support worker

relief worker

team leader

support coordinator

registered manager

Creative Support

Creative Support don't look after their staff and services suffer badly as a result. You are overworked, paid a pittance and gotten rid of if they don't like you. 

Management operate on a tick-box cover their backsides blame system whereby if anything goes wrong, it's all down to the frontline staff "who've been told." Inductions consist of being told to read upwards of 1000 sheets of policy documents on your own with no support. Service Directors are rarely seen at individual services and often have no idea about the state of the services they are responsible for.

Communication between management and Support Workers is pretty much nonexistent. Appointments can be made for the service-users or changes to their timetables can be made without management relaying this information to staff, let alone the service-users themselves; electricians, gas technicians and district nurses turn up unannounced due to poor communication. Management don't want to know about your concerns, they're only bothered about keeping their bosses happy. If there's an audit of the service, management always miraculously catch wind of this the day or two before and run around frantically sorting things out. 

Expect to be put on incredibly long shifts i.e 9am until 11pm, a "sleep" from 11pm until 7am and then working a further 8 hours until 3pm. If anything happens during the night and you can't sleep as a result then don't expect to be paid anymore or be relieved by other staff members in the morning. 

Don't expect to be able to have a social life outside of work either. Rotas are most often than not completed at the very last minute so you can never make any plans as you might be working. Management also seem to have a knack of clashing the shift handover with client's regular activities so you are forced to work overtime, unless you're lucky and the next person on shift can meet you and the service-users wherever you may be. 

The service-users themselves suffer from poor management. If without family or a particularly caring Support Worker then service-users, especially those with learning disabilities are left without a voice. Service-user's homes are often left in a state of disrepair and are only ever sorted out unless absolutely necessary. 

Staff turnover at Creative Support is incredibly high and morale is low. They don't have a HR department, rather they have a few people at head office who deal with HR issues on top of their own work. How they've managed to bag the Investors in People accreditation I'll never know.

Sadly, I'm sure these problems are rife across the across the health industry. Privatisation has meant that "not for profit" organisations like Creative Support submit bids for tender for everything and anything, regardless of their ability to provide a good service. Councils will award the contracts to the lowest bidder and that's that. No one regulates the quality of service in any great depth and councils save money.

This company doesn't deserve to have the word support in their name because a lot of the staff that I encountered didn't know the meaning of the word. Most of them are sat around like they're at a Mothers (or Fathers) meeting, chatting over coffee and putting the world to rights. I say most of them because if your face doesn't fit then you're treated like an outcast. These outcasts are usually the nice staff who seem to care about the clients welfare the most.
You also find that some staff can pick and choose what days/hours they work while the less vocal staff have to do the shifts that they're given with no room for compromise. The place is full of hypocrites who will slate others for things that they're guilty of doing themselves, for example using mobile phones on shift, making human errors, sitting around doing nothing.

As for management/home leaders. They're not helpful in the slightest. If you go to them with a problem, that problem is made bigger and more stressful because they make it that way! Nothing is confidential, they belittle what the problem is and do nothing about it, and they don't care about anything that may be affecting your physical or mental health. All they care about is that the rotas are covered. They don't care about how many extra hours they're asking people to do or whether they're calling you on your day off/annual leave to cover shifts and making you feel guilty if you say no, and they certainly don't care if you've got a life away from the workplace, but they make sure they have their free time! Maybe if they treated their staff better then they wouldn't be so short staffed. I'm glad I left the company because I felt like I aged 20 years in the 4 and a half years that I was there for. I worked in almost half of the houses and each one was as bad as the last! They need to have a good staff move around because plenty of the staff that I encountered acted as if the service users were in their homes and not the other way round. They got too comfortable and too complacent.

If you want to be a puppet who gets treated like you're a nobody then apply for a job (it's almost guaranteed that you'd get it because they're desperate for staff). If you value your physical/mental health and your home life then stay well away from Creative (No) Support! All I have to say now is good riddance!

Everything about this company is wrong. Bad management. Payroll are the worst I have ever seen. They make mistakes with your pay, take their time to take your calls that's If they do, when they do they blame you for their mistakes and are very rude on the phone to you from their head office. They are never friendly. Receptionist at their training centre in Leicester a very rude. The manager Where I worked was the worst I have ever seen in care industry. New to the job but allows others to be in control of her thinking. Drives old workers out within weeks in office, brought confusion 
everywhere no communication whatsoever. When challenged about the lack of communication all you get is excuses. Bear in mind that this manager is hardly seen in the service but so quick to make changes maybe once a week for few minutes. . No table meeting with the service users and workers when started as a way to introduce a new manager. Taking people off their post without notice whatsoever and not even following anything on the contract given to you where they say, "you will be given prior notice before any changes" that never happened it's all lies. Work colleagues lies and betrays others for whatever reason, selling colleagues out for their own benefit. Since it's their "FATHER'S " company,  I hope they all stay there all their lives. Worst place to work. The company is no where good. They don't care about the clients that are being supported, they don't care about the workers and their well-being, because if they do, you will be considered before any changes. None of these happened. They play with people's emotions and well-being forgetting that the well-being of their workers matters as well. Make a mistake and you are on YOUR own but they won't support you when you need it. It's all good in paper but not until you get in there.


At least, appreciate people's efforts. 


All your work and effort are never valued. Now I can't get all my last pay  and I can't get hold of the payroll. Too bad that you have to chase your money like this after your work but no one chased you to work as you did your own part now it's a big deal to get your pay.

STAY AWAY FROM THEM.

Worked at this company for less than a year and very glad that I have left.  There is no support from senior management nor central services at all to support your role.  You are left to get on yourself thrown into the deep end without any forms of induction.  The most shocking thing is according to other staff this always has been the company culture hence why the staff turnover is very high.  Heard a lot of negativities about the company initially when I started but unfortunately all what I have been told had came very true and experienced by myself.  The company do promote the need for staff support which you have to ask for but my experience is you can ask but whether you get it its a different matter.  Payroll is not always on the ball and a lot of staff regularly complain about not getting the correct pay which also happened to me even though correct process has been followed.  Once they get your pay wrong it takes forever for them to rectify.  They also have tendency to ignore communication from emails and phone calls due to limited capacity as their reason.  This wouldn’t be an issue if they get staff’s pay correct in the first place.  Although this is a national company but they have services scattered around the country but they do not have a proper infrastructure to support those services so the nearer you are to their head office the easier it is to access their central services.  Staff level is always low and staff are expected to work over constantly and they do not care about people’s personal life and you do as told.  The most positive thing is the customers are lovely to work with but I do feel very sorry for them being cared for by this company.  Person centreness only exist on paper but not practice.  Staff often not complain due to the ramification afterwards.  My advice is stay away.

Poor company to work for if you like paperwork and training every week/month then it’s for you. I never came into the care industry to be an admin worker. Poor facilities and they love posters. If someone drops a shift you are hounded to cover can easily work 9 days on the bounce and kiss your weekends goodbye work life balance ( having a laugh aren’t you). Poor management and if someone continues to make mistakes the whole team are lambasted and treat with contempt. Disgusting. Clients need better support but staff retention and any respect for staff is non existent. Things could be so much better but the culture is toxic at times and what you are offered never seems to happen. Disgruntled staff team and no recognition for positive things you do but god help you if you make a mistake. No wonder staff leave seen so many good staff leave and they wonder why. Not valued and what you are expected to do for a pittance is disgraceful. And that’s before the responsibility that is thrust upon you. I’m sure lots of people can resonate with this, it needs to be addressed as social care is in crisis and losing the very people that came into this with care values and positivity have been flattened by poor management systems and a Jack of all trades mentality and not focusing on the skill set people often bring to the table. I’ve left the profession and will never go back and my quality of life has improved and my work life balance has been restored. What started as a great profession has now been devalued and stripped of valuable resources and great staff. This will be mirrored in so many care settings,  sad but very much true. I left knowing I gave my all and it was never good enough as they couldn’t  care about my well-being it’s all about covering the shift. Thank you and goodnight. 

The interview process is a joke..there are no managers to actually conduct interviews. Inductions are none existent, you are thrown in the deep end without training or information..just left to read out of date service users support plans etc as there are no managers to provide an induction and they are so short staffed they need you to start work straight away. You are given no support from managers, you dont even see managers and never get to meet the managing director. 
It seems totally acceptable for service users to damage staff members cars and other personal belongings and even hospitalise staff members with no repercussions, you normally get the blame as 'you must have prevoked them'. Creative support will not pay out for any damage caused to staff property by service users and services users are not expected to pay to repair damages. 
Head office will try to underpay you every week in the hope you wont notice and you then spend weeks trying to get them to pay wages you are owed. 
You are expected to work all hours god sent with no recognition, most weeks i was expected to work 60/70 hour weeks and they still expected more. 
The services are run on agency staff who are given no info on the service users therefore the service users are given inadequate care. 
The office phone is never answered as there is no one there to take the call. 
I feel service users safety and wellbeing are at risk being supported by this company.
I could go on...it is the worst compant iv ever worked for!!

I felt as a permenant member of staff that we were left to train any agency staff who had never worked on site before, where there would be 3 staff to any shift, you would have 2 agency who had not worked there, leaving it dangerous for service users and staff. The new staff they employ, more times than not are clueless, who have never worked in care, very unprofessional and refuse to work in places or doing certain jobs. The pay does not reflect the work you do!! They allow staff to be lazy and make excuses for not working.

As for management, they don't care, they employ bullies, then when you try to do something about it, they either get rid of you or put the bullying manager in their training rooms, your not listened too at all. The management/worker culture is very much upper class/lower class treatment, nothing you say or suggest is taken into consideration, team meetings your talked at, not included. If you go above and beyond within your job role your not rewarded or recognised for it. There is no chance of progression either.

Creative support literally ripped the caring side out of where i worked and made it a business over night. We went from knowing our service users, doing activities daily for them and CS ripped that away, causing our service users to turn on us thinking it was us stopping the activities.. Which wasn't the case. All management would say was it was crossing professional boundries!! It's just a business, not a care company... If i was desparate for a job, i would never work for Creative Support again nor would i have them as a care agency for any of my family members.. Appauling company.

I would not recommend Creative Support to anyone. Some of the staff were good team to work with, line manager are often changed over or go for a long time without one. Managers not very supported of their staff, often undermined as a staff member. Work long hours and often have to cover for staff at very short notice when you made plans to be with your family. Although they could use bank staff sometimes they did not want to use bank staff, so you were expected to drop everything to cover for other staff absences, even though you are absolutely shattered which is not good for you and the service users. The service users and families appreciated the staff but the management show a lack of regard for the work and hours put in. Very stressful working for this Company. I would not recommend anyone working for them. I use to wonder why they often advertise for staff on a regular basis, but since working for them i begin to realise why, they have a large turn over of staff. Staff members who started working often leave not too long after starting with Creative Support. There are a lack of empathy when staff members lose family members and grieving, The Company and management show a lack of support and respect and empathy at your time of grief, instead expect you to return back to work in a very short time span or immediately after you had buried your loved ones. There are no support given on your return back to work, from either your manager, director or team leader. Their is a total lack of respect and support given. On the whole I would not let my worst enemy work for this company.

Worked for the company 2 and a half years before I chose to leave. Had a fantastic, supportive registered manager for most of that time, then didn't. Some of the staff I worked with were brilliant however most of the services are terribly short staffed which is hard for everyone, especially the service users. Line managers of these services spend most of their time simply trying to cover shifts which then means they can't focus on supporting and developing the support workers. The constant use of agency workers makes it very hard to control quality though some of them are far better than the staff Creative Support recruits due to paying minimum wage in a competitive area. They are simply not competing with other places that pay better. Really chaotic senior management (including chief executive) who judge the week only by if shifts are covered, it can be anyone basically with a pulse and despite lots of evidence about what is going wrong in services, it is truly staggering that there is no reflection or learning by the company, especially if it involves spending money. Very low staff morale across the board.

Top Job Titles	Average salary
Support worker 279 salaries reported	£12.88 per hour
Relief worker 251 salaries reported	£12.86 per hour
Team leader 11 salaries reported	£14.23 per hour
Support coordinator 27 salaries reported	£14.01 per hour
Registered manager 12 salaries reported	£34,431 per year

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