We recently held a new starters’ training session and thought it would be a great chance to catch up with some of the new members of our team and find out what they thought of their induction training.

We are extremely proud of our award-winning training programme for both new starters and continuous learners and want to give you a ‘behind the scenes’ look into how we prepare, educate, and train our team for their new journey into care!

At Bridgewater Home Care we place huge importance on our training and development. It is vital to us that our team are well-equipped for beginning their role as a Care Specialist, and that they feel competent and supported within their role.

Each new team member will spend between 3-5 days shadowing, where they follow an experienced Care Specialist to learn how to be a Bridgewater Care Specialist! At the end of this period, new team members must have demonstrated a high level of competency and understanding, which will then allow them to begin their role in earnest out in the community as a Care Specialist with Bridgewater Home Care – a cut above the rest!

Once happy in their role, all of our team members are actively encouraged and rewarded to continue their learning and development with our online Care Certificate as well as offering staff members the opportunity to complete a variety of accredited short courses to specialise in different areas of care.

All of our training is carried out in-house by our own training team, so we are always there to answer any questions or queries our team might have. From online courses to practical sessions and workplace shadowing, we provide everything our new team members need to feel prepared and confident to deliver care in the community, this means that it isn’t necessary to have any prior experience of care!

During this particular week’s training session, our new Care Specialists were getting to grips with Moving and Handling and took part in a practical session led by training manager, Maxine.

Here is what some of our new Care Specialists had to say about their experiences of the training course:

“I found the training very enjoyable, enabling people to interact as little or as much as they wanted. It was a structured programme, covering many areas. It gave me confidence and prepared me well to go out and complete some shadowing shifts.” – Julie

“I think that the training is a good representation of care work and prepares new staff for the role. The training online is comprehensive and the face to face training was excellent and very enjoyable, everyone’s views were recognised and all questions and queries were answered fully.

The training also provides an opportunity to meet other new staff, the training team, and the office staff. All the staff are approachable and very supportive. This support continues when you are working in home care with Bridgewater as the on-call team are knowledgeable and you are encouraged to ask questions and ask for advice.” – Suzanne

“The training was very informative and introduces the trainees to the duties and responsibilities entailed within their future role as a Care Specialist.” – Sarah
“The training prepared me by showing me different scenarios that staff are placed in. The training was thoroughly enjoyable and fun and it prepared me to work in care.” – Stacey

We try to make our training sessions as fun and interactive as possible, ensuring that our new team members are introduced to real-life situations and develop the skills to make them an outstanding Bridgewater Care Specialist!

We also encourage all our team to keep in touch with one another to help form long lasting bonds between colleagues, who are there for support, not only on a professional level, but also as a friend.

Once a fully qualified Bridgewater Care Specialist, we then continue to offer career progression opportunities to our team, whether they want to develop in their current role or pursue different roles within the business – there are so many different opportunities for our team.

The Franchise Opportunity
The Bridgewater Home Care franchise opportunity provides those with a passion for delivering high quality care a chance to run their own sustainable and successful business.

Their business model has been refined over the past few years to ensure it provides a successful platform for business owners to thrive in the sector. The opportunity provides franchisees with exceptional ongoing support and allows a better work life balance to be achieved, with greater financial freedom and autonomy.

Bridgewater Home Care are delighted to be offering a limited amount of spaces for their Franchise Pioneer Programme, giving their initial franchise partners access to an accelerated growth programme and a lower initial franchise fee.