Head Chef

Head Chefs at Care UK are well organised, highly motivated, flexible and enthusiastic. They have what it takes to build trust, maintain team discipline and boost morale. They enjoy collaborating with others and sharing ideas and information. They're great at delegating and stretching people’s responsibilities in order to develop them. And, they have full access to a large supply chain for all catering requirements and the autonomy to create nutritious well balanced menus for everyone. Do you have the same sort of attributes? Then we could have just the role for you.

What you’ll be doing
Being a Head Chef isn’t just about maintaining high standards in all areas of the kitchen. It's about using modern kitchen equipment and fresh local produce to develop full diet sensitive meals for residents so they can enjoy the same flavour and nutrition. It’s about recruiting, training, supervising and developing a team to help them make the most of their potential. And, it’s about ordering supplies, maintaining agreed stock levels, working to a budget and completing monthly audits. Put simply, it’s about making a difference. A real difference.

What you’ll need
A Catering Diploma (City & Guilds/BTEC), NVQ 2/3 in practical cookery and Health and Safety and Food Hygiene Certificates (minimum level 2) are essential. You’ll also need to have relevant high cover kitchen experience and a good understanding of HACCP. Great at planning nutritionally balanced menus and catering for specific dietary needs, you're efficient at ordering, stock control and working within a budget and comfortable carrying out staff meetings and training. Above all, you have a natural ability to help make the lives of others more fulfilling and want to work in an environment where the work can be hard, but also fun and rewarding.

• Alternate weekend working and sociable working hours
• Competitive rates of pay – we continuously review pay in your local market
• Opportunities to progress through our personalised career paths into regional support roles
• Competitive refer a friend scheme of up to £1000 depending on role
• Quality and free training to help develop and enhance your skills
• Bank holiday enhancements
• Cycle to work scheme
• Free DBS
• Thousands of online and in-store discounts across big known retailers enabling our colleagues to make big savings on every day shopping such as holidays, supermarkets and travel.
• Employee Assistance Programme – Immediate access to a confidential telephone counselling and legal information service which operates 24 hours a day, 365 days a year to include support such as financial and family concerns

Silversprings is a beautiful, modern luxury care home in Thorrington, set in stunning surroundings near Colchester in Essex.

Silversprings care home delivers a range of quality care for older people. There’s our weekly dementia activities club for people in the local community who are living with dementia, and their carers. We also offer short respite stays to give family carers some well-deserved time off, as well as full-time residential and nursing care.

Staff in our care home are specialists in caring for older people with Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia and even undertake special experiential training to gain a greater understanding of what life is like for people living with the condition. Their empathy and commitment mean that Silversprings has developed an impressive reputation for the care it provides.