Disability Support Worker CV Examples & Writing Guide

This is a CV for someone with about six years of paid support work, the point where most people move from bank shifts to a permanent role or a senior position. The person and the providers are made up. Notice that the shifts, the staffing and the specific conditions appear in the first six lines, because that is what a service manager needs to know before anything else.

Support providers hire constantly and read fast. They are checking whether you can start, whether you can be left with a vulnerable person, and whether the shifts you can work match the gaps on their rota.

• Checks. Enhanced DBS status and whether you are on the Update Service, first aid, and a full driving licence with a clean record if the role involves driving. Put these near the top, not buried at the bottom.
• Support type. Personal care and continence support, hoist transfers, positive behaviour support, complex health tasks, or mainly social and community support. These are very different jobs and providers staff them differently.
• Who you have supported. Learning disability, autism, cerebral palsy, acquired brain injury, physical disability, dual diagnosis with mental health. Name the conditions you actually have experience with.
• Availability. Sleep-ins, waking nights, weekends, split shifts, on-call. Rotas are the hardest part of running a service, so a line about your availability moves you up the pile.
• Recording. Whether you can write daily notes and an incident report that would stand up to an audit or a CQC inspection. Say it plainly with a compliance figure if you have one.

“I can teach the paperwork. What I cannot teach in two weeks is whether someone is calm when a support plan stops working at 9pm. So show me the actual situations: seizures, a behaviour of concern, personal care for someone who does not want it that day. And tell me your availability, because the vacancy is a rota gap, not just a job.”

Three or four lines, no longer. If you already have paid support hours, use a personal statement. If you are new to the field, use a career objective that names your transferable care experience and your checks instead of your ambitions.

Most people in this field copy their job description onto the page. Every applicant then looks identical. The fix is to add who you supported, how often, and what changed for them.

Ten to fourteen, grouped so a reader can tell what level of support you can give. Practical skills first, because those decide whether you can cover a shift.

• Hands-on support: personal care and continence support, showering and dressing, safe moving and handling with hoist or slide sheet, mobility support, help with eating and drinking, texture-modified diets, PEG feeding if you are trained and signed off, seizure response, catheter or stoma care where your role allows.

• Behaviour and communication: positive behaviour support, de-escalation, reading and following a PBS plan, autism-friendly routines, sensory strategies, communication boards and speech devices, Makaton or other key word signing, working with people who do not use speech.

• Planning and paperwork: person-centred planning, setting and tracking outcomes, daily notes, incident and safeguarding reports, MAR charts, supporting appointments and benefits forms, confidentiality, UK GDPR and Mental Capacity Act basics.

There is no licence to practise for this job in the UK. Support workers in England are not individually registered, and most providers train you after they hire you. What you list here still matters, because a candidate who already holds the basics can start weeks sooner.

• Enhanced DBS check with the adults' barred list (and the children's list if you support young people). Say it is current and whether you are on the Update Service; Scotland and Northern Ireland run their own checks through Disclosure Scotland and AccessNI.
• First aid, such as Emergency First Aid at Work, with the year you last renewed it.
• Crisis intervention and de-escalation training, such as CPI Safety Intervention or PROACT-SCIPr-UK. Name the exact programme and year.
• Medication administration. Providers train you and assess your competency, usually every year. Name the course and when you were last assessed rather than calling yourself certified.
• The Care Certificate, the induction standard for new care workers in England, and the Level 2 or Level 3 Diploma in Adult Care if you hold one or are working towards it.
• Positive behaviour support (PBS) training or a PBS qualification if you work alongside a behaviour specialist.
• Driving licence, driving record and whether you have business insurance to drive your own car with the people you support, or are approved to drive the service vehicle.
• Anything role-specific your employer required: safe moving and handling, infection prevention and control, Mental Health First Aid, epilepsy and rescue medication training.

This field hires people with no paid history all the time, as long as the CV proves you understand what the work involves. A page that leads with "seeking an opportunity to grow" gets skipped. A page that leads with 200 hours of real caring gets a call.

1. 1Count your unpaid caring. Supporting a family member with a disability is experience. Write it as an entry: "Unpaid Carer, 2023 to 2026", the person's support needs (without naming them), and what you did each week.
2. 2List volunteering with hours attached: Special Olympics or a disability sports club, a respite service, a faith or community group, school volunteering, a holiday scheme for children with additional needs.
3. 3Add any work with people, even outside care. Childcare, a busy hospitality floor, retail with complaints to handle, coaching a youth team. Pull out the parts that matter: routines, patience, safety, keeping records.
4. 4Get two cheap certificates before you apply. A first aid course can be done in a day, and some colleges and councils offer free short courses in care or learning disability awareness. It shows you are serious.
5. 5Say your availability and your transport. Weekend, evening and waking-night availability plus a full driving licence will beat a longer CV with weekday-only availability.
6. 6Keep it to one page and put a short career objective at the top instead of a personal statement.

One page if you have under five years of support work, two if you have a long rota history or a senior role. Reverse-chronological, month and year on every job, and no photo, date of birth or full street address. Bank and agency work is normal in this field, so list agency shifts as one entry with the support types and hours rather than a separate line for every placement.

• Mirror the words the advert uses: support worker, supported living, person-centred, support plan, positive behaviour support, personal care, community access, safeguarding, active support, outcomes.
• Put your checks in a short block near the top: Enhanced DBS, first aid, driving licence, medication training, Care Certificate.
• State your availability in one line above your work history.
• Save it as a PDF named for yourself and the job, such as whitfield-disability-support-worker.pdf.
• Keep the same phrasing the employer uses for the people you support. Most UK providers write "the people we support" or "individuals", not "patients".