To think this is bullshit and want everyone to know?

[Fuckbrexit]

I'm a mature NHS student, I needed to pick up some part time work so decided on community care to earn a bit of cash and develop my care skills and manual handling etc. I've worked in the sector before but office based so had some awareness of the job but I'm bloody shocked!

I've been expected to start at 6am minimum, drive miles to pick up double up non driving carer to then double back to drive 15 miles (going past my house) to first call (unpaid travel). Then work all day without a break, literally not even 10 minutes between calls and driving, no travel time at all. I get home close to midnight then have to get up at 5am to start again. All I can eat and drink all day is what I can grab from the back seat and put in my mouth while driving. So near 18 hour days and 200 miles a day driving (for which I get paid for 12 hours max) and 6 hours between shifts.

I only do this at weekends but full time carers do it 5/6 days a week and think it's normal!

How can this be safe for the carers? How can clients be getting decent care when calls are cut short to allow for travel? Am I being naive here or do people in general not know how bloody awful it is?

I don't even know why I'm posting really, I just can't see why this isn't a national scandal!

I don't understand how employing a non driver is fine but another employee has to be their taxi driver, no.

My friend was a care worker for a few years so this sadly isn’t news to me. She worked 12-14 hour shifts with a ten minute break to pee and shove a sandwich down her throat. She wasn’t allowed to get a drink until this break either. In the end she was fired one day because she wore the wrong coloured socks- I wish I was kidding. All that for minimum wage, it just isn’t worth it.

Care companies are desperately short of carers across the board (unsurprisingly!) so for them it's ideal to pair a non driver with a driver for the whole 18 hours, they only have to pay one lot of mileage and they basically don't give a shit if it's fair or not.

I did my first shifts with drivers while I was learning the ropes, they hadn't even mentioned working with a non driver and the bullshit it entails. The first I knew about it was late the Friday night before my 6am Saturday start when the non driver texted me with pick up instructions. Honestly, I cried! The non driver brought a huge bag of food and proceeded to stuff her face all day between jobs while I couldn't even eat a sandwich due to the driving. I'm not going back anyway, fuck it

@lborgia I definitely didn’t say that I was more angry with the Unions.
The list of culpability includes them definitely- but also the Care Companies, Local authorities, friends and families who don’t speak up (although that’s really hard to do) and Government who have cut funding to the LAs.

All care work is under paid. And community care work-the thing the government is now relying on, having sold off nearly all local authority care homes and following the big push towards domiciliary care-has the worst conditions of the lot.
Ive been a registered manager for 18 years-various settings. I've seen the value of the contracts driven down by local authorities whose budgets have been slashed year on year. Older people's care is the most under funded, followed by LD, followed by mental health-continuing care (if you have a health problem is about your best bet and even that's not great)
There is always a staffing problem. There are frequently missed calls. The care we can provide in the time we have is woeful-and often we are the only people our service users ever see.
I've no idea why it's not more of a national scandal. Because no one wants to think about it as that would be to confront the fact they will get old one day? Because they feel bad, rightly or wrongly for not being able to look after their own aged relatives? Who knows? But it doesn't win votes so it's rarely talked about except vague lip service about 'revolutionising social care' which never seems to happen-if anything the opposite is true. Under Brexit care staff will not be deemed skilled workers so won't get visas-Christ knows where we will get staff from then 🤷🏽‍♀️

I'm glad you've got a job in a residential setting. Though it often pays less it offers better and safer conditions and at least some colleagues to bounce off-nice ones if you are lucky. You aren't stuck in traffic and stressing or finding your way round dodgy neighbourhoods in the dark, so it's by far preferable.

@MurrayTheMonk thank you! You're absolutely right about all of it, it's properly heartbreaking

This needs to change

It won't. NO ONE wants to pay for care. You see it on here all the time, 'Why should I have to pay/lose my inheritance by my parents having to sell their home/I worked hard/I paid in for years . . . '

And then people live longer and longer and longer.

It's a poisoned chalice no one wants to touch. I'd rather sell myself for sex before work in care again - the pay would be better for fewer hours.

@PatellarTendonitis spot on! I hadn't thought of it that way but you're absolutely correct. Nobody wants to pay for their own care, there will always be plenty who have no assets and just can't.

Honestly the one thing I've taken from the last couple of years is that getting old and infirm is actually shit. My grandparents all died in their 70s and while I was devastated at the time, with experience I think it was probably easier on them. I can't tell you how many times I hear people tell me they don't want to go on any more, both in hospital and in care settings. I hold a lot of hands and give a lot of hugs (when wanted!)

I'm pretty sure what they are doing not paying for travel time is actually illegal.

Last year (or the year before?) there was a clear ruling that staff who work driving between clients are expected to be paid for the whole time they are at work. If I remember right, the ruling was that they didn't have to pay you to get to your first job, because no one is paid for commuting to and from work, but travel time should be paid. Slightly different if you work e.g 8-11am and then again 5-10pm because that is a split shift, but if they give you a list which goes from 8am-10pm, then the only thing they don't need to pay for is an agreed break time, but it is expected you are paid for travel as you are "working" because travel is an expected part of your job. I'll have a look and see if I can find the government doc which outlined it and see if I can attach it.

www.gov.uk/minimum-wage-different-types-work

Ok, I think this shows what should happen. If I read it right, if you are not paid for travel time, your hourly rate when seeing clients should pay enough that overall you get the minimum hourly rate for the total time you are working, from the start of the first client to the end of the last (including travel). So if I understand, they should only get away with not paying travel time if you are paid enough per hour while seeing clients to cover that so the average hourly rate including travel is more than the minimum wage.

I'm sure someone who know more about it than me will be able to confirm or put me right!

If people think working conditions for jobs like this will improve they are sadly mistaken. They keep voting for Tories so this issue will worsen. We'll lose all the EU people and then the Tories solution will be to force people who are totally unsuitable into doing it - what a fab way for crims and addicts and the like to take advantage of vulnerable old people! But hey, no one wants to pay and people can get their inheritances.

I have never not paid my staff for travel time when I've been managing Dom Care-so I'm also not sure how they are getting away with that one.

The problem with who pays for care is that everyone's point of view on it is understandable to some degree....

If it's free for everyone then tax payers are in since cases subsidising the super Rich-and we can't afford it as a nation. If those that can afford it pay for their own until they (very quickly) can no longer afford to then it's a disincentive to work and save and seems to punish those that planned and scrimped for their old age-if they are getting the same thing as say 'feckless Bob' next door who pissed all his money up the wall having a great time and didn't bother to think about it . That also seems unfair.

And yet we can't as a supposedly decent society leave Bob to starve in the gutter...so what do we do?

It's tricky once you get into it.

But all I do know is that unless you've got lots of cash, old age and needing any sort of care is an absolute nightmare at the moment....

Perhaps the answer would be to nationalise it to a certain degree-and at least pay the staff what they are worth. They would go some way to driving the standards up anyway.

And don't get me started on some of the legislation around care-CQC I'm looking at you.... we are an insanely over regulated industry in lots of ways-(some areas that are very necessary and lots that really aren't) and it diverts time and effort away from actual care and towards paperwork, that in lots of cases is utterly insane.

And we are trying to get untrained, poorly paid,under pressure staff to complete this to a high standard, that for a good proportion of them is frankly impossible. Then good Managers burn out and leave and around it all goes 🤷🏽‍♀️.

YANBU but this is the sort of dedication the nhs demands of its mind bogglingly amazing staff x

Grace, this isn't the NHS- it's privately-run domiciliary care companies.

Companies dodge the travel time by giving five minutes to travel between calls, regardless of distance or time of day.

@deareloise exactly this. 5 minutes between calls that can be 20 miles apart so 12 hours of calls on a rota actually takes 18 hours to complete. Then they ask why you're running late and tell you it's your own fault for not getting a break while only paying for those 12 hours

Another ex care worker here. YANBU. I was continually amazed that that such working conditions exist in a country with such a reputation for the rule of law.

Just wanted to add a little update, thanks to everyone who commented! I started my new job in a residential home last weekend, what a difference! It's so brilliant to be able to spend so much time with each client, sitting with them at mealtimes instead of throwing a microwaved dinner at them on the way out the door, allowing them time (and dignity) on the commode/toilet instead of having to rush them to get finished so we can move on. Less pay (in theory) per hour but actually getting paid for every hour worked. Plus breaks and having time to eat and drink like a regular human being. I'm desperately worried about the future of domiciliary care but bloody glad to be out of it