To expect the UK's 1 million unemployed to get a job as a Care Worker?

[SquireOfGreenway]

The number of people unemployed in the UK is just over 1 million - the lowest it's been since the early 1970s. However, we should still surely expect that figure to be even lower.

From next year, it may be much harder for care-providing organisations to recruit European migrants to fill their Care Worker vacancies.

Surely, it is reasonable to expect any UK resident who is unemployed, claiming job-seekers allowance and so far unable to get a job to be required to get a job as a Care Worker? If they don't then they should be sanctioned and lose their state benefits.

I am not just talking about Care Work. I am talking about all minimum-wage and minimum-wage plus jobs that we have been relying on European migrants to fill.

Why not? There will always be maybe a few 100,000s unemployed, as people move from one job to another, etc. But why should there be a million unemployed people if there is a shortage of workers in any industry that does not require any great level of pre-entry qualifications?

Sure OP.

Cant even be arsed to read the thread...just want to say you offer up your children or your parents to be looked after by those forced to do it.

No?

Why not?

Spot on, March.

I’m not unemployed, but there’s no way I could be a care worker. I just couldn’t do it.

My mam is in a care home with Alzheimer’s and I certainly wouldn’t want any old random looking after her. She can’t do anything for herself. Your “idea” leaves the door open to abuse - even more abuse than there is now.

I take my hat off to care workers. They should be paid a much higher salary IMO!

TBH, I would absolutely expect any job seeker to accept the jobs left vacant after the Easter Europeans move back to their countries.
Otherwise they should cut their allowances and benefits. There's enough seasonal work such as strawberry pickers they can do. Chambermaids, bin men, cleaners. My understanding was that this was what the poor people from Northern England voted for, to get their jobs back.

TBH, I would absolutely expect any job seeker to accept the jobs left vacant after the Easter Europeans move back to their countries.
Otherwise they should cut their allowances and benefits. There's enough seasonal work such as strawberry pickers they can do. Chambermaids, bin men, cleaners. My understanding was that this was what the poor people from Northern England voted for, to get their jobs back.

Your surname isn't Rees-Mogg is it, by any chance, OP?

Your attitude stinks, BTW. Yes, unemployed people should consider any work they can viably do, but 'poor people', as you so snobbishly label them, don't just exist to do your dirty work.

Your surname isn't Rees-Mogg is it, by any chance, OP?

meant PP not OP

Well, Patel et al has managed to piss off half the country by telling skilled healthcare workers, hotel managers, lorry drivers etc that they are all low skilled thicko's deserving of shite wages and long hours.

We aren't even getting any brexitiers to post on here in her defence!

TBH, I would absolutely expect any job seeker to accept the jobs left vacant after the Easter Europeans move back to their countries.

So people who are 63 and made redundant having paid in all their lives but their pension age was suddenly raised, people who have learning disabilities and other disabilities were moved onto UC having been found 'fit for work' though they are not, to hoist around adults and pick fruit for a month that may be 500 miles from their home, violent criminals who've been released early, you want them serving you food and working with vulnerable and ill people?

You are talking about conscripting people who are not guilty of a crime and who may have paid into the system for 50 odd years. This has already been tried.

@bringincrazyback .... the PP was taking the pee wee!!!

I think the long term idea from the tories is to off the vulnerable and elderly (alongside eugenics). Needing and paying carers will become a non-issue.

I wish I could say that was a ridiculous thing to say but sadly I think it's spot on.

@bringincrazyback - no, but I love lying on the sofa with my best posh smirk on, watching the plebs.
And yeah, I was highly sarcastic. I think jasjas said it really best.

@EuroMillionsWinner - well, if any Remainer said that a while ago, it would be a "scare tactic". Right now it's becoming reality because I seriously would like to see how Britain is going to plug the holes in the economy.

So with no vocation, relevant experience, skills (empathy, patience, understanding) & forced into it, they'll be great Carers then? It would be an unmitigated disaster. The abuse levels would surely rise too. I'm all for upskilling & education but there has to be some motivation from the employee rather than money in caring professions, to protect client welfare if nothing else.

Travellers used to do the agricultural work. They lived on the sites and moved around with the work. Automation came and then there were also very stringent moves to force them, yes, force them, to settle, and some of it was also due to their customs of not schooling their children. So you want a move back to this, Eerie, because you can't have people doing this sort of piecemeal, seasonal, zero hours work and at the same time expect stability in their lives.

@EuroMillionsWinner - yep and I fully agree with you. All I am saying is, that from what Patel was saying it looks like they are looking to make the unemployed to do exactly what I was saying - make them choose careers they don't want to, relocate, leave their families for seasonal work etc. And it will hit those areas hardest which voted against the emigration and for the better life after the pesky cheap Eastern Europeans fuck off.

Some of these posts are heartening, loads of posters here understanding right away that care work involves skills that not everybody has (patience, kindness, flexibility, humour, not to mention a clean DB check.) I am the primary carer for my severely disabled son who will never be independent and as such I am paid £66 per week in carer's Allowance, this tells you all you need to know about how much caring for the vulnerable is valued in this country.

But seriously, how many of you voted for the Conservatives in 2010 when they were promising to roll out austerity? How many of you voted for them again in 2015 when it was VERY obvious that austerity was hitting the disabled and their carers very hard indeed? Then again in 2017? The Conservatives have a long record for this kind of thing and now, with Brexit, all of it has been ramped up.

Make the connection, for god's sake. One day, YOU might need care. or will have to be a carer. You'll be getting next to no support, next to no money, occasionally you'll be patted on the head (because that is easy) and you will get virtually no help for your increasingly poor mental health. This govt has never given a s* about the disabled, about frail old people, or about carers. And some of you (just looking at the stats) must have repeatedly voted for them.

I'd add, back in the early 80's my Grans sheltered housing had newly released prisoners doing the gardens on some long binned 'scheme' . The residents were all really scared spooked & the fact the scheme didn't last says it all.

How about we value more those that work in care and pay them a decent wage? I'm sick of hearing that girls need to do more STEM subjects as those are the only ones that have a value. How about we value higher care and so called "girly" care based roles?

Sorry, slightly derailed the thread but you get what I mean.

Oh and OP YABU

I agree with converseandjeans's post. Carers and health professionals should be paid much higher wages and have their vocation and service recognised. There are abusers in the profession now, before this latest nonsense.

I don't disagree with Patel though that we should stop seeing lower paid jobs as unworthy; they aren't, they're just able to be secured without formal education, they're still entirely necessary and i don't see why people who can work, choose not to? Why is that even an option?

What we need is to make care work a respected profession which adequately compensates those with the empathy and life skills to do it.

and before everybody froths at me, I'm talking of people who are capable of work and fit enough to do it, not those who are not.

But addressing the carer issue is the most urgent priority and press-ganging the unqualified, the unsuitable and incapable isn't the answer, it never was.

Years ago my mother decided I should either work as a nurse or in a bank.

Neither appealed but I tried banking out for a few weeks.
If I had taken up nursing I definitely would have killed someone.

I have a real aversion to sick people. The idea of tending to someone’s needs that couldn’t do it them selves really annoys me.

You are saying you expect people like me to look after the elderly

@ChardonnaysDistantCousin you asked do you think it’s a good idea to import carers and pay them a pittance? We haven't imported any carers? And we pay above minimum wage. Unfortunately self funding residents have to subsidise local authority funded residents because the council doesn't pay enough. Minimum wage is going up more than 6% in April but the council is only increasing payment by 3%.

What we need is to make care work a respected profession which adequately compensates those with the empathy and life skills to do it

My friend was an excellent geriatric nurse.
She really did love her job and the people she met.

The NHS made her redundant

A million unemployed/economically inactive is nothing, and encompasses a large range of people who are found fit for work but who no one in their right mind would ever hire. There's a reason they aren't working and I would bet the farm that for 90% of them it's because they aren't employable.

(Source:my job involves trying to find suitable employment for some of these people.)