Pros
The trading is very good and teaches important client care as well as all the must haves of safety etc. You get hands on experience practicing with each other on hoists etc. The downfall though is that it’s jam packed, into a short space if time, for example our group missed out on catheter practice because the course leaders ran out of time.
Cons
Helping hands say they will match you to a client, I think this is pretty vague in reality, they just give you what they have. They might try and put a younger person with a young client but that’s about it in my experience. When I actually got onto a placement one of the key things that they taught us in HH was always consult you line manager if there is any change- and this is where it all goes to pot because I never could get hold of my line managers! I could always get hold of someone as they have a good back up phone system, but never the line manager and that is who is in charge of the particular client and their care plan. The 2nd thing that went to pot is we are taught always to do what the care plan says , but every client I went to , the care plan was months and years out of date, had not been updated by the line manager and it was not possible to get hold of the line managers. This is really bad because it not only means carers don’t have direct support , it means carers are going unchecked and unwatched , leaving vulnerable people extremely at risk of harm. I worked at 3 placements in HH and two of the 3 had horror stories about previous carers who took advantage of them. These were told to me by the carers handing over and the family of the client’s.
