A flexible career that fits around family life

Lifeways Service Manager, Sebastian Leong gave up his job as a qualified chef to work in the care sector at Lifeways.  

Over 11 years ago Sebastian Leong was working as a qualified chef by trade. During his culinary career, he was lucky enough to go to Birmingham College of Food and even cook abroad. This was when his son started school and Sebastian was certain that he didn't want to miss any of the big milestones in his son's life.  

"I wanted to be a parent that went to sports days and parents’ evenings and take him to after school activities but I wouldn’t have been able to do any of that working split shifts. I was working from 7am-3pm and then 5pm-11pm six days a week. I would have missed all the important things. I didn’t want my son to look around and see that every other kid had both parents and he only had one parent around. 

That's why I decided I needed to make a big career change. So I found Lifeways. I didn’t have any experience in the care sector but through the training and development opportunities, I was able to get to where I am today. Lifeways have given me so much over the last 11 years. Some days have been harder than others and still are but if you have the right team around you who work hard to achieve the same outcomes, then anything is possible". 

Now Sebastian is a Lifeways Service Manager, a fulfilling and rewarding role where he works hard to improve the lives of the people we support.  We asked Sebastian what his favourite part about the job is:  

"I appreciate the level of trust that is given to run a service and the help and advice from other colleagues. I was also given the opportunity to progress within the company starting at a support worker level, then progressing to team leader, and finally, service manager. 

I take every day as it comes, as every day throws up different challenges. This means having a lot of patience and being able to remain calm when handling difficult situations.  It also takes time to learn the background of each and every individual service user". 

To see how you can join the team at Lifeways, visit our careers page.