Hugely successful Careers Fayre gets young people interested in a future role in Health and Social Care

Schools and colleges from around Hull and the East Riding brought their students along to the Great Big Health and Care Careers Fayre and discovered the huge range of careers available within the NHS and other organisations.

With over 600 people attending throughout, the event was made possible due to a collaboration between health and social care providers across the region, including our Trust, Hull University Teaching Hospitals and City Health Care Partnership (CHCP CIC).The well-attended fayre saw members of the public and local schools coming to see the variety of careers available and the interactive displays gave opportunity to understand the roles in a fun and informative way.

There's a huge range of stalls at The Great Big Health and Care Careers Fayre!

Here's a preview of some of the careers you can discover more about. pic.twitter.com/0dHFncb8a7

— Humber Teaching NHS Foundation Trust (@HumberNHSFT) October 25, 2023

Andrea Monaghan, a teacher of Health and Social Care at Withernsea High School attended with around 25 students and noted how informative was for her students. She said, “It’s been very well organised and there’s a huge variety of careers for students to find out about. It’s important for the students as they're studying theoretically so it's great for them to see how it works in the real world. We would certainly come to this event again with future students.”

In true local style, one of the main attractions was the classic cream coloured phone box, which was part of our Youth Recovery and Wellbeing College stand. Attendees were encouraged to pick up the phone and talk about how they managed their own mental health self-care. These audio recordings are being collated by the service and will be used by the service to develop a future course module delivered by the college to its young people.

How do you take care of your mental health? ☎️

Visit the Youth Recovery and Wellbeing College's phone box, record a message and let them know - they'll build a course around it and you'll get a freebie! pic.twitter.com/oKirdYYySJ

— Humber Teaching NHS Foundation Trust (@HumberNHSFT) October 25, 2023

Felicity Hague, Engagement Assistant for Children’s Services at our Trust said, “Today has been an amazing day and the engagement from young people has been phenomenal. The phone box has been a great way for them to give us their ideas to help shape NHS services, and it really highlights our work around co-production at the Trust. Humber is quite literally listening to the voices of our service users and young people!”

Our Integrated Specialist Public Health Nursing Service (ISPHNS) were also in attendance, showing how they inform parents about practising safe sleep with new babies and how their Health Visitors track babies’ weight and support parents in a variety of ways.

Along with the variety of careers being displayed, there were people from the University of Hull explaining the range of courses available to anyone looking for the higher education pathway they need to access some of the careers. And there were careers that wouldn’t always be thought of such as Central Decontamination Unit who brought medical instruments and explained how they work to clean and renew this equipment for use in surgical procedures.

Speaking to some of the students who attended from Kelvin Hall School they were enthused to have learned about more career options than they knew of before. One of the students said, “I came in thinking I knew what career I wanted to do, but after being here I’m stuck between so many jobs!”

The Fayre intended to show how many career options there are available in health and social care, and it certainly delivered.