Why We Care

“Peters Dean Care have given us the best staff we have ever had. They show a passion for helping us like no other agency” (Service Manager)

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Comments like these are the very reason we exist – we want to make a real difference through the work we do. After my psychology degree, I worked in a senior capacity at a large social care recruitment agency for many years and I thought that the quality of staff we supplied mattered because our hiring Manager’s told me it did. However, I didn’t understand the true significance of it until I left that role to work directly in a children’s home. I wanted to see for myself what difference staff really made and I will never forget the lessons I learnt. Having an agency worker hide in the office while a child was on the roof was not particularly helpful! We knew we were in for a tough shift when the staff member who barely said hello to the children and had no authority arrived. On the other hand, having our regular staff member who the
children knew, trusted and loved to work with was such a huge relief to us as staff members, but most importantly to the young people in our care. If we didn’t know who was coming, you could sense the anxiety amongst all of us, staff and young people alike. It was incredible what difference it made. Our team itself underwent a wrath of changes, not uncommon to the setting, and the quality of care provided to the young people as well as their mood and behaviour, seemed almost entirely dependent upon who was on shift.

After working in the children’s home, I took up a position within the NHS supporting adults with complex mental health issues, in particular anorexia. It was a specialist service and I was fortunate to learn from some of the most incredible psychologists and psychiatrists in Sussex. I loved the role and considered a career in Clinical Psychology. But I just couldn’t get the experience of working in a children’s home out of my head. Never had I learnt so much about myself, and never did I imagine quite what a difference people could have on the wellbeing and development of our most vulnerable people. My wife and partner Jess, herself from a social housing background, knew we could combine our knowledge and experience to make a difference.

A Passion for Doing More

We set up a social care agency with a mission to improve the quality of agency and permanent staffing in the region. We wanted to bring together the ethos and values of social care to create an open and honest approach to recruitment. But an ethos wasn’t enough - we needed to develop the processes, team and infrastructure to deliver results for our partner services time and time again. We needed to be a family-run, independent agency with strong values but which also has better reach and systems than the larger agencies. Many years on we are proud of the number of care services and service users that our staff have affected, but continue to press ahead with new initiatives and improvements to give our partner services and those they care for the very best.

Staff quality and service mean the world to us, because we care about what a monumental difference it makes to you and those you support. Work with us and we guarantee our maximum effort and passion to do our very best for you, your organisation and crucially, your service users.