Meet Aurelia and Dona, our Care Coordinators

Our Care Coordinators, Aurelia and Dona, do an amazing job piecing together the individual care needs of our customers, creating bespoke home care packages, and matching customers with Care Assistants.

Our Care Coordinators play a hugely important role here at Bluebird Care Wandsworth. They act as the ‘glue’ between our team of Care Assistants and our customers and their families, relatives and the professionals involved their care. You can find out more about the work they do in our blog "Piecing together the Jigsaw of Care".

Spending so much time talking to people, understanding their needs and then ensuring they are met, requires a special type of person – and we’re lucky enough to work with 2 such amazing people, Dona and Aurelia. We managed to grab some time with them to ask them some questions about their role as Care Coordinators.

What do you enjoy most about your role?

• Supporting colleagues to provide excellent care by making sure care visits are allocated and delivered.
• We love knowing all visits are covered – that is the only time we can relax!
• Speaking with a satisfied customer or Care Assistant (Dona and Aurelia are being modest - they regularly get thank you gifts from customers and Care Assistants for being so fantastic!)

What is the most challenging part of the role?

• Covering calls – consistency is vital, both for our customers and care assistants so when a regular Care Assistant is unavailable due to holidays or sickness sometimes it can be a lot of pressure to cover and coordinate everything.  We do try to ease this pressure however as each customer will be introduced to 2 or 3 other Care Assistants in addition to their main Care Assistant.   Although we cannot guarantee the customer will get the same care assistant every single time, this team system means that each customer should always see a familiar face, even if it isn’t the main Care Assistant.

We know and understand that Coordination requires a particular skill set. What would you tell someone looking for a career in Care Coordination?

• Stay calm! We constantly deal with people that can be in vulnerable and sensitive situations and so we always have to be sensitive and respectful while still being firm and professional.  The role is not suited to someone who is easily frustrated or aggravated...
• You must be able to prioritise. We constantly have multiple priorities and you must have excellent prioritisation and organisation skills.
• MUST EXCEL UNDER PRESSURE!

Dona and Aurelia say:

“For us it makes a big difference that we work for an organisation that appreciate, respects and supports us.  We don’t like letting anyone down – our office colleagues, our Care Assistants or our customers and their relatives – they all put their trust in us!”

If you could have any other career what would it be?

Dona said she would be a nurse and Aurelia a doctor. For us this says it all - these two women are absolute diamonds, dedicated to making life better for people, and we would not have the success we do without them as part of our team here in Wandsworth.  

For more information about careers with BluebirdCare Wandsworth, take a look at the careers page on our website.