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The Life of An Alliance Support Worker

Saturday 02 February 2019

Hi, I’m Will.

I’m one of the two support workers at Alliance Foster Care — it’s definitely one of the most varied, interesting and fun roles there is.

Most of my time is spent getting to know young people and helping them out during their time in foster care.

Meeting and spending time with them is so enjoyable – and can be challenging at times.

A typical day might involve organising events and planning fun support sessions — or maybe representing Alliance at school meetings.

In an afternoon I’ll often head out to visit young people after they finish school to do a variety of different work.

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Exciting and interesting

Most of my effort is child focused, with a significant amount of providing support for children in their placements.

For many topics, I’ll work on a one-to-one basis, tackling the challenge of developing inventive ways to help young people succeed.

It’s an exciting journey, seeing them engage and progress in areas such as:

  • Building self-esteem and self-confidence
  • Developing strategies to improve behaviour
  • Exam preparation and revision for SAT’s and GCSE’s
  • Child sexual exploitation awareness and appropriate behaviour
  • Online safety and appropriate use of technology
  • Befriending and being a positive advocate
  • Respite and placement support for foster carers
  • Independence work — e.g. cooking or money management
  • Visiting and welcoming young people who have recently joined Alliance

Along with Nicola, our other support worker, I organise regular events, such as activity days for looked after children, foster carers and their birth children.

We usually hold these in the school holidays so our young people have something to look forward to.

Summer is always a busy period but my favourite time is when we organise our Christmas events.

Decorating the Alliance offices to make them look suitably festive, or taking groups to Christmas pantos are always fun.

Being a support worker is something I thoroughly enjoy — and thanks to our fantastic young people — it’s always interesting.

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