When care workers don't have basic working rights those they care for suffer too
I worked as a homecare worker for about 18 months.
I stopped because I couldn’t afford to do it anymore.
Homecare earned me only four or five pounds an hour – well below minimum wage – because my company wouldn’t pay me for the time it took to travel between service users.
On a typical day I’d visit people to care for them from 6:30am until lunchtime. On an average day I’d spend four and a half hours in people’s home and over two hours travelling between them – but I’d only be paid for the time spent in people’s homes.
And because the calls were often organised back to back, it meant many homecare workers were forced to cut time off from calls in order to arrive on time.
I would end up rushing at one service user’s home in order to leave 10 minutes early so that I would be on time to the next call. This meant I didn’t have enough time for a proper chat, which felt awful when so many of the people that I cared for had no other visitors at all most days.
15 minute calls were particularly difficult.
Sometimes, I would be required to make somebody lunch and check that their medication had been taken properly; 15 minutes is just about enough time to do that and leave the kitchen tidy – unless you want to have a chat with the service user or check how they are feeling that is.
There simply isn’t the time.
15 minute calls treat people receiving care like a customer at a fast food restaurant: a number, an order, a box to be ticked, and then onto the next one. There is little ‘caring’ about arriving at someone’s home, heating something up in the kitchen, checking a medication box and leaving with barely a conversation in between.
It was not until I began working in the office to recruit care workers and noticed a UKHCA pamphlet lying around which had an article about this issue, that I realised that not only was this practice of not paying care worker’s travel time unfair, but it was actually illegal.
I broached the subject with my manager several times only to be rebuffed, until eventually discussing the issue at a senior management meeting.
The managing director told me that I did not know anything about business, and that I did not speak for the care workers, who were ‘fine the way things are’ and happy with their pay. He offered excuses such as increased pay on bank holidays and pay for training, which don’t affect the compliance with the national minimum wage for the rest of the time.
Care workers can report this to HMRC but the vast majority don’t – and even if they do, a lack of resources means investigations are rare.
What’s needed is a focused campaign to halt rogue companies from treating staff and service users in this way, which will need to include an increase in awareness among care workers so that they know what their rights are.
For the sake of those who are cared for – and for care workers themselves – we need to see a fundamental change in the way homecare is delivered.
We are all going to grow old, we all have elderly parents, grandparents and so on. Care affects us all and we should not be providing elderly and vulnerable people with substandard care.
We need to stop treating care workers like disposable labour, not even worthy of the basic minimum wage, when people’s lives are in their hands.
The author of this article is a former care worker who prefers to remain anonymous.
Paul Blomfield MP has organised a Westminster Hall debate on minimum wage enforcement in the homecare sector on Wednesday afternoon. Please encourage your local MP to attend via this email action.
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15 Responses to “We need to stop treating care workers like disposable labour”
Nick
firstly lets get some facts straight. you cant just import carer’s there a very rare breed of people
my wife is carer and according to her chief executive she is a natural
you can learn the role if you have had a caring attitude for others from a young age but failing that you will struggle in the role as the demands are very great especially for my wife who deals in end of life only
the whole of the caring industry need to bring this type of role in to making it fully professional just like as nursing as any nurse will tell you a cares role is just as demanding as theirs
Linda
I have worked in the community for nearly 13 years, and never been paid time between calls. It’s a disgrace, what happened to equal rights, Council workers are doing exactly the same job, it’s time to speak and be back payed all these years. I wrote to Nicola Sturgeon last week, and I am still waiting on a reply. Speak. Out now!!!!!!
E C
You can stop calling them service users for a start. They are elderly people.
Anthony D
My wife works as a care worker for my local council. In the past few years she has seen a decline in the quality of service, reduced pay through creative accounting, a shift pattern which make it difficult to find another job to help support a family and reduced time spent with clients.
The shift pattern was 4 days (Mornings or Evenings) ON & 4 days OFF. That has just changed. Now its 4 mornings followed by 4 evenings. They are also giving areas to the private sector without notifying carers or clients.
There is total disregard for anyone who cannot work these hours due to children or other family commitments as some carers also care for their own family members.
Those who worked in the recently privatised area still have jobs, but now have to travel some distance to work in other arrears.
Travelling time is paid, but they only allow 5 minutes to go from one call to the next. From one end of the county to the other takes 25minutes if there is no traffic, so workers are nearly always late & some clients miss hospital appointments because they are not up & ready to go.
The whole system is a shambles as the “Programmers” who make the rosters are either prevented from making the system work efficiently or they have no idea how the system works or where clients live. This means carers often pass each other travelling from one area to the next.
The walkers are expected to walk to nursing homes 4 miles from where they live to arrive by 7am or finish work at 11pm to walk home. No bus service operates at those times in the area that was privatised.
dj
Hi,
I am writing, having plenty of experience in support workr roles in care work companies, and i am now wanting to try to campaign or make things known to the public about how vulnerable people are let down du to lack of funding and businesses making money out of them. The support workrs are exploited with very low pay, inconsistent hours, long hours, zero hour contracts, not having breaks, asked to travel here there and everywhere at short notice without being given the funding upfront to get there. Also low staff moral caused by these things, lack of supervision, and this from companies purporting to be offering high quality care (and often having got boxes ticked to satisfy CQC).Aswell as this often people, service users, thats the elderly, those with learning disabiibities, mental health difficulties are provided with staff who dont yet speak the language well enough to make communication effective, and also care agencies and companies/businesses take on anyone (those with no experience/skill/or interest sometimes in the work). All these factors make the industry a ridiculous chaotic mess, where vulnerable people are often more extremely labelled due to lack of understanding or time provided to them. These people become blamed, which exasperates the problems and is a self for filling prophesy, and everything spirals down. Short staffed establishments, take on staff and the turn over is high, so lack of consistent trusting relationships can be developed. Staff can be often asked to come in on days off so as to keep managers happy with them, and also do shifts following night shifts (where sleep deprivation can then be hugely detrimental to the service, as many staff routinely are in that position), and working three shifts in a row, increasingly where food often isnt provided, or transport home at unsociable hours. Any one ,staff member, who tries to stick up for what is right for other staff, the service users quality of care,(or for their own selves and time off for example) can be most often seen as troublesome and eventually laid off..either put up with the inadequacies to care for the service users, or become eventually and inevitably gradually got rid of, or abruptly got rid of (for any reason they like- as it is very hard to win legally against these big companies). I have seen alot of poor prcactice which amounts to abuse through not giving people rights, choices, dignity, respect, and not being treated with enough care interest and understanding. The majority of institutions are routinely depriving people of their liberty to have the human rights they are entitled (and the care companies profess to give them). All in all, due to greedy capitalism, privatisation, exploitation of unskilled or sometimes highly principled and skilled yet low paid staff, means service users of care companies (increasingly businesses monopolising, or trying to,monoplolise and run the whole or large sections of the industry) are being treated as second class citizensin this country! The majority of the public have more compassion for theirs pets, it could be argued. If you look on glassdoor or indeed or azuna, every other former employee review, of a company/business, tells of negative service to service users, bad work conditions for staff making it impossible for good retention of permanent staff to make the companies good. Also all too often HR and office and management have little or no experience on the ground, in the work, and therefore operate these companies like other cut throat businesses, – AND its the vulnerable and their poorly paid supporters, that suffer. Basic paid staff, prevent society from antisocial aggressive,violent,sexual behaviour, that these service users can be challenged by (their own difficulties), and they are not respectd or paid for it.
Given all this, i would love to be able to do something, to make my voice heard, so as to enable the service users and other staff to benefit in the future. I would love to get others on board through some kind of campaigning strategy -to actually be able to make a different to this devastatingly profoundly failing industry, that is one of the backbones of this country.
Please let me know if you would be prepared to help in this mission, by making these issues more public and changing public perception and hopefully get the word across to those who make the policies and enable funding.
Thank you,
best wishes,