To think it's really not worth me working for £9.90 an hour

[Rolaskatox]

I've been offered a role as a Care Assistant in admittedly a very nice home. Also, only doing care whereas many homes also require you to work in the kitchen, laundry etc. As well as doing the care.
However, I've seen that Aldi offer a starting salary of £10.50 an hour. Not saying Aldi is an easy job, but feel like 9.90 is just too low really.

I thought it was well know that care jobs offer poor pay. Are you on one of those 0 hour contracts? Why not take the job, assuming you need one and then apply to Aldi?

Everyone agrees until there asked to fund it

Everyone agrees until there asked to fund it

I was paying out £16 per hour, that was 2 years ago, it wasn't a problem. I had friends who sorted private care fro their mother at £17 per hour

People are paying the price but as pp states its not reaching the careers

It depends when I was a student I scored good HCA pay by working with challenging behaviour agency , bed watches etc. Nursing homes pay badly for HCA , I had to do restraint sometimes etc but generally I was paid better and better staffing ratios.

The holiday, like the pay, is the bare minimum. You will not be getting the usual bank holidays off but a day will be added to your leave instead. Basic leave is 4 weeks (20 days)plus 8 bank holidays= 5.5 weeks. There are care homes that pay a couple of pounds above minimum wage - have a look on your local jobs board to find them. In my experience the posher the home the lower the pay.

I would try Aldi, if you can as £9.90 is not the best.
if in your area Kingsley Healthcare have theirs homes you might try them, they advertising as living wage employer.

Go with the supermarket. Care work is extremely important and rewarding but not financially worth it! I'm a care worker at £10.50 an hour but add on the constant costs it's nowhere near that much an hour. £59 disclosure fee, £25 for each tunic, £30 for SSSC membership, SVQ requirement within 3 years, constant training both online and coming in on your days off unpaid... it really adds up. Infection Prevention and Control training is a good 10, maybe even 20 hours online, as is training in things like adult support, dementia, covid, and even food hygiene and family liaising. Every single possible aspect of care is covered. Unless I happen to be working when trainers come into the home, it's an unpaid few hours back at work in the training room doing my moving and handling refresher course or something.

This is because Aldi are being quite generous/decent with the pay. What you're being given is clearly over the minimum wage, too. Care work is not recognized for how much grimmer it is and that it should be paid more.

I'm not saying these wages would be the case in a utopia, but we don't live in a utopia.

People look at it and think the care company get £20 they pay staff £10 the make £10
take off the tax they pay £4 gone straight away leaving £16 ,national insurance ,pension ,training cost, insurance ,management structure ,fund 5 weeks holidays pay for office premises , yearly registration fees administrative charges ( accounts, payroll clients bills)
lone worker have to have duty of care system where they login in and out all this cost
and yes there not a charity they need to make a profit and I’m sure there be plenty of cost I’ve missed
a lot of care homes and companies have folded as they can’t make a profit

Sorry was just out, reading the replies now, thank you!

I get paid for training, in person and online.

the online stuff says it should take x hours but it’s really simple and takes less than that.

for bank holidays I get paid £10 ph, so 50p more an hour.

my shifts are 7 hours long, so if I work a bank holiday (remember the summer and I live near the seaside so everyone is down the beach) I make £3.50 extra. Before deductions.

very little time to spend with the residents having fun but some days are better than others.

but for me it’s s stepping stone, moving onwards and upwards.

most of my colleagues are recent immigrants, don’t speak much English and just want to get the jobs done and go home. It’s a fairly ‘posh’ care home too.

I've just come across an ad for a warehouse role where the wages start from 10.90 ph..
Never worked in any sort of warehouse role.

The reason I thought this home would be a good option is because staff usually only do half days as opposed to 12 hours, you're not expected to do care plus domestic and kitchen work too.
I do enjoy care work, the only issue I've had though is that some homes/staff can be incredibly cliquey and bitchy, some people allow the pressure of the role to get to them and they take it out on people too.

Also thanks for clarifying about the holiday thing I hadn't realised. It makes sense if standard is 28 days plus bank holidays.

I'd say that if pay is your motivator (and nothing wrong with that) then avoid care work.
I've been a carer for 26 years. It's emotionally and physically tough, the expectations are relentless, and it's largely an unvalued role.

I do it because I love it - not for the renumeration. I get so much joy from caring for elderly people, finding out about their lives, and being able to support them through the difficult aging process. It's not easy, but I wouldn't be doing anything else (and I'm degree educated).

Aldi will give you a better rate of pay, no doubt about that. You'll be expected to give your pound of flesh, much like any other job. And it's not easy to get into, from what I understand.

I'd like to add - please don't do what other pp have suggested, and take the care job before applying to Aldi.
Our elderly people deserve better than people doing their care as a stop gap. Building relationships is a massive part of my job, and that gets minimised by the number of staff who just pass through.
We do very intimate care, and it's not right that people treat this lightly, like it doesn't matter. Elderly people are deserving of dignity and privacy, and therefore need dedicated carers involved in their care.

Is that residential or community care? I get £11 an hour for community care yet the staff in our care homes get paid less than that. Apparently ours is due to having to travel considerable distances throughout the day. If I knew then what I know now about caring I wouldn't have applied for a job doing it. Don't get me wrong I absolutely love what I do and my confidence has soared massively over the years. It's the lack of support, the lack of breaks and the stupid travel times between distances. The bad weather we've just had we had no extra travel time and then you end up feeling like shit every time you're late for a call. Add in the unsociable hours as well. No one wants to finish at 10pm and be back in again for 7am cos by the time you've got home, had a wash, had something to eat and drink you're looking at around 5-6 hours rest before going back out again. Don't even get me started on the having to hold your bladder for hours and hours on end. I've never had as many UTIs since I started working in care. I know people will say why don't you go to the toilet whilst on calls. Some of them you wouldn't use even if you were massively desperate and also since Covid a lot of people don't want us using their bathrooms.

What pp's said, absolutely shocking is that salary.

Go work in aldi and work your way up.

I don’t think any job should be paying that low!

Well it's a low wage obviously. The UK is a low wage economy though.

I guess it depends on your priorities. Eg do you want a career in care, get more qualifications, move sideways etc. Does what that involve suit you? Or would you be better suited to a career in retail? Fewer qualifications but early line management responsibility and very long hours.

Plus there's the working pattern. Sounds like the care job is full time. Retail rarely is, contractually. So if you're a sole earner it doesn't pan out so well unless you can be really really flexible ie turning down friends and nights out etc so you're constantly available and even then the low contracted hours fuck up things like paid holiday etc.

TAs in schools earn less than shop work but that's down to budgets given to schools. Schools are now losing brilliant people who can make more else where because the school budgets do not allow to increase the pay.
This year, especially due to heating bills, budgets are going to be over stretched and a large proportion of schools have said they will go into the red. This will result in them having to make staff cuts, which WILL impact on the children's education.

It is to low. Careers should be minim 14ph

Aldi is £11ph from 1st Jan.

Very good benefits, flexible hours, 28 days holiday, discounts, first dibs on reduced food. Progression to Deputy manager is very easy, £12ph + extra £4ph if you're the only Dep on shift.

You do have to be very good under pressure, able to multi task and be physically fit. Strong mental health too helps as you're dealing with the crazy general public!

This is a receipe for either
a) sending staff home "sick" and on next to no money when they have nothing more than the sniffles, and a supermarket wouldn't care, so staff lose out,or
b) having staff come in when they're genuinely unwell but can't afford the time off on SSP (£99.35 pw) and passing the lurgy onto other staff and residents

I can't help but feel that this is how covid got into care homes in some cases. When choosing a care home for my elderly relative, one of the questions we asked was about staff sick pay!

The Aldi job would be a lot less stressful.

Care work pay is a disgrace, it’s one of the hardest jobs to do.

I don't comprehend why in this country we pay the people who look after our loved ones (childcare as well as careers) such a shit salary. I couldn't be a carer and have huge respect for anyone who is. I'd take the Aldi job.