This job is a 5 days a week residential personal assistant role supporting a female disabled student for 3 months from early September to early December. As some personal care is involved, applicants must be female. It’s based in east London, and could suit someone who has just graduated or gained a professional qualification and needs to earn and save a chunk of money, perhaps for travel or to help fund post-graduate study. The accommodation is rent free, but you’ll need to have somewhere else to live at the weekends.
The supported person is a 20 year old female psychology student starting her final year at Queen Mary University of London (Mile End) in September. She is a wheelchair user because of a medical condition since birth, so needs a personal assistant. She is Petite, clearly spoken and articulate, intelligent and ambitious. She is looking for a young, energetic woman older than her. The work is 5 days a week, with nights on call, Sunday night to Friday night. The weekends are covered by the other members of the team. During the working week you would live in her apartment able to help her in the night if necessary and the working hours are on average about 10 hours a day, mainly in the early morning and late afternoon / evening.
It’s important that you are the right sort of person. In particular you need to be fun, patient, kind, physically and emotionally robust, positive and optimistic, and a non-smoker. The nature of the job is that the successful assistant becomes a companion and mentor – you help with care, but we aren’t looking for a professional carer. The right candidate is likely to be a native English speaker, but if English is not your first language, it must be so fluent and clear that we can’t tell. You will probably have been to university (you’ll understand what’s going on in a student’s life) but it’s not essential. You don't need any care experience as training is provided (and anyway nothing specialist is needed). Pay is £585p/w, through Paye.
You need to be able to help the supported person with most aspects of daily living, particularly the physical things, such as cooking (from scratch – no microwave meals), pushing her wheelchair, cleaning, laundry, shopping, showering going to the gym, some aspects of study. When she goes out – perhaps to the theatre or the canoeing or wheelchair rugby club, it’s likely that you will assist her. Every day is different and some days are longer than others.
If you’re interested, please send an application with a CV by 5pm on Thursday 27th July to Richard and Liza, who handle the recruiting for this role. Applicants will be filtered on Friday 28th, and a shortlist invited to interview.