The 'Caring' Breakfast

Vicky Haines is the Managing Director at Kingsway Care – a home care provider based in Hove. Speaking at our August Chamber Breakfast, she talked about how she started out her career in a very different place to where she is now; but that the skills and experience she’s learnt along the way, have been vital to every role. 

How am I going to get the hat on my hair?

At primary school, Vicky Haines wanted to go into the police force. She had visits at school from a local police offer, who’d take children on trips round the playground on his bike. And, aged 15 she did her work experience at the Oxford police station – blue lighting to incidents, chasing shoplifters, and walking the beat. Perhaps what we’d now consider a slightly unorthodox work experience, but probably a more realistic than the filing, shredding and tea making a lot of us did during work experience at school.

Eventually though, she was dissuaded from joining the police force by her mum, who didn’t want her to be a diversity hire for a city force and end up moving miles away from home - although Vicky admits she had been wondering how she might fit the police hat over her hair!

She was however, still interested in supporting people and understanding how circumstances impact people’s behaviours. Something she would eventually come back to in her later career. 

Coming full circle

Vicky moved to London, then France to work as a PA. A few years later, she found herself returning to the UK as a single parent with three kids, thinking: What do I want to do now?

She sees this point in her life as a time when her old interests resurfaced and took centre stage for her career, and she decided to start a degree course in Applied Psychology and Criminology (whilst juggling two seven-year-olds and an eight-year-old).

Although managing three children, writing a 20,000 word masters dissertation, and starting a new job as a trainee probation officer – which came with its own set of education requirements – almost tipped her over the edge, she made it through, and became a probation officer, managing high risk offenders in both prison and the community. 

Real passion doesn’t really die

Vicky loved this job from start to finish. She has some funny, and some terrifying, stories. But she loved working in the courts and in the prisons – it gave her an insight into life, and the lives and motivations of other people.

Working as a probation officer, Vicky came to understand that nothing ever happens in a vacuum. There’s always a history, a reason for behaviours. Usually that’s a background peppered with deprivation or abuse: people who are a victim of their own circumstance.

Vicky’s biggest takeaways as an ex-probation officer:

• Never judge or make assumptions about someone’s ability or internal desire to change – most people do have a desire to change.
• Trust your judgement.
• Be understanding of someone’s history.
• Violence is rarely innate – it’s acquired from life experiences.
• We shouldn’t be defined by our previous actions.
• Acts of kindness and respect have a positive impact, even if you’re not around to see the result.

The steepest learning curve

In 2021, Vicky left the probation service because of she felt she couldn’t work in a system anymore that had a refusal to accept and acknowledge that it was broken beyond repair; and lacked the insight to redesign itself.

So, she decided to move into a different sector that was better funded, better organised, and more insightful. She chose social care…!

Moving into the care sector was, for Vicky, accidental. It wasn’t an area she’d considered before, and she admits it was a steep learning curve for her. She wanted to be a voice in this sector, not accepting the status quo and the narrative around care and always looking at ways to improve.

Here are some of Vicky’s (untrue) caring myths:

• Care is something you might need if you’re unlucky and at the end of life.
• Care happens when you lose the ability to be independent.
• Carers care because they can’t do anything else.
• Providing care is easy and anyone can do it.

What care actually is, is great conversations; knowing your client; supporting their needs; trips out; and becoming an important part of someone’s life. 

Disrupting the narrative around care

These untrue caring myths are just part of Vicky’s work to change the narrative around care. A lot of it is perpetuated by the media - it’s easier for people to accept stories of the bad care out there, than the many, many instances of great care.

Most people have a huge admiration for carers; it’s a complex responsibility to be involved in care for families, and the idea that it’s an under skilled job is something that needs to change in our culture’s mentality. 

Start thinking differently, and ask yourself these three questions:

1. Would you be more impressed if your child, or someone you know, said they were going to be a lawyer or a carer? If yes – why is that?
2. Why do we think of care as a career we wouldn’t choose – despite nurses and doctors being highly valued?
3. Why do we plan for birth, education, marriage, death – but we don’t walk about a plan of care – ignoring an entire stage of life that we’ll all go through?

Vicky’s talk left us all feeling like we should go out and take some action. We can all be part of changing the conversation around care – and it’ll be part of our lives, one way or another – so go talk to your friends and family about it, because everyone needs care at some point. 

Vicky Haines is Managing Director at Kingsway Care. Find out more on their website.

At each Chamber Breakfast, network and hear from a guest speaker who'll talk about their own experiences of running a business and their own personal journey.

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