Whether you’re a Housing Association or a homelessness charity, getting the right care for your residents is the very pillar of your services. And for those operating a 24/7 service, night cover will be essential to this. In this post, we’ll delve into common questions about a Waking Night Support Worker. We’ll briefly look into what they do, the benefits & challenges of hiring one, and how to hire them.
Long before the pressures of the pandemic, the supported housing sector was in a crisis of a shortage of support staff. As England’s leading specialist Support Staffing provider, AGS Support provide a unique solution with its fully managed, 24/7 staffing services. Whether you’re in need of waking night support on an ad-hoc or medium/long-term basis, we’ll make sure to have you covered.
A Brief on Waking Nights Support Workers
What is a waking nights support worker?
A waking nights support worker is responsible for the safety, health, and wellbeing of vulnerable people during night hours.
Traditionally, a live-in carer sleeps during the night but is be available if assistance is needed. A waking night support worker, however, will be awake all night to provide specialist support to the residents of the facility.
What do they do?
Generally, a waking night support worker’s duty is to be the point of support for clients throughout the night. They’ll be in charge of safeguarding the environment, protecting the health of residents in emergencies, and handling difficult situations.
The specialist support they provide depends on the client group they care for (e.g. children with learning disabilities, homeless youth, people with a history of drug & alcohol abuse, etc). Other responsibilities include: completing risk assessments and ensuring compliance to healthy & safety and other regulations.
Does a night support worker require training?
Supporting vulnerable people certainty has its unique challenges — as well its very real risks. Extensive, specialist training is critical because it directly determines the quality of care.
For night support workers, training could be for mental health awareness, drug and alcohol awareness, safeguarding, and dealing with difficult people & situations.
Who trains them?
It very much depends. If a service provider is using a recruitment company or hiring their own staff, candidates will often have no previous sector experience or inadequate training. In this case, the training will be the responsibility of the provider’s in-house team.
A Support Staffing provider like AGS Support, however, offers an alternative to this. Each member of our staff has been full vetted & extensively trained to deliver the high quality of care that the Supported Housing sector need. In this case, all the training is already taken care of — with additional training available if requested.
Hiring a Night Support Worker
Who can benefit most from a waking night support?
Any accommodation or facility in the supported living sector, operating 24-hours a day, will require some form of night support. But the traditional option of live-in carers falls short when the residents are vulnerable people.
A prime example are homelessness shelters. People may have a history of substance abuse or mental health challenges and require 24/7 safeguarding & support. Housing associations, local councils, and charities in the supported housing industry benefit most from a well-trained waking night support worker.
What are the challenges of hiring one?
The duties of a waking night support worker are notorious for being demanding. Working the night hours can be exhausting and shifts are often covered alone. Managing an environment where crisis situations may arise, or residents are troublesome and aggressive, makes the position inherently stressful. For these reasons, along with an often minimum wage pay, the industry has long battled with shortages of staff.
Another big challenge is of hiring a waking night support worker is the quality of the staff available. As mentioned earlier, candidates recruited from agencies often don’t have proper support training — resulting in poor delivery of services or stressful management of them.
How can I hire a Waking Nights Support Worker?
The 3 main ways of hiring night support staff are: 1) using a recruitment agency 2) hiring in-house 3) using a specialist support staff provider. Because of the industry’s high staff turnover rate, using recruitment agencies & their inexperienced candidates has been the go-to way for service providers.
As a a specialist support staff provider, however, AGS Support offers the sector a unique & truly ultimate solution. With 25+ years of serving the industry, we are experts at selecting & training support staff to deliver the best care. But our added value is so much more than just providing high quality staff.
Our fully-managed staffing services are run by a fantastic senior team, who take care of logistics to guarantee night cover 365 days a year. Whether it’s for ad hoc night shift cover or hiring permanent staff, our assurance is: we’ll always have you covered.
For more information on AGS Support’s services or to book a discovery call, feel most welcome to get in touch.