Going from COVID care worker to super service manager in under three years, Hayley Timmins has been nominated for the Outreach Community Service Award as part of the inaugural Housing With Care Awards.
Hayley started her career in care with Baron’s Place, one of Radis Community Care’s supported living services, in Staffordshire, as it opened during the first COVID-19 lockdown, and was promoted to team leader after just six weeks.
In this role, Hayley and her team support 14 people with mild learning disabilities, autism and a range of mental health conditions, with one resident requiring 24-hour support. Hayley quickly realised that despite some requirements for additional support, the people under her care were all incredibly independent and had a huge drive to be out and active within the local community.
After forging links with a local charity and subsequently hosting a joint coffee morning with them, Baron’s Place was bitten by a volunteering bug and Hayley has empowered them to keep it up ever since.
One resident even volunteers for the local Scout group, and when Hayley asked him what attracted him to the role he replied that there was nothing for children that were like him, and that he just wanted to help people that might have different needs – a sentiment that Hayley shares and lives by.
Residents at Baron’s Place are also encouraged to get stuck in when it comes to fundraising for hobbies and leisure activities such as gardening.
Hayley said: “Everything is purely fundraised, or it’s all from donations. Sometimes we’ll ask around the local community or look on Facebook pages but a lot of it is some really awesome fundraising.”
“We’re even looking at setting up a table sale with the local church, so we can split the money raised. We also have some residents who run their own businesses, one person makes greetings cards and another couple of people love to bake.”
When asked what she loves about her role, Hayley explained:
“I just like helping people and I like to make people happy. I like to build people’s confidence. I was never confident growing up and I never wanted to progress, I was quite happy being a support worker. As long as I could put food on the table for my children then I was happy but the more I grew in my profession, the more I wanted for the people I was supporting. I want the service to be the best it can be.”
She also has a really simple motto that keeps the team in high spirits and ready to support their service users – “If we can work together, it’s a much happier place, isn’t it?”
She explained that it can be really challenging to help service users feel like they’re part of the community when they’re often given less access to opportunities and treated differently.
Hayley is working incredibly hard to shift attitudes towards supported living and individuals who have additional needs.
“I’m still very involved with the people we support but I don’t get to work one-to-one with them very often anymore. So if I pop to the local shops with a resident, for example, and I see people in the shops take the time to say hello, it’s so nice to see people being accepted,” she said.Hayley was also asked what she thought of the shortlisting, and she was incredibly humble.
“To me, it’s just the job. I don’t think that I’m doing anything ‘out there’.” She continued, “I just want my service users to feel supported and to know that they can do what I do. And I am just so proud of my team, it’s not an easy job and they’re always so willing to go above and beyond.”
