Star Apprentice Zoey Taylor: Apprenticeship offers ideal career

Zoey Taylor, age 21, is an Apprentice specialising in end of life domiciliary care at AMG Nursing in Chesterfield.

When Zoey was growing up, she always wanted to be a vet. However, she opted not to go to university so that she could stay at home and care for her grandmother, who was ill. When her nan passed away two years ago, she says she ‘felt something was missing’ and decided to go into a career in care with AMG Nursing, who cared for Zoey’s grandmother before she passed away.

Zoey’s role as a Health and Social Care Apprentice involves caring for patients in their homes. This can range from keeping them company, to making them meals or personal care such as bathing, or washing clothes. Zoe joined AMG Nursing in Chesterfield eighteen months ago, and was enrolled on an Apprenticeships in Health and Social Care with Acacia Training to help formalise her training. Although she previously had a lot of caring experience with her nan, Zoe says that the formal training she has gained on her apprenticeship has helped her to appreciate the strict rules in place to ensure high standards, and become more aware of what is appropriate when caring for others.

Jessica Baugh, compliance manager at AMG Nursing agrees. She says: “We have more than 20 staff at any one time undertaking Apprenticeships with Acacia Training. The qualifications improve staff’s confidence in themselves and develop their self-esteem. We have several staff who might not have done any learning since school and didn’t originally achieve English and maths GCSEs. Before they even start their Apprenticeship, they retake their English and maths and this helps them feel motivated to go on and complete the qualification.”

She adds: “As an employer, Apprenticeships give us motivated and skilled staff, but they also give us quality assurance that all our team who are caring for people in the community have up-to-date knowledge on things like dementia, manually lifting patients, best practice to ensure our patients’ dignity, and more.”

Acacia Training provides Apprenticeships, work-based training and short courses for new employees or those already working in the care, childcare and health and social care sectors. Contact us to find out how.

New to the sector and looking for an Apprentice role? We are teaming up with HC-One to recruit to a host of new apprenticeship vacancies across the East and West Midlands.