Working families £18k worse off than benefits claimants after budget

Only. So you really think 1in3 families have disabled children?

A few posters have said that part time working should not be allowed, but your point proves that part time is sometimes all there is available, be it due to caring responsibilities or the nature of the job.

If you are in a job where you don't know what hours you are doing week to week, you can't get another that slots around your non-existent rota. So you end up doing less hours (but still have to put your life on hold in case more hours are offered), get a UC top up, and then get berated on here for being lazy and not working more.

How do we get the right people to be carers then in the right numbers? You say you couldn't do it, but of course you probably could. You probably just don't want to do it which is a different thing entirely.

Most people are capable of reading care instructions and caring for someone. They might not be the best carer in the world but ultimately they could do it to a reasonable standard.

That is a huge shame. Sounds like the industry lost a valuable member of staff who loved their job. I have known someone else had to drop out of care work for similar reasons.

It is always a red flag to me when a certain place/industry has a high turnover of vacancies. The problem there lies with the employers, not job seekers. Make the job more secure, well paid, with better working conditions, and people will want to do the work.

You are in the minority of people. We don't have enough people like you to fill the caring roles even if it was better paid and we got rid of zero hour contracts. None of my friends would like to be carers apart from the one friend I have that is a carer and loves it. It is a rare type of person amongst the general population.

Whilst care could be better paid, realistically it would never be able to be that much better paid because where would the money come from? Too few of us put aside enough savings to cover our care needs in our old age and the state has a ballooning debt so can't just start doubling carers wages and fund it with public money.

So instead we look at what can realistically be achieved with what we do have. Millions of able bodied people that are choosing to stay on benefits rather than to work in care and loads of care vacancies. Not every placement will work out and I'm sure we could offer people a range of opportunities in other shortage areas like cleaning. At the moment though people believe that they can simply opt out of doing the work they don't want to do and the government will pay them virtually the same (if not more) anyway. This cannot be right!

Absolutely agree with your last paragraph. Our house could have burnt down during our summer holiday because a useless young woman coming in to care for my mum left the fire on one night, and myriad other cock-ups took place because she apparently couldn't be bothered to read the care instructions. It's a responsible job and you can't just throw any old so-and-so at it. My mum's care company seems to be seeing very high staff turnover atm due to this assumption any old Tom, Dick or Harry can do care work. I couldn't.

The care worker discussion is a bit odd.

Care work is one of the main jobs people on UC who work, are doing, albeit part time.

If you are a care worker and you do 20 hours of shift as a single parent. Its not always as easy to find 17 more hours as you first think. the 17 extra hours available might well be outside of normal childcare availability. A lot of care work is anti social hours. My mum did it and it involved driving house to house, very early in the morning till late at night, night shifts, weekends etc and she had to run her own car. She claimed milage but it didnt cover wear and tear.

Then people say, well dont be a carer then. But thats the job they have qualifications for and experience in.

They cant win they should do care work, but then when thier children continue existing outside of 8-6pm they shouldn't do care work.

Most people are capable of it though. The vast majority of people in fact. They might not want to do it and have a poor attitude but that's something we as a society need to manage. Some people have a poor attitude to all work and quite frankly think they're above it. These people need to be brought back to earth.

Again, I ask you, where do we get all these carers that need from then? Demand is only going to increase and importing people from abroad doesn't necessarily work for the reasons I have already outlined.

I actually loved care work. If I won the lottery, I would go back into part-time or I'd train to be a mental health nurse. A lot of the more experienced care workers I worked with also loved their jobs. It is not a job people stick to long-term unless they enjoy it.

The reasons I left were lack of steady pay, a lack of holidays due to staff shortages and a constant stream of incapable teenagers who did not want to be there being sent to work there.

Because it is a job with a high turnover of staff (in part caused by people being forced into the role by UC) they are constantly recruiting so what happens is the home is short staffed and you have to work 60 hours a week and forget about that holiday request being approved because it's not happening, then 3 months later, their newest round of recruits pass the training and they're over staffed so you get 24 hours a week if you're lucky, then the new recruits start to leave and you're hours creep back up to 60+ hours a week, rinse and repeat three month later.

You could fix care work by paying a proper wage and scrapping zero-hour contracts. Sending in incapable 18-year-olds is making the issue worse, not better.

Care work always gets mentioned as a job anyone could do. That someone who is unemployed has no excuse to be jobless because there are always care vacancies. Not everyone is capable of care work, either physically, mentally, or they just don't have the right attitude. As @Frequency posted, people who don't want to be there are a detriment to both the colleagues and clients.

I had a relative who worked in a slaughter house. He turned to alcohol to cope (really common in people who work in them) and ultimately killed himself.

Of course they don't. Nobody does. Does that mean we all should just choose lot to work at all? Because we can't find a job that we would love to do?

I just don't understand your perspective to be honest. Somebody has to do the crap work that nobody else wants to do but we as a society need doing. Obviously most of us want to avoid it so people work really hard, building skills and experience so that we can find alternative (imperfect) employment. Common sense would dictate that this means that those without other options should do the work that's left that nobody else wants to do.

I don't know where you think we will get the slaughterhouse workers or carers from?

There are nearly 1million advertised jobs
with more just advertised locally

The point is there are jobs out there and people can apply for ones they are capable of doing

But a single job seeker does not have the choice of 996,442 jobs to pick from.

What I do is neither here nor there because I work and pay taxes. I have absolutely no problem with helping to support a full time worker on a low income as-they are actually contributing and I have total respect for them. It’s this attitude which shows quite clearly in your posts that it’s okay for people to claim benefits because the jobs available don’t quite suit or are somehow beneath them so won’t bother. It is not the role of the taxpayer to support those who are holding out for a dream job that will never come.

There aren't enough people in this world that want to be carers compared to how many carers we actually need. We are going to have to push some people into doing it or end up with lots of vulnerable people having their needs unmet. If you think our current strategy of importing carers isn't also effectively 'pushing' people into the sector then you are completely wrong. Most of those people would also rather so something else if there was another way of getting a visa.

Topped up is better than being fully funded by the taxpayer

I don't know what you mean about 'forcing' people as I wouldn't be sat there with a gun against their head forcing them to be a care worker! But ultimately we need more carers than we have people willing to be carers. Unless you are happy for vulnerable people to have their needs unmet then we are going to have to incentivise people to become carers somehow. At the moment we do this by trying to encourage people from other countries to come here and work in the sector with the promise of a much desired visa. What percent of these carers do you think are carers because they are compassionate, proud, motivated carers and how many of them are simply desperate to get to the UK by any means possible? Why do you think they are so much better suited to caring than our own population?

Not many people have a burning desire to be cleaners, slaughter house workers, litter pickers or carers, yet society has a need for these jobs to be fulfilled by people. We can all say we aren't suited to the roles as we don't want to do them but where does that leave us. Somebody has to do them and if you can't find alternative work then why shouldn't it be you? Why assume that there are loads of people that are well suited to dealing with people with dementia or wiping bums when it's obviously not true

There are currently
1.79 million people unemployed
723,000 job vacancies (advertised )
273,442 people here on work visas ( half of which are care workers)

If we add the vacancies and work visas there are
996,442 jobs available to U.K. people.

Of note A lot of jobs are advertised locally so won’t be part of the ONS figures

Another 1million out of unemployment would certainly help the economy and prevent total reliance on the taxpayer

I've worked in care with people who were pushed into it by the DWP. It's one of the reasons I left the sector.

When you have 2 hours to get 12 people fed, medicated, washed, changed and into bed, you need someone who not only wants to be there and wants to work, but is capable of actually doing the work, quickly but with patience and understanding.

Sending me an 18-year-old who is going to cry when I ask her to attend to a resident who can be grumpy or who will ask me "what should I do with this?" while holding a pile of clean laundry is not helpful for me or the people who are relying on them to meet their basic needs. Continuing to send people like that to work there is only going to push more experienced careers into leaving the sector.

I doubt you would do those jobs.

Cleaning is a job typically topped up with UC.

Yes because it’s a a job. You really can’t afford to be choosy when it’s someone else paying your bills. There’s also cleaning people can do. Or aren’t people cut out for that either?

Honestly you need to stop making excuses for people especially when it’s others picking up the tab. I merely illustrated where people could get jobs. They just don’t want them. This is an area the government needs to be looking at.All the part timers claiming benefits to stay at home half the week

So you think the answer is to force people into care work instead?
How about a slaughterhouse? Or reviewing CSA images?
I do not think there is anything wrong with knowing your limitations in terms of what work you could do. Not everyone is cut out to do care work. Some people should never do care work.

I'd much rather someone be on benefits than work in a sector such as care which needs people who want to be there if we want our elderly and vulnerable people cared for well.

I know I wouldn't want any elderly family member cared for by someone who doesn't actually want to be there and in that case, may not actually be doing a good job.

We aren't talking about stacking shelves here.

I'm sorry but this is unbelievably naive.

There simply aren't enough people with a desperate desire to do care work in the way you imply. This isn't a problem that is unique to the UK. Very few people would actively choose this kind of work even if it was more highly valued/paid. It's hard, unrelenting work and can be physically, emotionally and mentally testing. So what can we realistically do?

At the moment we are simply importing our care workers which is extremely questionable in itself. Do you really think all of these foreign care workers are dedicated and proud carers or do you think they are potentially agreeing to do this work in order to get into the country? Is this really better than encouraging our own people to do this work through whatever levers we have available (yes paying a bit more but also making a life on benefits harder and less of a viable option for so many people)?