to find this job advert unacceptable

[bigbluebus]

A job advert looking for "people who are looking for their first position in the care sector" to join their latest training course "All we ask is that you are a car driver with access to your own vehicle."

This is a job advert placed by a care agency for people who will be working in clients homes on a 1:1 basis.

AIBU to expect that the most important thing they should be looking for is people who actually care and want to make a positive difference to the lives of those who need help - and that the ability to drive/own a car should be secondary.

As a user of care services, this advert - and in particular the placement of the word all made my blood boil as it accentuates everything that is wrong with the care sector. We need carers who care and who are enthusiastic - not car drivers who have been through a brief training course.

The employer needs to objectively justify the need for a drivers license or it could be indirect disability discrimination.

And I am sure they can prove that you need to be able to drive in between clients.

Caring and wanting to help people is not a prerequisite for the job. Professionalism and the ability to carry out all tasks necessary is. How you personally feel about it is irrelevant.

The fact is that the profile of care needs to be raised, it needs to be treated as a career rather than a last resort. Pay needs to be increased for an absolute start.

You are absolutely right, OP, that those attrtributes are what should be looked for first and foremost but I am an adult social worker and recruitment in care services in my area is in crisis - so difficult to recruit that I have done personal care for clients in the past because there was literally nobody else left.

In that scenario, I'd start with someone with the physical tools for the job and work up. It should be worded better.

When my aunt had carers one of them chose to walk as the amount paid for petrol and time given to travel were totally unrealistic. She would have been losing lots of money if she had kept using her car.

She was an utterly brilliant carer and said what has already been said on this thread, that 30 or 15 minutes is not enough to care for the vast majority of her clients.

Use of a car is pretty essential to most of these types of roles, so can understand why they want to ensure people stop wasting their time by applying and then thinking they can use public transport or walk etc when it is not feasible.

However for that to be the main thing and 'only' ask on the advert? Yea it is depressing.

Caring is fucking hard work and badly paid, especially domicillary care work, where often you are only paid for each call, expected to be available for calls at unsocial hours, and have big breaks between calls. Or where travel time is not paid, or in some cases i have heard not even fuel money.

Add into that the emotional and often physical challenges and the lack of respect or thanks many carers get from their employers or from people as a whole and it is easy to see why they struggle to keep hold of staff.

I really wish careers such as caring were better paid and valued, a good carer can make such a huge difference.

I think MiscellaneousAssortment you make a good point regarding training and grades.

The problem is that budgets have been cut to the absolute bone in LA care (by the government) so care companies are trying to provide the same amount/time of care on ever-reducing budgets. The numbers simply don't stack up.

I would advise anyone who is getting older to move into a town - living in a rural location as an elderly person who relies on carers pretty much guarantees poor care.