Raaj's story

Hello, my name is Raaj. I'm a Children & Family Worker at a Domestic Abuse Refuge, and I've been with Hestia for 18 months. Every hour, every day is different. There's a set job description, but it doesn't come close to what I do every day.

Women come to the refuge with all different kinds of trauma, and sometimes they don't actually realize all the different elements of their abuse until they talk to us. In the time they're here, my role is to support the mothers and the children to become independent and able to cope with the trauma - not forget, because they're not going to forget - but cope, and have a positive more outlook on life.

The best part of the job is seeing how my support helps people. For example, one of the mothers came and said to me "My son has always stayed with me, he's such a good boy, but after coming here, he's not listening to me, he's going off and playing with other children, he's happy to leave me and go in the garden and play."

This was after 3 months, and I said to her that that means your son is beginning to be a child, and the Mother sat there and cried. Her son had only ever known his Fathers abuse, and now he was seeing how life could actually be, and he was happy. Even now talking about this, it gives me goose bumps, because I know I've made a positive change.

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Career opportunities

We're looking for people with a passion to change lives, and who identify with our values: respectful, genuine, dedicated, collaborative, courageous. If Hestia sounds like your dream employer, then click here to see our current opportunities.

The Hestia Approach

The Hestia Approach represents our commitment to making the most effective interventions possible in the lives of those who use our services.

Our approach is based on a single principle: in order to add real value to people’s lives it is essential that we work with them as equals. Our expertise and experience of working with people on their recovery journeys is valuable, and we believe this gives us a great deal to contribute, but we never impose our ideas.

Read more about the Hestia Approach

Equality and Diversity

Hestia is proud to be a Disability Confident employer and offers a lot of support to candidates who may require extra help with their disability. To ensure we can support you to the best of our ability, please ensure you complete our Equality and Diversity form as accurate as possible.

We will only highlight any potential disability to our hiring managers so they are aware they may need to offer reasonable adjustments, not only for the interview process but during your employment with Hestia as well. All other information from the Equal Opportunities form is strictly confidential and only available to our HR department.

Samantha Uwadiae, Head of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion at Hestia said:

 “What excites me about joining Hestia is the organisation’s genuine commitment towards creating a more equitable, diverse and inclusive organisation. I appreciate their dedication towards wanting to build an inclusive culture, courage to challenge themselves and admit more needs to be done and willingness to work in collaboration with staff, volunteers, and service users to identify, understand and address inequities. So, their people feel respected and more able to bring their authentic and full selves to work, free of discrimination and barriers”.