first start you work 12 days out of 14, unless you put it in writing that you want certain hrs, or certain days off. So do this before you start, otherwise you have to give a months notice of any changes in your available hours.
The pay is good, £8 an hour, but it defeats the object when you are travelling so much, it ends up being broken down to less than minimum wage. 
Learn to say "no" from the beginning. You will constantly be asked to work on your time off (yes, even though you are only getting every other weekend off). And if you say yes once, you will forever after be asked, playing on your "letting the customer down", "no one else can do it"
You generally have time to do the task that is to do at customers houses, you are not rushed in that respect. But you are rushed in getting to your next customer in time, cos the time allotted to get there is ridiculously inaccurate. So sometimes it gets a knock on effect and you are late throughout the day for your visits. 
This is very frustrating for both workers and customers. You ring 'the office' to say you are running late and they are supposed to ring the customer to tell them, but 99% of the time, they don't, so you are sometimes met with disgruntled customers, which is completely understandable. Constantly tell office 'not enough time for travelling', your next rota comes ..... no difference.
Most co workers are brilliant. But management do not appreciate you, and just keep asking more and more of you.
Pay packet looks good when you get it, but you're so knackered you haven't got the energy to spend it.
Hardest part of the job, driving like an idiot to get to visits in time, very stressful.
Most enjoyable part of job, seeing the customers, having a chat, helping and supporting them, and making a little difference in their life by doing that.

What is the best part of working at the company?
A very well organised company to work for and the office team and the ongoing training provided is excellent.  Bluebrid prepare you with the knowledge and support that you will need in order to carry out ones duties as a care assistant. The best part about the job is supporting clients in the community and assisting them with their personal care and  supporting and promoting thier own indepedence and social  requirements. It is a great feeling knowing that you have helped make someones day better, and that maybe just by offering them some companonship which sometimes  is all they need to help brighten thier day. In my opinion Bluebird are  a brilliant caring company to work for. Offering flexible hours and good rates of pay

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
Sometimes driving in traffic to the next clients home as you do not want to be late. However, the office team are always their on hand to support you if you are running over time

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Vert friendly staff and management. It is always nice to pop into the office for a chat. The management team are always happy to stop what they are doing and have a chat with you and find out how you are

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Sometimes I may work an early shift from 7am and finish about 3 pm then an evening shift is from 4pm to about 10pm.  In that time period I may have between 5  to 9 visits, depedning on how long  each visit is. Usually its half an hour visist or one hour. I can also chose to work all day from 7am to 10pm with a few hours break inbetween about 2-4.5 hours. This then alows me to have more days off and still earn a full time salary. During a visit a typical day may be to assist a client getting up and supporting them with their personal care,  preparing breakfast and supporting them with their medication.  Other tasks may include some light house hold chores, and some cleaning.  Sometimes we have the opportuntiy of taking our clients out shopping or to visist the beach or maybe just for a drive. So, the role can be quite varied.  I really enjoy the enabling visits as I get to spend more time  with the client and you get to learn about their lives and their expereinces. It's a very rewarding job but you have to like people and have good interpersonal and listening skills.  I love making my clients laugh as sometimes we carers maybe the only people that they may  get to see in a day.

This space is not quite enough room to list all the disgusting things about this company! Just put it this way greedy! The office earn a monthly bonus for every time they reach their target of gaining new customers! These customers are just a bonus to them nothing else! All they give two craps about is there bonus at the end of the month! Therfore you are crammed with calls all day every day even when u are not available and if you dare say you can't do it they make you out to be some sort of bad person!  (They would have us all out working 7am-10pm 7 days a week as all they want is their bonus for extra customers not care about our welfare) I was actually so overworked I was taken into hospital with a bad infection one day as it was left untreated for so long due to the fact I was working such long hours I could not possibly go to the drs! If you care about your health or the respect for yourself in anyway do not do this! Also no break time is not given on some days I worked, I had heard of many care workers complaining of working a 15 hour day without any break given! Not only is this illegal it is also disgusting for a company to do this! No travel time is payed so therefore you are working nearly 4/5 hours in a full day (I have worked out)which is not paid as it is travel to and from customers! Over the month this is A LOT of money lost! Management is so poor I have been in tears on the phone to my manager several times, she told me that she understands how I feel about working long hours and told me she has done it many times and knows the customers well! ( I later found out she had only in fact ever been and cared for 1 out of our 100's of customers, ONLY 1) I was not the only one with these views I did training with 9 others, within the week I started I had found out only myself and another were still left standing as everyone else left! I have carers always complaining everyday about this company no wonder why people come and go SO often! Its a joke, I went from being a happy person to being in tears nearly every day and dreading work so much I actually handed in my notice with no job to go to as my health, social life and well being is more important then a company that treat employees like this!

I started work with Bluebird full of enthusiasm as you do. It soon became apparent that they were very badly organized and used bullying tactics to try and make you cover extra shifts for them with no consideration for your own family or personal commitments. The rotas were badly organized with little or no time to get from one place to another, also on "double- ups" sometimes three people would turn up , sometimes only one. In the time i worked with them I only had a couple of sick days off through injuring my back at work although I was hassled every day about when I was coming back.
I resigned because I phoned in sick one day due to being up through the night for hours vomiting and was told I had to come in anyway even though I was attending very elderly/vulnerable clients that day. I was then told basically that I was a liar and wasnt ill at all. I attended a doctor and informed I needed an operation, still no apology. 
I then applied for another job within a different industry and was offered the job. After seeking a reference with Bluebird my offer of employment was withdrawn and I was informed by my old care co-ordinator  that my reference was made by a phone call and my manager refused to give me a reference but seeing as though it was made by phone who knows what was actually said, my references were fine to be employed by Bluebird but now theyre not? mmmm strange that. Im seeking legal advice now for discrimination because I bent over backwards for this company to the detriment of my own family. The only way you get anywhere with this company is if your face fits and you dont complain, if you do you get really bad hours/rotas. If you value your family and self worth dont touch them with a barge pole, by the time you calculate the actual hours worked, your petrol money because the allowance doesnt come near to covering what you actually spend you probably earn about £3 an hour.

My typical day at work would be leaving my house at around 6:30am to start my 7am call, I felt the need to be there 15 minutes earlier than scheduled so I could keep track of time (which rarely happens when my rota was usually 5 minutes to get from A to B, during rush hour and a good 7 mile trip...impossible.) I had barely any breaks, and if I was lucky enough to have one, it would have been spent ignoring the constant vibration of my personal phone being called multiple times. 

I would receive constant phone calls from the office begging to cover several calls PER DAY. These phone calls from the office would occur once I've signed out of one of my allocated calls and I'm travelling in my car (they expect me to answer whilst driving and would get in a huff about it if I did not answer)

I enjoyed the actual work, but the office is terrible and needs sorting out. They need to hire new carers as they are very short of them. I felt like the rush to get from call to call, I was lucky I was never involved in any collisions. I was exhausted when I got home at around 10:15pm, I had no time to eat, no time to speak to friends/family, and in general I had no social life and it was making me feel very down. 

Many of the other carers who I worked with were a pleasure to meet, a lot of them agreed about the office taking the mick and not taking our own mental and physical health into consideration. 

I was filling up my car £40 every 5 days. I sent a leaving letter to this 0 hour contract work company; who refused to let me leave and said I had to give them a weeks notice! Liars. If it wasn't for the head gasket on my car being blown, I would have had a real struggle to get away from this job. 

However, I've learnt that I done this job for the love - not the money, and I will proceed on to find a better, more suitable job for myself.

An absolute sham of a company. ZERO respect for customers or employers.

Typical days include of working from 7am - 10pm at night from personal care to a deep 3 hour house cleaning service. 
You are supposed to get a 2 hour break but this rarely happens and you are usually at the other side of town from where you live so stuck in your car. 
Expect for them to change your calls without any notice, leaving you either with no travelling time to get from A to B or LONG gap periods (which you do not get paid for).
Expect to have at least 10 texts a day on your own personal mobile begging/harassing you to work extra, And if you tell them you have plans they then go into asking you questions of what your doing, when your finished, etc.. Highly unprofessional. 

Office staff are unhelpful. Some of your supervisors are nice, most of them have now left due to management. The manager of the company is completely  manipulative and on a major power trip, The main reason why A LOT of the staff who have been with the company for years have left, Expect endless threats off her and bullying tactics.
The directors of the company haven't got a clue about care never mind how to run a business, its all money money money. 

The staff turnover at the moment is ridiculously high. No one from the office to the carers or customers know who is doing what role and are responsible for what, which is very confusing as they are constantly changing roles.

Working for this company has brought nothing more than stress and drama. Not worth it at all, look else where like most of the staff are already doing. They also refuse to give you a reference. 

Also the last review which boosts about how great they are etc, Is from one of the office staff.

Been working at the company for almost 3 months, and not done any previous care work beforehand. Overall the office staff and other carers have been welcoming and supportive, and majority of the clients I have met I have found to be very pleasant and easy to build a relationship with. However, organisation and communication lacks within the office. Been a few times where I have raised specific concerns more than once and it has not been taken on board. You are on a 0 hour contract until you pass probation period, but don’t bother asking for a set amount of hours or days as you pretty much end up working full time anyway because the hours asked for are not respected. Overtime is always available like any care role, but I have found they don’t ask you beforehand, they just put it on your schedule anyway and becomes an awkward situation having to always ask for things to be changed because they don’t seem to take it on board. Travel can also be a problem as sometimes expected to get to a visit 15 minutes away with a 5 minute time frame - this means you have to basically plan visits yourself and sometimes go in to some early in order to stay on track. I have been told I should have had a review and observation by now to make sure I’m getting on okay but I haven’t had this either. 

The pay is good, and fair for the responsibilities you have (on a good day). Travel time is also paid fairly. The job itself has a lot of pros but also a lot of cons. If things were organised down to a T I would say it would be a fantastic place to work and build social and general life skills. But lack of communication and organisation unfortunately puts it down massively. 

For a care company it’s shocking how much they obviously don’t care for their staff. Management seem to think it’s acceptable to talk badly about ALL employees - and only speak highly of you when it benefits them or suits them at that time. Although the manager will be nice and fake friendly with you when you first start the dynamic soon changes and you’ll find you’re being blamed for things you weren’t told to do in the first place and generally you’ll end up being a scapegoat for most things that go wrong. The manager is as fake as they come and the fact she works so closely with her mother is detrimental to the company. When she isn’t online shopping or speaking about her personal life in extreme detail, you’ll find her degrading employees- often judging and talking about their personal lives with no compassion or understanding. If you’re ‘lucky’ enough one of the ‘favourites’ the manager will continue with her fake facade and will brown nose you and pretend to take an interest in you to benefit her. Anything she does is to benefit her and her alone. She is nowhere near fit enough to manage a team of carers and provide adequate care to the customers if she can speak so harshly and cruelly about the employees who work for her and give so much of their time to other people. It’s a common theme among the carers that she is not liked but as she has a habit to make those carers she dislikes lives harder- no one wants to speak up and so many end up leaving. Bluebird Care Bicester - when are you going to realise the manager is the issue and get rid of her? It’s not only the carers I feel for but the poor customers. Do yourself a favour and apply to ANY other agency or care home. This one is not for you.

I started working for Bluebird in December 2020 in the office.

Office - The office staff were extremely welcoming, very helpful and well organized. I could tell from week 1 that the office staff had good relationships with the carers, which is different to any other domiciliary care company I had worked for which felt like it was office staff vs care staff, very different feel here - in my second week, the Wakefield carers all chipped in and got a big bunch of flowers for their Field Care Supervisor for all the help and support she gives to the team!

Care staff - The care staff at Bluebird Care Wakefield & Kirklees are fantastic, when I first started they were calling me in the office to have a chat with me, and when I was out in the field they were also offering me support and guidance with our customers, again a very different feel from other domiciliary companies I have worked for in the past.

The management are very understanding and hands on, always asking how we are, and even sometimes going out in the field meeting customers, and again this is extremely rare!

The owner is very keen on personal development, always looking at offering staff extra qualifications and regularly taking park in charity events.

The most enjoyable part of my job is constantly speaking to employees who are happy, it's infectious and the happiness runs through the veins of everyone.

 The down side to damiciliary care is travel times between calls however, Bluebird Care Wakefield & Kirklees pay toward car mileage and also have other incentives for example, monthly bonuses for completing weekly COVID tests!

The company itself looks very interesting at a first glance. They say all the right things to get you motivated throughout the induction but sadly when it actually come to going out and working, it was a different story. The clients are wonderful, although just like the staff they get annoyed at meeting so many different care staff. The company say they will build up a regular for staff as most clients prefer to use just a few staff members as to not confuse them or their loved ones. Sadly this does not happen. Yes you get to choose the hours that you want to work but if you limit this they don't tend to fill those hours up, they give you a few visits here and there. The management staff sadly have no communication skills and often speak sarcastically to members of the care team. The other care staff on the other hand are brilliant and a true pleasure to work with. The pay looks really good on paper too. Although they don't tell you that most visits to clients house are roughly 30 minutes then you jump back in your car, and could be driving to the next client for 10/15 even 20minutes, during this time you are not getting paid apart from the 30pence per mile. And the way they work out the mileage is in a straight line, from door to door! So when you actually sit down and work out how much your actually earning compared to what your paying out in fuel it doesn't really look as interesting as it first sounds. If you ask around about bluebird you will find out they have an extremely high staff turnover. This doesn't say a lot for the company.

Top Job Titles	Average salary
Care assistant 537 salaries reported	£15.82 per hour
Caregiver 50 salaries reported	£16.00 per hour
Care manager 37 salaries reported	£28,916 per year
In home caregiver 16 salaries reported	£862 per week
Care coordinator 39 salaries reported	£27,812 per year

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