I was a home carer -ask me anything

[IWasACarer]

Did you grow really fond of any of your clients?

That’s an easy one, yes, definitely Some were lovely, really lovely.

Have you been in any situations where the client clearly needs care but is totally resistant to it? How did you do your job under those circumstsnces?

All the time. There was very little you could do. Sometimes you could try to persuade them but as a rule there wasn’t any time. So they got left.

Do you work for an agency?

Do you clean their home too?

Do you change catheters, cut nails and pubes etc?

I did work for an agency, yes.

Yes, we were expected to clean. Specific cleaning duties were called domestics. Otherwise, we would clean up the mess that had occurred while we were there such as washing up from breakfast but not otherwise.

We actually weren’t supposed to cut nails, not sure why.

Pubes, no, not something I ever did.

How do you feel about aging and potentially needing carers in the future?

The nails thing is probably because if you accidentally cut the skin, foot injuries can be really dangerous in older people/diabetics/people with mild heart failure etc. I won’t even cut my healthy but nearly blind 90 yr old mums toenails nails - she uses a chiropodist.

was it worth the pay? did you drive from client to client? did you have extra clients added on willy nilly

I dread it coughy

The system is awful and I have seen people living in conditions they’d be prosecuted for keeping a dog in.

did you go shopping for them?

Slarty, the pay was dire.

Minimum wage - which was £6.50 when I started, and most calls were 15/30 minutes in length, so I was getting about £1.62 for each visit.

The way people made it worth it was by rushing tbh. It was all very frantic pace, if we’d stuck to the times on our rota we’d have been out from 6 in the morning to half eleven at night with no proper break.

Occasionally, not often. But it could be part of the role.

I'm thinking of doing this for maybe a couple of days a week as a way of getting back to work, how much did you get paid per hour and how many clients per day or half day , what sort of hours did you do ?

Would you want to do something else? Or progress into nursing or care home management? Do you work shifts?

Whats the best part about your job?

Would you recommend it to your children?

were management reasonable?

What would happen if you ran out of time to see people on your list for that day?

would you prefer to work in a care home?

Ooo it’s minimum wage but you do have to subtract from that travel costs and wear and tear on your car. Most places also charge you for a DBS and uniform.

Coughy I left ... I went back to my old job. I did work shifts while I did it, very anti social ones which was a killer really.

Best part of the job was the friendships I made with the other women although that was the worst part too, working with someone you didn’t get on with and having to sit in a car with them for several hours could be awful and stressful in a way that’s hard to explain.

I would hope none of my kids would ever have to do such a horrible job to be honest ... there were nice aspects to it but mostly it was awful.

Ooo, you had to go.

Slarty, no, definitely wouldn’t be for me!

What was awful? Stress of going from one house to another? Time constraints? Did you like the clients

It's work colleagues in all jobs isn't it

I didn’t like all the clients. Some were nice but had very rude family members.

The hours. Getting up at half five for a six am call. Finishing at eleven and getting home at half eleven. Working weekends, Christmas, driving through school run traffic. Being shouted at. Drama between other carers. People smoking. Driving too fast. Dirty houses, wee and poo, aggressive dogs, ugly sweaty uniform.

You've convinced me 😉

Is it true they will put you down for an unrealistic schedule / more shifts than you can manage? As often I have found the carers are lovely but late because it's phsycially impossible to be in 2 places at once

Yes. You get five minutes between calls which isn’t always practical especially in busy school run or rush hour traffic.

So Mrs Jones call finishes at 9, and Mr Smiths is at 9:05. The timings end up being completely fictitious.