Meet the team... Hazel Reed

Hazel is our Senior Supervisor based in Exeter... let's go meet her!

What are your main responsibilities in your current role with Bluebird Care Exeter?

My main responsibilities at Bluebird Care are wide ranging!
I help to train our Care Workers on specific topics such as medication and moving & handling updates. I also supervise our Care Workers and provide career mentoring and guidance
I also work as a Carer and am Bluebird Care’s End Of Life Supervisor
 
What do you enjoy most about your job?

I really enjoy making a difference to our customer’s lives – I have several customers that I have been visiting for years now and have built up a real bond. I think I look forward to seeing them as much as they do me!
I also enjoy the other side of my job, seeing new Care Workers at induction, meeting them to discuss their career journey and then seeing them enjoying their jobs
 
What does a typical day look like in your job?

My day usually starts with care visits in the mornings and supervising Care Workers whilst they are out on visits, and then it’s back to the Exeter office in the afternoon for reviews, paperwork and classroom training sessions!
 
How many years have you been working in the Care Industry and how did you get started? What did you do before?

I have worked for Bluebird Care for three and half years, but before that…
Started my nursing career in 1973 and qualified as a Theatre Nurse in 1975. I then went on to do domiciliary care work from 1991 and in 2000 became a nurse in Care Homes where I worked until I joined Bluebird Care in 2011!

Tell us a fact or something unusual about yourself…

I collect old postcards from my home village – a National Trust Estate, I probably have over 250 now! 
My Father worked on the estate and for the National Trust for nearly all his working life.

I didn’t want to give him the usual sort of retirement present, so looking around the Antique centre on the Quay and saw the postcards and just out of curiosity looked at Wiltshire and saw some for  Stourhead, and Lacock and Somerset had Montecute which were estates he also knew very well, so started to collect a few of them from each for his retirement present.

I just continued to look for and buy for myself after that, but just from my own village Stourton, but the estate of Stourhead.

He’s 86 now and retired at 65, so what’s that – 21 years! I hate to think what I’ve spent or what it’s worth!!