Read our care team stories
If you care, you will love working in care, whoever you care for! Click here to read Sonya's story
Enjoying the flexibility of a career in care, whatever your skills. Click here to read Abbie's story
Proof that its never too late to take up a career in care...Click here to read Jill's story
Continuing the caring role and why I love my job Click here to read Clare's story
If you care, you will love working in care, whoever you care for!
Sonya McCormick is one of our long serving carers and joined us on the recommendation of another Bluebird Care owner who, luckily for us, was unable to employ her in his area. She is immensely popular with her customers and colleagues alike, not only for her friendly, bubbly nature and positive outlook on life, but also because she is surrounded by an amazing menagerie of animals at home with many fabulous tales to tell about her animals.
Sonya loves her job with Bluebird Care Worcester and Wychavon as she is a carer through and through both at work, and in her relaxation time. The flexibility of the role gives her plenty of time to indulge her passion for caring for animals.
Sonya says, “I am convinced that I attract waifs and strays. Animals in need always seem to find me and know that I won’t turn them away.”
Sonya acknowledges, “My partner has described life with me as like living rather hemmed in by wild animals, prowling about the place constantly!”
She is currently the proud carer of Merlin, a cairn terrier, who she has known her all her life. Prior to caring for Merlin, Sonya cared for Fin, a collie who ran in front of her car one night, leapt into the car with her, made himself her constant companion and stayed by her side until his sad death 18 months ago.
Charlie Cat, another current incumbent at chez McCormick, turned up on her doorstep during a particularly nasty storm, making such a racket, that at first Sonya thought it was a wailing child. Charlie Cat had been living wild for about a year and his owners, were more than happy for Sonya to give him a home.
Several horses and ponies have had the benefit of Sonya’s loving care and attention over the years. She currently looks after Tommy, a gypsy cob, originally a trekking pony, who turned out not be very keen on trekking - a bit of an occupational hazard for him, as well as Tammy, her boyfriend’s horse.
Lately, Sonya has had the embarrassing task of often having to return her horses to the field as they are very good escape artists. After apologising to her fellow villagers and thinking of moving them, her village friends absolutely forbade it as they considered Tommy and Tammy to be their own village celebrities! They may even be asked to open the next village fete.
As child it was pretty obvious that Sonya was destined for a career in care. The proud owner of Fitzroy, her pony, who used to drive her parents mad by plodding into the house at breakfast time; cats Polly and Busby, various spaniel dogs, one so soft-mouthed that she was able to train it to pick up grass spiders and deposit them outside unharmed and she even developed her own animal hospital to care for injured creatures, mainly the victims of her cats. Even as student she had various mice, fish and hamsters, one of whom arrived one night whilst was taking delivery of a pizza.
As a testament to Bluebird Care’s excellent training, Sonya was even able to successfully administer CPR to an injured deer that she found in the road and gives all credit to our trainer, Larraine Knight!
We are extremely proud of Sonya and look forward to enjoying her tales of caring for a long time to come.
Enjoying the flexibility of a career in care, whatever your skills.
We are asking our carers to let us know why they love their jobs and how they like to spend their relaxation time.
Abbie Jones joined us after training as a dog behaviourist which has put her in good stead with some of our customers' more challenging pets!
Understandably, Abbie likes to relax with her own dogs, Masie and Madie. Abbie says, "There is nothing more I love doing than training my dogs to do agility, walking and scent trailing.
Being a dog behaviourist, I enjoy helping others not only with advice and training on other carers/ customers pet dogs but enjoy helping people with their daily routine of living a nice lifestyle.
This may be assisting with personal care, getting shopping, cooking or just providing a friendly face and companionship as all our customers are different.
My job suits my lifestyle as I can pick up hours wherever there is availability, giving me not only a really enjoyable career but, also allowing me quality time to spend with my dogs. The hours can always be flexible to allow for any appointments either for me, Maisie or Maddie!
Oh, and by the way...the dogs and I love paddle boarding. Obviously, they just sit at the front of the board, leaving me to do all the hard work but we all have a great time!"
Proof that it’s never too late to take up a career in care
Carrying on with our focus on our care assistants, our amazing carer, Jill, has had a fantastically diverse and interesting life, leading to her joining Bluebird Care and becoming one of our most experienced carers at the lovely age of 76!
“I rise at 4.00 am, put the dogs in the car and go to my land, feed and water the horses and move the electric fence, run the dogs around the fields and return home. Have breakfast and a shower and leave the house just after 6.30 for my first call at 7.00 am!”
Jill is 80 this year!
Jill has enjoyed a long and varied working life. She has worked as a Doctors receptionist in Glasgow, a waitress in Aberdeen, an Office Manager in Manchester and also an Air Hostess for a short period on internal flights.
Taking a break from the office grind, Jill decided to take a couple of years out to go and work for her Aunt who had a B & B and holiday flats in Blackpool and joined the Tower Dance Troupe in Blackpool.
In her first season with the troupe, Jill and her friend were assigned to the Tower Circus where they worked, riding horses, elephants and generally dressing in gorgeous costumes. It was here that Jill met her first husband, Peter who was over with Knie’s Circus from Germany with a troop of elephants. They met and fell in love and as Jill says, “The rest is history”, but sadly, Peter died a few years later from Leukaemia and complications.
Jill has worked in administration most of her married life, from PAYE, Accounts, Buying and Sales, with her last employment with a silver giftware company for nearly 20 years, allowing Jill to pursue her many and varied hobbies. Jill has three horses and has competed on two of them and her best ride, ‘Charlie’ was competing at Medium level Dressage and Intermediate Eventing before retiring.
Jill also has five dogs (Norwegian Elkhounds), and she exhibits at shows all over the country including Crufts. She has made 27 of them into Champions over the years, so in the summer she spends her holidays travelling around the British Isles.
After sort of retiring, Jill was looking for a part-time job to finance her hobbies and was recommended by Tasha, her friend to come along and work for Bluebird Care.
Jill is happy to express her joy at working for Bluebird Care, “ What an experience this has been for me. I absolutely love my job, I love my customers and have a great relationship with all of them. I suppose because I am more mature and are of their era, we have lots to chat about. It's a lovely job with many rewards and a lovely caring company to work for.”
Jill is pictured here with one of our lovely customers.
As Jill goes on to say, “Variety is the spice of life, and I have experienced plenty of that!”
Continuing the caring role and why I love my job
Having been diagnosed with a permanently painful degenerative spinal condition 12 years ago, Care Assistant Clare Cowell understands that there comes a time when people need genuine, high quality care.
I started my journey in 2020, at the beginning of the Coronavirus Pandemic after sadly losing my dad to Covid-19.
I had cared for both of my parents over a 10-year period through various illnesses including Cancer, Sepsis and Alzheimer’s.
Feeling that I needed to continue that caring role in supporting others, I first became a Responder for the Royal Voluntary Service supporting vulnerable people in the community shielding from the virus.
I wanted to offer more. I applied for several care assistant positions but during my final interview, I knew I’d become a ‘Bluebird’. My journey to date has been difficult at times due to my condition. All of the team have shown me support, encouragement and guidance helping me achieve my goals as best I can.
There are no ‘typical days’ as they are varied. Certainly, it can be a difficult, hard and frustrating at times. Being a carer can make you laugh, cry and feel immensely proud (all in one day!) and I wouldn’t want to do anything else. The people I have met along the way, the stories customers and other carers have shared with me have been inspiring.
I couldn’t continue to care for others without the support from my amazing family- (my devoted husband, Dave and daughters; Kelsie and Aaliyah, including all the love and attention from our fostered and adopted animals we care for).
Knowing that I put my heart and soul into each visit, to hopefully make a difference to that person and their family members means the world to me...I’ve been known to say it once or twice, but it’s true –
I love my job!
So please, to the caring individuals out there who are apprehensive in taking the leap into the Care Sector, contact Bluebird Care Worcester & Wychavon, you’ll be a valued member of a great team taking on a hugely important role and you won’t be disappointed.
Thank you for taking time to read my story so far…
