493 care employers in Norfolk could find you

Working in care in Norfolk

Big skies, long lanes: what does care work look like across Norfolk?

Norfolk covers roughly 2,000 square miles, with 90 miles of coast, and more than half of the county is classed as rural. It is also an older county than most. A quarter of residents are over 65, and the number aged over 85 is expected to double to around 60,000 by 2040. Put those together and you have steady demand for care spread thinly across market towns, coastal villages and farmland.

Norwich is the centre of gravity, with close to half of the county's care employers. After that the work clusters in Great Yarmouth and King's Lynn, then Dereham and Thetford, with smaller groups around Cromer, Diss and North Walsham. Norfolk is one of the places where care homes outnumber home care agencies, so if you live in a market town there may well be a home within walking or cycling distance. Home care in the countryside is different: calls can be miles apart, and a car is close to essential.

Norfolk County Council runs its own Direct Payment Support Service, which helps people who get direct payments find and employ a personal assistant carer and can handle their payroll. If you want to be directly employed as a PA, the council points you to its preferred job matching site, and self-employed PAs can list themselves free on the Norfolk Community Directory. The council will also arrange and pay for an enhanced DBS check for a PA being taken on through its service.

For NHS comparisons, the county has three acute hospitals: the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital, the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in King's Lynn and the James Paget University Hospital at Gorleston, near Great Yarmouth. City College Norwich runs Health and Social Care courses, and the College of West Anglia offers a free 12 week online Level 2 certificate in Preparing to Work in Adult Social Care for adults aged 19 and over.

69% of the inspected care employers in Norfolk are rated Good or Outstanding by the CQC, below the 82% across the East and below England as a whole (85%).