Why I gave up managing a call centre to work in social care: Mark Minton

My day job was managing a call centre but I also volunteered at Yorkshire Ambulance Service as a first responder and was part of the falls team.

One day on a call out, I happened to meet Angela Fletcher, CEO of Happy Futures, and she gave me her business card.

I discovered that Happy Futures, based in Scarborough, supports individuals who live with learning disabilities, mental health, and complex care needs.

And I now realise Angela is a visionary and saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself that day.

After a few emails back and forth, she asked me to come for an interview to work at Happy Futures.

I’d been in a call centre environment for more than a decade so I didn’t know if such a radical move was right for me.

I asked to do a couple of 12-hour volunteer shifts at Happy Futures before I had an interview so that I could see what the business was really like and if the job would suit me.

When I did those shifts, it gave me goosebumps.

I knew straight away I had found my vocation in life.

It dawned on me that if I can change a person’s life by even one per cent then it is worth it.

And that answered something in me that wasn’t being met by working in a call centre.

To me, social care didn’t feel like work.

It is like it’s unleashed a passion I didn’t know I had – to help people with learning disabilities.

It’s given my career a purpose.

I’m not going to lie, when I first started, I felt like a spare part and had severe imposter syndrome.

But I’d probably feel like that starting any new job and within months, I felt like one of the family.

When you say to people you work in social care, I think they imagine you spend all day wiping bums but it’s not like that.

What our support workers do isn’t ‘just’ care.

If you spent a day in one of our bungalows for our individuals, you’d be amazed.

Now in my new role at Happy Futures, I oversee the health of our individuals.

I make sure they have blood pressure checks, arrange doctor visits, coordinate care and try to generally be proactive about their health issues and ultimately save call-outs to GPs and make sure all our people feel comfortable.

I totally get that the pay in social care puts people off.

Money is tight for most people and the cost of almost everything is going up.

But there’s more to it than just money.

For me, it’s a sense of pride, a purpose and a future.

It’s the best move I ever made, working in social care.

Being a carer is a vocation, not a job.

So if anyone is thinking about it, I’d say go for it.

You won’t regret it.

Mark Minton works for Happy Future