Residential Support Worker

• Solo Residential Children’s Home

• Wythenshawe, Manchester

• £13.50 to £14.00ph + £65 per sleep

• Two on, four off shift pattern

This is a permanent Residential Support Worker role in a solo children’s home in Wythenshawe, south Manchester, paying £28,080 to £29,120 basic, which works out at £13.50 to £14.00 per hour depending on your qualifications and experience. Once you add in sleep-ins at £65 a night on the two on, four off pattern, you’re realistically looking at £35,880 to £36,920 a year, all while getting four days off out of every six to enjoy your life outside of work.

There are two roles available with a small, owner-led provider whose Wythenshawe home is getting ready to welcome a young person with a brand new team, hopefully from November, so if you’ve got a couple of years in children’s homes behind you and you’re maybe wondering what it would feel like to help build something from day one, I think this is worth a proper look.

Why this one feels different

Most Residential Support Worker jobs on Indeed right now ask you to step into a home where the team, the routines and the culture were all set long before you arrived, and you spend your first year learning how things have always been done. This one offers something a bit more interesting, because you’d be joining a brand new manager and staff team who are training together right now, which means you’d be one of the people deciding what this home feels like when the first young person walks through the door.

Because it’s a solo home, you also get the kind of work that a lot of us came into children’s residential care for in the first place, which is building a genuine relationship with one young person and seeing what being a consistent face in their life can do over weeks and months. To be honest, that’s usually the part people remember most when they look back on why they stayed in this sector.

The people behind it

The provider was set up in 2023 and is still a small, owner-led organisation with two solo homes, which usually means you’re a name and a face to the people running it, and your ideas have a real chance of being heard and acted on. They’ve recently made some big, brave decisions about leadership, bringing in a new management team and putting everyone through training together, all with the aim of building permanent, consistent teams around the young people they care for.

They’ve also made it clear that they want to reward people who show what they can do, with a pay review after probation for anyone who’s making a real difference to the home and the young person living there.

The home

The home is a solo provision in Wythenshawe, which means one young person, one dedicated team and a real chance to build the kind of relationship that can change things for a child over time. It’s well connected too, with the Metrolink running through Wythenshawe and the M56 and M60 close by, so getting to and from shifts should be easy enough wherever you’re coming from across Greater Manchester or north Cheshire.

Right now the new manager and team are training together and getting everything ready, which potentially makes this the best moment to join, because you’ll be part of setting up the routines, the expectations and the little traditions that make a house feel like a home before the first young person moves in.

What you’ll be doing

• Helping set up the home’s routines, culture and feel ahead of welcoming a young person

• Providing day to day care and support for one young person in a solo children’s home, including sleep-ins

• Building a trusting relationship and being a consistent, reliable adult in their life

• Supporting education, school attendance and morning routines

• Supporting family time and helping keep important relationships going

• Planning and joining in with activities, days out and holidays, making the most of everything Manchester has to offer

• Keeping accurate daily records, logs and handovers

• Following care plans, risk assessments and behaviour support plans

• Keeping young people safe and following safeguarding procedures

• Administering and recording medication

• Helping build everyday life skills like cooking, shopping and looking after the home

• Working closely with the home manager and team, and taking part in supervision and ongoing training

What you’ll bring

• Experience working in a children’s residential home, ideally a couple of years

• Level 3 Diploma in Residential Childcare, or currently working towards it, with Level 4 very welcome

• Comfortable with sleep-ins and a two on, four off shift pattern

• A warm, patient approach and the confidence to be a consistent adult for a young person

• A good sense of humour and plenty of resilience for the days that ask a bit more of you

• Willingness to complete safer recruitment checks, including an enhanced DBS and references

What’s on offer

Basic salary is £28,080 to £29,120, or £13.50 to £14.00 per hour, set according to your qualifications and experience, which reflects the skill it takes to build a one to one relationship with a young person and to help open a home properly. Sleep-ins are paid at £65 each, and across the two on, four off pattern that takes realistic annual earnings to £35,880 to £36,920, with a pay review after probation giving you a clear chance to grow that further as you settle in and show what you can do.

Interviews are with the home’s management team, either face to face or on Teams, followed by an application form, references and the usual safer recruitment checks, so the whole process should feel straightforward from start to finish.